> Russia is a huge country, with 27 times the pop of Finland, that
> would have to generate a large internal market; its exports are now
> mostly natural resources. It could never export high-VA stuff on a
> scale comparable to Finland.
Why not? It has the brainpower, it's highly urbanized and has a sizeable history of industrialization. And there are 450 million Euroconsumers on its doorstep. It doesn't need to depend on exports, it just needs enough to pay for imports of those pricey Central European machine-tools and ERP software.
> 2003; Finland, $11,590. Scaling Russia up to the Finnish rate of per
> capita exports would mean that Russia would have to export $1.7
> trillion, 18% of current world exports. Kinda hard.
But not impossible, thanks to the miracle of compound growth. I'm agnostic on the development-as-progress issue -- being richer doesn't equate to being nicer or more cultured. Still, I think the expansion of the EU is going to make this not just possible, but inevitable.
-- DRR