Belarus’s Soviet Economy
bloomberg.com
Belarus’s Soviet Economy
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Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#2Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#3Technically Belarus and Russia form the Union State of Russia and Belarus.
Some speculate that Putin might want to turn this paper union into reality before his term ends and become president of the union. He would avoid neatly term limits for Russian president.
https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-rejects-putins-call-for-unific...
Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#4The article talks about Belarus’ low levels of economic inequality, its Soviet past and the continuing heavy hand of the state and the KGB but it fails to connect them. I would be shocked if government employees don’t have a far higher standard of living than their pay packages would suggest. This is a less severe case of the problem with using Communist era statistics on income to track inequality as if they’re equivalent to the “same” measurements in the post Communist era. If access is more important than money and you measure money things can be very unequal and you’ll have no idea by looking at the statistics.
Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#5You can't talk of Belarus now, and keep China out of the picture.
If people says that East Africa is China's 24th province, than Belarus would be double of that.
Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#6The first sign of lousy journalism is the chart of poverty with the $5.5/day limit, like the cost of life is measured in dollars and it is the same across the board. No, it is not, in some places $1 is the equivalent of more than $10 in other countries.
Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#7Technically Belarus and Russia form the Union State of Russia and Belarus. Some speculate that Putin might want to turn this paper union into reality before his term ends and become president of the union. He would avoid neatly term limits for Russian president. https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-rejects-putins-call-for-unific...
Pretty sure someone like Putin knows how to pull the strings without actually being the president of anything.
Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#8The former soviet states are a great natural experiment in economics. Countries that liberalized their economies, like Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and Latvia (the "mostly free" countries here: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking) have grown much faster than countries that retained socialism and central planning, like Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17/ussr-s.... Remarkably, much of the economic growth came before Estonia, Lithuania, (Czechkia and Slovakia), and Latvia joined the EU. Indeed, their democratic and economic reforms, along with corresponding growth, paved the way for EU membership.
Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#9The first sign of lousy journalism is the chart of poverty with the $5.5/day limit, like the cost of life is measured in dollars and it is the same across the board. No, it is not, in some places $1 is the equivalent of more than $10 in other countries.
>The first sign of lousy journalism is the chart of poverty with the $5.5/day limit, like the cost of life is measured in dollars and it is the same across the board. No, it is not, in some places $1 is the equivalent of more than $10 in other countries.
Assume that's true: $55 a day to support a family still sounds like shit to me, depending on how you enumerate that.
for reference, that daily value multiplied out for an equivalent monthly wage covers about two thirds of my base monthly rent.
That is not counting heat, hot water, and electric bill. Also not counting food, internet, phone, clothes, health coverage, gas, insurance, etc.
i live in the US northeast; $19,800 a year is ~16% below the poverty line for a family my size this year https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines.
So sure. that sounds like poverty to me.
Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy
#10The first sign of lousy journalism is the chart of poverty with the $5.5/day limit, like the cost of life is measured in dollars and it is the same across the board. No, it is not, in some places $1 is the equivalent of more than $10 in other countries.
They mean purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars, nor US dollars. That's how the World Bank measures poverty.