I didn't post a graph of non-real GDP per capita, I posted GDP-PPP per capita which accounts for major factors like inflation and costs of goods. Its the most reflective single metric of standard of living, not counting weighted quality of life indexes based on numerous measurements- which I also included. They both show an undeniable trend, quality of life in Russia plummeted as the USSR broke up and dissolved into a kleptocracy, then dramatically skyrocketed into a modern society on par with the west.
They went from a complete shithole to a modern society

PPP does not automatically account for all relevant sources of inflation. From your own link:






This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 19 2020 07:53pm

lmao at “economic disparity data” from pre-WWI russia

There are lots of concerns into which inflation for commodities can be determined. GDP PPP tries its best to pick a reasonable basket of goods to get a picture of purchasing power of individuals.
Like IQ testing, you're reducing an extremely complex and somewhat subjective set of characteristics into a single uniform metric. Its always going to be lossy.
But GDP PPP is pretty much the gold standard of economic wellbeing for the people.
Yeah you can look at the very contrived and extremely complex quality of life index, but it risks getting weighted by political biases.

Fact is, Soviet defectors in the 90s were aghast at the wealth of America compared to the meager existing under communist russia, just seeing supermarket shelves stocked with food was unbelievable. You can't compare that to modern day Russians living in a developed nation.

PPP is inherently a static concept developed for cross-sectional data, not panel data. The extension of the concept of PPP that also takes inflation into account is called "Relative PPP (RPPP)".
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/relativeppp.asp

Yes GDP PPP is the gold standard for economic wellbeing, but this doesnt mean that you can easily compare it over time. Particularly not when the country in question went through a really messy episode with a crumbling economy, soaring nominal inflation and declining exchange rates all at once. And particularly not when this took place within a short timeframe, such that one cannot expect the currency exchange rate to capture and reflect the inflation rate (which it normally does in the long run).

So you think it’s funny that there is greater wealth disparity in Russia now than there was under a monarch with a peasantry.

Yeah there's totally more disparity nowadays when average people have blue collar jobs, own PCs and cell phones and trucks and have doctors and supermarkets and TV shows and refrigerators and microwaves
than back when they were a nation of serfs scratching in the dirt for potatoes and beets in barely arable lands as their landlords took half their subsistence crop

Do you have a statistic to quantify that?

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 20 2020 09:06am

You can make more money playing EVE online in Russia than working in most places there.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jul 20 2020 09:18am

And with greatly reduced living costs and dirt cheap utilities, universal healthcare, low taxes and most people paying no rent, that EVE online money earned has about 4x the quality of life purchasing power as someone playing it from a major US city
State petroeconomies have their benefits, at least up until the markets crash and wells run dry. Like europeans, they can work less hours than Americans and get similar QoL. Unlike Europeans, they're not necessarily crammed like sardines into 1 room apartments

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 20 2020 09:27am

not at all. it’s funny that someone has “economic disparity” data from a monarchy during the early 1900s. did the tsars provide this data to the rest of the world then or was it the 400 lb hacker known as 4chan who got access to it