How to Solve the Economic Crisis in Russia?

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
Sun Oct 18 16:58:50 PDT 1998


On Sun, 18 Oct 1998, chang wrote:


> What is "guidance of market"? When grain is in short supply and the
> people are unwilling to engage in farmland cultivation, the government
> should cut down their relief funds to make them rather willing to take
> up this job.

Do you yourself work for a living on a farm? If you do, or have ever done so, you will find out that agriculture is one of the most backbreaking and exhausting professions you can ever have. It's pretty brutal work, especially in China, where agriculture is less mechanized than, say, the factory farms of the US or the EU, but even here in the US, farming isn't a whole lot of fun. It's not something which people will voluntarily do, especially after they realize how much more fre time and opportunity they have in the cities.


> Should the Russian people encourage the export of their food when there
> appears a great shortage of grain at home in Russia? In China, a lot of
> workers are working hard for the export of various consumer goods. How
> many salary do they get? A worker only get one hundred US Dollars every
> month or even less! You will not believe it, but this is true.

They should export high-value manufactured goods, just like Eastern Europe and protect their agricultural markets from competition, just like the US, the EU, and Japan do. Russia's problem is not sheer starvation, because they still produce plenty of grain, meat, fish etc. It's that they don't have a food processing industry which can compete with the West. They've got the technical resources to do this, they just lack the institutions. As for Chinese workers, many of them get much, much less than $100 a month, especially in the rural regions (and China is, of course, still 70% rural).

-- Dennis



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