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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   36674 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Well, they haven't produced the desired result of 'Russia being unable to sustain its war effort', 'Russian elites overthrowing Putin due to not getting luxury imports' or 'China being unable to reach the frontier of AI research'. The Russian economy is performing quite well. Everything seems to be going up, real gdp, real incomes:

https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/05/russia-war-income?lang=en

However, given the growth in income tax payments (and that Rosstat assesses that 59 percent of incomes in 2023 derived from wages), it can be said with confidence that real incomes have risen faster than inflation since the full-scale invasion.

They're not totally ineffective. But most small, thin, unfit women aren't totally ineffective at fighting. They're just not significantly effective. They still lose vs big strong men.

Failing to prevent Russian oil from ending up in western markets is a failure of application. Sanctions shift the expected outcome by making the sanctioned party pay a higher cost to achieve their goal. In the case of Russia, this means the point at which they are no longer able to sustain the war effort arrives sooner.

The Russian economy is not doing quite well, it is verging on stagflation.

https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/11/russia-central-bank-dilemma?lang=en

The war with Ukraine means that Russia’s economic policymaking is caught in a paradox: on the one hand, the government is increasing expenditure (over 8 percent of GDP is being spent on the war), which fuels inflation, while on the other, the central bank is trying to dampen inflation by raising interest rates. It is this paradox that drives calls for greater coordination between the government and the central bank. Of course, the looming specter of a recession and stagflation also mean that there is a preemptive hunt under way for scapegoats.

Western sanctions mean that the Russian elite has no institutional alternative to Putin and Russia’s current economic course. They can’t flee to the West, and their only option if they want to earn money is to remain in the country. But high interest rates are squeezing their margins and cutting into profits. Business lobby groups have complained that companies are scaling back investment plans.

The case for China is much murkier. But if one starts from the assumption that ASI are of the same level of strategic significance as nukes, improving your chances of getting there first seems like a defensible position to me.

Russian GDP is not doing so hot (I can't find a good multi year graph that goes up to nearly the present day, but this serves to show the recent trend). It's true that rumors of Russian collapse were obviously overblown but that doesn't mean they don't work at all.

5% growth over the past year is not hot? Any western country would consider it a miracle to have that growth rate. For reference america, which is the western country which best recovered from covid, has a growth rate of 2.5% over the past year. Honestly I was ready to accept your claim that the russian economy is doing bad until I saw the chart you linked. Now I'm wondering how they managed such impressive growth under such a restrictive sanctions regime.

It's not that hot when there's zero growth since 2013. It's easy to have a year with big growth if you crash beforehand.

if you switch plot to constant 2015 US$, it shows growth and if to PPP in current international $, it shows nearly 2-fold growth.

I feel you're losing the plot here. We were talking about recent sanctions effect on the economy. Why are you bringing up the last decade when the discussion was about the last 2 years of economic growth?

Because sanctions have been in place since the invasion of crimea in 2014.

The discussion started over claims about russian oil and gas which weren't significantly sanctioned until russia invaded.

Russia is also not doing so hot on metrics of Diversity, nor on total amount of Californian wine consumed. Why is any of these three things relevant?

Take it up with ranger if you don't think GDP has any income on material living conditions.

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