Comments by "knopkaplay" (@knopkaplay0507) on "Explain 2 Me: Russian Declining Incomes u0026 Rising Prices?" video.

No, not really - the US embargo on Cuba, for instance, has been around for some 6 decades now, no sign of it lifting or easing up. Magnitsky is long dead and the refuseniks have grown old and peacefully died out in Israel, Canada, and the US - but the spirit of Jackson-Vanick is still very much alive. It would be nice to have SWIFT back and have aircraft parts to maintain Russian Airbus and Boeing fleet - after all, it's a question of safety and ultimately human lives, but then again, Iran has been in this situation for awhile now and seems to be coping okay. So yeah, generally the expectation of sanctions lifting is fairly low.
2
 @EconLessons yeah, can you imagine all the Egyptian sweet potatoes she could've purchased via Kazakhstan instead....
2
No economy is invincible. Yours, Cpt. Obvious.
1
@volkerr. Interesting observation... Could it be that general dislike for Russian (Serbian, Turkish) men comes from the fact that one could still fairly easily tell them apart from Russian (Serbian, Turkish) women. These men kinda do look like men, unlike the androgynous humanoids in developed democracies...
1
Mark, your examples are just ridiculous - sweet potatos from Egypt? Have you EVER seen sweet potatoes at a Russian store?
1
@EconLessons just look at the import numbers. It's like using passion fruit as an example of a staple food item. Just tells me how little you really know about Russia.
1
There was drought, also some floods in the spring. Some pretty bad frost in late spring as well... Not a great year overall. I'm sure Poland will help, the European breadbasket and wonderful people they are.
1
You could... What you should do, though, is take a chill pill and mind your own business.
1
You misspelled Jr🎉enovuja...Still, let's keep it a secret - otherwise some long-haired monetary economists will gang up to sanction us into oblivion.
1
Oof! Where inside Russia? And what do you agree with, specifically?
1
It's been what, a year since Tucker's shopping tour? Do you think his shopping trolley would look very different today?
1
@peter-pi8bc how familiar are you with those regions? Do you really think a shopping cart would look drastically different in any city of reasonable size? Well, sorry to break it to you - it won't, unless you are going into the territory of faraway villages with a population of 30, where their shopping experience is a biweekly visit from "avtolavka" grocery truck. Any place that has chain stores, from Kursk to Magadan, to Ulan-Ude (is that the place you had in mind?), would have roughly the same selection and availability.
1
There is no curtain, mate - it's in your head. Ask questions, study documents, talk to people - and you'll figure it all out some day...
1
He says a lot of things that one may think he had meant to say differently...something tells me though, half the time he really doesn't know what he's talking about.
1
@EconLessons how exactly is it "one metropolis" any more than, say, Krakow and Llodz, or DC and Baltimore?
1
@hansericsson7058 Cuba will fall, Iran will fall, Syria will fall, Afghanistan will fall - just keep the pressure on and don't believe a word of what comes from anyone other than your own propaganda outlets.
1
Only if you use the term "cash" figuratively. I don't remember the last time I used cash in Russia - it's virtually cashless.
1
@gior987 good guess - but incorrect. Yes, availability varies, of course - but by the logic of the original comment (he was talking about "mountains of cash") we are probably not talking about 30-person villages deep in Yakutia anyway.
1
@gior987 I have a summer house in one of those 30-people villages, some 120km away from Moscow, so I have a pretty decent understanding of how things work there. On paper, the village would qualify as "no plumbing", with low employment, high percentage of vacant houses, no gas connection (until very recently), and there is no local store at all (there is a grocery truck coming twice a week with bread and other staples). In reality, all houses that are used year-round are connected to septic tanks (so of course it doesn't qualify for "centralized plumbing" in official stats), multi-fuel furnaces, with very decent 4g internet connection, satellite dishes, and the like - and some of the houses would put to shame the neighborhood where I used to live in the US. Still, on paper it's one of those decrepit rural villages somewhere far, far away.
1
@gior987 well, yes, the country is pretty large and last-mile connections, be it fiber optics, water/ plumbing, or gas can quickly become prohibitively labor-intensive and expensive. Still, there are ways to deal with it - take a look at the videos of that weird Canadian family who moved to Nizhny. They are detailing their plight with power and water connections. All that said, to return to the original comment, - yes, the level of loans/mortgage is quite low, hard to argue with that. I've had several credit cards since early 2000s, used them maybe 3 times total
1
@gior987 well, come visit - at this point half the population of the village was born and raised there all long retired, the other half is urban people building themselves a place away from the city. Of course you need to be self-sufficient - dollars or no dollars, the village is pretty much off the traveled routes. Pretty good sense of community, if you ask me - not problem-free, of course, but no "unimaginable poverty" to speak of. With Nizhny - look up where he is...he bought some agri land pretty far away from anything. Seems to be doing fairly well so far.
1
@gior987 and I did travel around quite a bit - not all over the places of course, but I did visit some pretty remote places. Like oil drilling town remote. What I've seen is some quite significant developments over the past couple of decades - across the country, and I feel that most people droning on about "total poverty" haven't been to Russia post-90s. There's another YouTube guy with some interesting videos of quite remote locations - he did a motorbike tour from Bulgaria to Magadan and back last summer. Gives you some perspective.
1
@gior987 Like I said, my village would - on paper - be one of those villages you guys keep lamenting about. In reality, it's a decent place to live. If you want "life opportunities" - you need to actively pursue them, but that also holds true for any country out there. When it comes to urban development, infrastructure and, especially, opportunities for children - any 1m+ city in Russia would blow any comparable US city out of the water. Funny part about the aqueduct - next time maybe you'll also manage to spell it correctly, otherwise it takes away from the joke.
1
@gior987 also, - just out of curiosity, - which industrialized country do you represent?
1
@gior987 Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) is a fairly well developed, industrial city (kinda like Soviet Detroit, when Detroit was still a thing). The guy I'm talking about, though, bought a large parcel of farmland somewhere in the region, at a fairly remote location (as most farms are). I'm sorry I wasn't specific - but then again, most people who know anything about Russia would instantly recognize Nizhny as Nizhny Novgorod:-) Also apologies for replying out of turn - your comment doesn't show on this thread.
1
It's a boon if you are a third party supplying both sides (ideally), or just one, but only taking marginal part in the conflict. Ukrainian war will likely bring northern Pennsylvania back from the dump it has become - but if a couple megatons accidentally make a crash landing in Harrisburg, the benefits for US economy are likely to be outweighed by the costs.
1
Not directly, no. Neither are meds, supposedly - it's just given the exchange rates, some have become prohibitively expensive.
1
Sweet potatoes, sure... The ones from Egypt...
1
Is this a good piece of coding? Asking for a friend...
1
@marthacichon5950 that's what I thought :-) Not a far cry from Mark's other thoughts and arguments: high propaganda value, only marginal connection to reality :-)
1
What do you think?
1