--- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote: In the US, Europe, China, Russia, north Africa, East Asia, the standard of living has been improving for the last ten years.
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I have long been of the opinion that Russia dropped out of much left discourse around 2002 or so for precisely this reason. In the 90s when the economy was collapsing, it was appealing to use Russia as a poster country for the evils of capitalism, especially since it used to have a planned economy. Given that real wages have risen 10% in Russia every year since 1999 and that there is enough money in the Stabilization Fund to maintain the current Russian budget for 4 years at an oil price of $0.00 a barrel, that is not easy to do anymore.
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