Miscellaneous News

FriedButter said:

Which set of numbers are you using? In terms of PPP in accordance with the world bank. The difference is about 50% higher than the Russians.

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I am using nominal numbers. Its not like Russian economy was isolated from the global market after soviet collapse. It was fully integrated. So, there has been flow of goods, ideas, technology and everything. So, how come Russian professionals like doctors or engineers are getting so much less money compared to Australians for example? What causes this gap?

Even Saudi Economy which is also dependent on mining is significantly richer. I am trying to understand what causes such disparity if the structure of the economy is the same between Australia and Russia

tamsen_ikard said:

I am trying to hard to understand one thing, Russia and Australia both are dependent on mining for their economy. Both countries biggest employers are likely the mining sector. Moreover, due to soviet legacy when Soviet economy was completely self sufficient Russia should have an industry for everything such as cars, consumer goods and so forth. So, why is Russia so much poorer than Australia?

What kind of jobs do Australians do that pay them 5 times more than Russians?

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You need to understand 3rd world Asian's Anglo/west worship first. Once you understand that, you understand everything. There is a logic behind it - a twisted shit logic, but logic nonetheless.

pmc said:

I dont think either US nor China can assemble 600K people to keep in another country for this long.

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China and US both once deployed around 1.5 million troops on a rotating basis each in Korea.

pmc said:

and it is not just those 600K people but many more who are either under training or taking long rest for rotation. so lets approximately 2m. and they will get salaries higher than the market. just to give some idea 24/7 air defense means that people have to sleep near the vehicles and constantly on the move to avoid static. cheap drones and quantity/range of missiles have made air defense much more expensive.
both China and US have bigger coast lines. it means many more low altitude cruise missiles will enter there airspace. there also differences in Aviation strike force.

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There is at least (vast understatement) 1 factory in China that makes most of (explosives added somewhere else) 1000 cruise missiles per day. The output of that singular factory can likely outmatch the pace of the whole Russian cruise missile campaign in Ukraine by itself.

Even if we assume only 1/10 of those missiles have ready cheap launchers to put them on, how long has Russia managed to fire 100 cruise missiles daily at Ukraine?

tamsen_ikard said:

I am trying to hard to understand one thing, Russia and Australia both are dependent on mining for their economy. Both countries biggest employers are likely the mining sector. Moreover, due to soviet legacy when Soviet economy was completely self sufficient Russia should have an industry for everything such as cars, consumer goods and so forth. So, why is Russia so much poorer than Australia?

What kind of jobs do Australians do that pay them 5 times more than Russians?

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It's only maybe 5x higher on a handful of specialist jobs, like doctor, investment banker, and I'm not even sure about that. The reason for that would mostly be that Russia has a legacy of public funded services. Even rich countries like Scandinavia probably have 1/2 or 1/3 the salary in these specific jobs compared to Australia, because of socialized services.

In reality, in a socialized services society, people use other means to acquire wealth that don't show up officially as wages (such as having a personal company and taking out wages in the form of paid time off), because wages are severely taxed and restricted. So they're not really paid so much less than in Australia, and they mostly work way less hours.

tamsen_ikard said:

I am trying to hard to understand one thing, Russia and Australia both are dependent on mining for their economy. Both countries biggest employers are likely the mining sector. Moreover, due to soviet legacy when Soviet economy was completely self sufficient Russia should have an industry for everything such as cars, consumer goods and so forth. So, why is Russia so much poorer than Australia?

What kind of jobs do Australians do that pay them 5 times more than Russians?

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You can ask a similar question about UK and South Korea. UK's per capita GDP is ~40% higher than that of South Korea and UK has a higher population. Yet, UK has no real product of significance while South Korea is among the top global producers for ships, automobiles, electronics, semiconductors, chemicals, etc. So why is the UK significantly richer than South Korea?

zbb said:

You can ask a similar question about UK and South Korea. UK's per capita GDP is ~40% higher than that of South Korea and UK has a higher population. Yet, UK has no real product of significance while South Korea is among the top global producers for ships, automobiles, electronics, semiconductors, chemicals, etc. So why is the UK significantly richer than South Korea?

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South Korea barely inches ahead of UK in per capita gdp.

While I can agree UK gdp is inflated relative to the wealth of the country, it is also a slightly more populous country than SK, so it's not too weird that they have a larger total economy.

It just comes down to gdp being a poor measure because

1. Countries decide their own counting methods.

2. Countries make "transactions" on different things.

Example:
Country A uses tax money to reduce healthcare costs, which actually penalizes their gdp because people are paying less.

Country B instead uses tax money to subsidise a company, the company in turn buys an extremely expensive health insurance for their employees using tax money, and the health insurer in turn uses the tax money to buy healthcare. That is 2 expensive products sold (healthcare from the hospiral and the insurance from insurance company), to achieve the same effect as country A.

Gdp rewards you for doing lower option while punishing you for the upper option:

And any country that realized this and that also cares a lot about looking strong on international rankings (US, India mostly), can then use that knowledge to start inflating gdp.

tamsen_ikard said:

I am using nominal numbers. Its not like Russian economy was isolated from the global market after soviet collapse. It was fully integrated. So, there has been flow of goods, ideas, technology and everything. So, how come Russian professionals like doctors or engineers are getting so much less money compared to Australians for example? What causes this gap?

Even Saudi Economy which is also dependent on mining is significantly richer. I am trying to understand what causes such disparity if the structure of the economy is the same between Australia and Russia

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Mining regions of Russia are also very rich in nominal GDP figures. And the reason is the same as in Australia: enormous wealth of resources and low population numbers. On the other hand, Russian regions that are densely populated and scarce in natural resources (like Ingushetia) are very poor.

Russia has 150 million inhabitants with a lot of geographic and ethnic inequality between regions, while Australia has only 25 million, mostly of European descent and concentrated only in very rich regions, with migration regulated.

Also due to sanctions the ruble nominally depreciated while the Australian dollar remained valued, which explains most of the nominal GDP difference. In PPP the difference is much smaller.

tamsen_ikard said:

I am using nominal numbers. Its not like Russian economy was isolated from the global market after soviet collapse. It was fully integrated. So, there has been flow of goods, ideas, technology and everything. So, how come Russian professionals like doctors or engineers are getting so much less money compared to Australians for example? What causes this gap?

Even Saudi Economy which is also dependent on mining is significantly richer. I am trying to understand what causes such disparity if the structure of the economy is the same between Australia and Russia

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There is only 1 set of gdp numbers for Russia, and it is not that far off gdp per capita wise from Australia.

Can you maybe explain your methodology?

tamsen_ikard said:

I am using nominal numbers. Its not like Russian economy was isolated from the global market after soviet collapse. It was fully integrated. So, there has been flow of goods, ideas, technology and everything. So, how come Russian professionals like doctors or engineers are getting so much less money compared to Australians for example? What causes this gap?

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Ever heard of supply and demand? Russia has oodles of STEM graduates every year. And get this. The state basically pays their studies.

Compare this with Australia.

They bilk their students. And then when these people get their medical degree they bilk their patients.
This is also why in Cuba doctors earn less than cab drivers. Anyone who wants to study to be a doctor basically can be one.
Cuban university students, and that includes medicine, do not pay any tuition at all.

The cost of studying a Specialist degree in a medical university in Russia is on average 290-320 thousand rubles ($4,143-4,571) per year.
...
The yearly cost of an international undergraduate degree from ANU is
..
up to AU$47,940 (~US$32,780) for Bachelor of Science or Medical Science programs.

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i.e. in Russia you pay like six times less to study medicine than in Australia.

tamsen_ikard said:

Even Saudi Economy which is also dependent on mining is significantly richer. I am trying to understand what causes such disparity if the structure of the economy is the same between Australia and Russia

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So the ability to bilk sick and vulnerable people is "riches"? Hah.
As for the Saudis, they basically import most of their technical talent, that is the reason.

gelgoog said:

India has more population than China in like a third the land area.

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Yeah, but most of China's population lives in the eastern half of the country.



Outside the Thar desert in the north-western corner of India, their population is much more spread out geographically.

tamsen_ikard said:

I am trying to hard to understand one thing, Russia and Australia both are dependent on mining for their economy. Both countries biggest employers are likely the mining sector. Moreover, due to soviet legacy when Soviet economy was completely self sufficient Russia should have an industry for everything such as cars, consumer goods and so forth. So, why is Russia so much poorer than Australia?

What kind of jobs do Australians do that pay them 5 times more than Russians?

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Because the Australian services sector is much stronger and of course its population is much lower, which means their commodities exports cover a smaller population per capita. But even in the absence of a strong commodities sector, they have far higher productivity in the non-mining sectors of their economy compared to Russia.