"The CIA Factbook gives $9900 per year in PPP terms, a bit higher than Mexico..."
I should also mention that even the PPP-converted figure represents things actually. I am going to use the US as my baseline for comparison, as that is the only place I've lived (after childhood) besides Russia I know enough about. In addition to wages, if a person in Russia still lives in the apartment that was privatized and given to them (probably Yeltsin's only popular economic policy!), he or she pays no rent. Electricity is extremely cheap. Water is free or almost free -- I regularly keep my faucet running for hours. (Bad me!) Heat is free, but most people can't regulate how much is used -- the government decides when the heat goes on, probably in a month or so now, and when it turns off. Something like 70% of the population receives benefits of one sort or another. (Until partial monetization of benefits earlier this year, half the population of St. Petersburg was entitled to free public transportation!). Many urban families have the land plot outside of the city in Soviet times and have a house or agricultural plot there. So $9900 goes a lot further than it would in the US.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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