Re: [IWAR] RUSSIA black market

From: Daniel Roberts (joviteat_private)
Date: Mon Jan 19 1998 - 13:47:11 PST

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    >Russia's black market may amount to 50 percent of the country's GDP
    
    >   Russia's black market economy could account for 50 percent of its 
    gross
    >   domestic output, according to a new report that will fuel arguments
    >over
    >   how fast the economy is changing -- and in what direction.
    
    This info should not come as a great surprise.  Any nation undergoing 
    the change that Russia has undergone, and that has suffered the level of 
    economic implosion reported, should have seen significantly larger 
    disruptions.
    
    Year after year, we in the west have hear about the upcoming 'terrible 
    winter'.  And each spring, we wonder why there has not been a coup or 
    revolution.
    
    Drops in real wealth and standards of living lead to increases in crime, 
    warlordism, hunger, and rebellion.
    
    Reductions in military budgets have traditionally been one of the 
    primary causes of coups.
    
    Why then have these not happened to Russian (other than the increase in 
    crime and warlordism - which may now simply be reported, as opposed to 
    being 'new').
    
    Then, when we look at the GDP (which represents the measured dollar 
    value of economic activity) for the underdeveloped world, we see that 
    some countries (Cambodia, Somalia, Mozambique, etc.) have per capita 
    GDPs below $200/year.  One would think that these nations should cease 
    to exist.  But they continue.
    
    The fault, dear Brutus, lies not with their economies, but with our 
    measurement methods and assumptions.  Russia is in the shit, but then 
    again, it have been for decades.
    
    
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