The whole post was interesting mixture of solid points about the false exceptionalism in the US/Europe and fully insane anti American/European propaganda. Plus talking about the differences in home prices while ignoring the differences in home square footage is wild.
Around 90k for Russia is a figure based on actual counting of obituaries etc. Ukraine, on the other hand, does not admit losses and one has to use indirect methods such as counting number of fresh graves, number of cellphone numbers deactivated, numbers of "fresh" 50 year olds being "recruited" into army etc. The number is somewhere between 1 million to 2 million.
Given that most deaths and casualties in modern war are due to heavy weapons, having a massive advantage in such weaponry + an enemy that is willing to sacrifice tens to hundreds of thousands for PR stunts, it is easy to see why that ratio is so lopsided.
But you want to live in your make believe world, and you should keep doing that.
If they could not find more, even after having every incentive and trying hard- what does that say about the numbers? Ya.. those are accurate numbers, not just in total but also chronologically.
An interesting analysis, and one I’m in general agreement with. Having lived and worked in many of the areas you describe in Rest of the World, the main takeaway I have, relative to their western counterparts, is both cultural and political time preference orientation. These tend to be very low time preference societies, willing to sacrifice in the present for a better future for themselves and their families. The post WW2 west shifted into a high time preference deficit spending economic ideology, which only accelerated right up through the Great Financial Recession of 2008. Since then for western nations, it’s been an orgy of mortgaging the future for immediate gratification in the present, burdening future generations with unsustainable debt and lower standards of living.
For many countries in the collective west, decline is a choice that’s being fostered on their citizens by a globalist rent seeking elite class. I think this is why we are seeing so many populist movements within many of the countries, as the citizens wake up to this reality and struggle to choose a different path.
Future time orientation is only relevant if that society can guarantee a stable future. Financialism rewards short-term profits over everything and anything else, so there is no likelihood of a stable future. Consequently, the rest of society moves away from long-term thinking.
I agree that is the outcome. It hollows out the economic base chasing ever greater efficiency, while simultaneously creating a high and low against the middle sum zero mentality.
Fadi Lama’s “Why the West Can’t Win” is a great synopsis of these global shifts/trends, especially as pertaining to the over-financialized and un-productive economies of the West
Excellent post. Thanks. As an elderly white man, I took it to heart, although I think I manage to keep up better than many or most.
"Even the USA, with the largest military budget in world, has been unable to make more than a fraction of weapon systems and other consumables that Russia has been able to make..."
That phrasing highlights a way of thinking that is particularly illusory and damaging. Military budgets really don't matter at all; they are just imaginary numbers. What matters is purpose and process. Russia spends far less on defence than the USA, yet gets vastly more value in far shorter time. Why? The Russian system's goal is to produce and maintain the equipment that the Russian armed forces need to defend Russia. Whereas the US system's goal is to make enormous profits for corporations and their shareholders. They hardly even bother to pretend that their products aren't useless.
Money is very much overrated in "the West". It is just a way of keeping track of resources and costs, which becomes useless or worse than useless if it is cynically abused. In "the West", however, it has been the main religion for a long time.
"As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value".
The MIC at heart is a jobs program. Has nothing to do with efficient production of materiel. When the wars hit in 01-03, the first task was to get rid of the civilian holdovers who were impedimentia and put rule breakers in charge. And in 08 and after when it was wound down, the persnickety bureaucrats were brought back and a bunch of rulebreakers careers ended.
The real issue is the US dollar. The petrodollar. The ability of the US to use its financial and military power. Once that ends, the whole house of cards collapses
You're both on and off in big ways. 95% of all counties know they're not living in the 90s because they're living in a wasteland of 1910's poverty and industrial collapse. ...However, +50% of the POPULATION is living in a few Blue cities that have mere SECTIONS of the 90s strip-malls, etc. Remember, a sub-portion of these "90s" areas are inner-city collapsed wastelands, either housing or factory. So you have a huge portion of the population dead-set against this...as the election likewise demonstrated.
However, the THOUGHT people won't share power and won't listen to anyone, with the effect that, all discussion and action is carefully relegated to a few PMCs who are locked into their air-tight fart bubble. Those are the ones you read and run into, and they're jaw-dropping in ignorance, arrogance, and lack of awareness to the rest of us. ...The rest of us being anyone who makes, does, or moves anything, or has been anywhere outside the Vacation Zones. We're all well aware there is zero grain elevators, zero rail, zero steel, zero supply chain, and have been screaming about it for 30 years straight.
Since they make money by cannibalizing our section -- then denying that's what's happening -- obviously they can't realize this or they'd make themselves poor overnight. So the crews we have are dinosaurs who think Russia and China are 1979, a few who think they're merely 1999, and a flyover of uneducated who may not know what THEY are, but are all too aware that we're in no shape to do anything and need to focus on ourselves first.
How does that shape your article? Have to digest that for yourself. More and more I read "They" say/think/do this, and I ask "WHO"? Who, specifically?
If Russia is doing so well in the war how come it is not over? When Russia invaded the expectation was they would capture Kiev in a week. Didn't happen. Three years later it is still a stalemate. The Soviets made a lot more progress against the Germans in WW II than their modern counterparts have against a much weaker Ukraine.
Because Russia always had a different plan from what most in west believe- and this is something I have written about in the past. It was about ‘demilitarizing and denazifying’ Ukraine which is shorthand for killing off as many military age men in Ukraine as possible while taking minimal casualties. The next goal was to cause as much emigration from Ukraine as possible, destroying its ability to rebuild. Next step was to make sure that Ukraine as it existed from 1991-2022 was gone forever. Reacquiring historically Russian parts of Ukraine was probably next in list of priorities. That is why Russia has slow walked this war.
Sorry, but 2 million dead Ukrainian soldiers to 60k dead Russians needs a massive citation. I have seen plenty of numbers, I have never seen these and I am highly, highly skeptical of them.
The numbers you presented about the Russia/Ukraine war are so far detached from reality and unsupported by evidence that I had to stop reading at 2 million.
But it is ludicrous to claim that the Russian economy suffered no disruption since February 2022 or is steadily growing. Look especially at the effects of inflation, the percentage of GDP funneled into the war, and the Russian labour market.
As for Russian losses, do you understand that the Mediazone/BBC figures are an absolute minimum? Those are figures compiled from what can absolutely be confirmed, despite the fog of war and active Russian attempts to keep the real casualty rates away from the public.
You are welcome to believe whatever you want to believe. The problem is that we can all see Russia's economy doing rather well (good growth, investment within the country, low unemployment, higher wages etc). We can also see how Ukraine and western Europe is doing- the former being a unrecoverable disaster and the later stuck in a downward spiral. No amount of articles and posts can change what is obvious to anybody with eyes and ears.
Your worldview reminds me of the western "economic experts" who have been predicting the economic collapse of China for past 20-30 years. How did that work out?
“The most accurate assessment of Russian deaths to date suggests a number between 60-90k, which still high but a small fraction of the almost two million that Ukraine has lost.”
Lol, no. Not even close. Where in the world do you get these “most accurate assessment” from? Russian Defense Ministry? I’m sorry but those numbers are so delusional and detached from reality that they have to be called idiotic.
For soldiers, “most accurate assessment” all say that Russian dead are roughly two to three times the Ukrainian dead. Which puts them at around 170k for Russians and between 50k and 90k for Ukrainians. Not “millions”. That’s dead soldiers. For wounded soldiers it’s closer to parity but still something like 400k vs 600k in Ukraine’s favor. For Ukraine’s civilians, estimates range from around 12k to around 50k, hard to tell because difficult to count the people Russians massacred in territories they occupied. Still far from million.
This nonsense alone makes reading the rest of the article not worth it.
Western government funded outfits such as Mediazona were able to count only a bit over 60k Russian deaths (total) a few months ago- and then they stopped publishing such data because it was too embarrassing for their paymasters.
There is a reason why USA has so many derogatory jokes about the mental abilities of Polish people. But you know what.. keep believing whatever you want, because Ukraine as the state which existed between 1991-2022 is gone for good. I would be more concerned about how many more Ukrainians will move to Poland in next few months.
My guy, you took bullshit numbers straight from Russian Defense Ministry and then… you doubled them for some reason and tried to pass them off as “most accurate assessment”. And now you’re trying to call me stupid? You know what, if you want to call me a dumb polack then just go ahead and use the slur, you little chickenshit.
And I don’t know what numbers Mediazona published since I never pay attention to them. The numbers I gave are from multiple *independent* sources.
Edit: I just looked up Mediazona since you brought it up. You’re even lying about their numbers. Seems they’ve been able to identify 95k, not 60k as you claim, Russian dead *by name*. And of course those identified by name are going to be only a fraction of overall dead (especially since this is Russia we talking about)
That is why I said 60-90k. It used to 60k about 8-9 months ago- on their site.
Feel free to explain why Ukraine found it necessary to expand cemeteries all over their country on such a large scale- but Russia has not. Also, why are exchanges of dead bodies between the two countries so lopsided, with Russia exchanging 10 dead Ukrainians for one Russian body? And why is the median age for Ukrainian soldiers in the late 40s? What happened to all their younger men?
“Western government funded outfits such as Mediazona were able to count only a bit over 60k Russian death”
“That is why I said 60-90k”
Stop lying guy. And these are only those identified by name.
I expect your other claims about cemeteries and median age are as full of shit as your claims about numbers of dead, which are even more ridiculous than ones claimed by Russian Defense Ministry.
You are welcome to compare old and new satellite images of cemeteries in Ukraine (Google earth). Also there is a ton of video (esp on Telegram) about large numbers of new military graves in various Ukrainian cemeteries.
Yeah I seen the video. It says “to accommodate thousands of dead”. Thou-sand-s. As in some number with three or four zeros. Not two million. As in 2 with six zeroes. Hell, even Russian Ministry of Defense, which itself is wildly exaggerating Ukrainian casualties, only claims ONE million of dead AND wounded., not dead alone.
Come on, you made up some stupid shit. It’s time to correct the “mistake” (that’s me being generous)
Having lived in a variety of countries, there's some truth to what you're saying especially in regards to Europe, Canada, etc. It's less true in regards to the USA. The US is quite vibrant and very far ahead of other countries in widely held wealth. Housing prices in the US aren't that bad unless you pick a shitty city. There's huge amounts of growth happening in the south west, mountain west, and south. Meanwhile the amount of poverty that still exists in both Russia and China is incomprehensible. In thr case of Ukraine, it's more a sign of European weakness than American weakness - the US has no core interest there and the democrats are using it as an easy layer for money laundering, there's no actual interest in winning (see the applause at Trumps speech for 5 more years of Ukraine war). Other than for money laundering, and that almost solely for the left, the us has no core interest in Ukraine. Europe is an empty shell, with zero or even negative growth over the last 15 years.
You vastly underestimate the value created by financialization and software technology, a common mistake of post Marxists everywhere. Just because something is invisible does not mean it's worthless. The virtual worlds are extremely valuable, soon far more than the physical realm. Just as agriculture was superceded by manufacturing.
USA was sorta vibrant in the 1990s.. maybe the early 2000s. Since then it has stagnated, decayed and gone down the drain. You could argue that the situation in USA is not as bad as UK, but saying that you are doing better than UK is not a flex. That country is basically a few nice neighborhoods in London and vicinity within a sad and already decayed nation.
As far as your defense of financialism is concerned, here is something yo think about. Can financialism build automobiles, ships and ship yards, new and reliable power plants, new and better factories or anything that people can use? Money (USD) is useful only as long as it can buy you goods and increasingly services from other countries- and that era is starting to end.
Forget about advanced computer chips like those from TSMC, as things stand right now USA cannot even manufacture Tylenol without purchasing precursor chemicals from China. This country can also no longer scale up the production of simple artillery shells, let alone design and make new airliners , nuclear submarines or new ICBMs- something it could do easily even two decades ago.
Finacialism has made USA into one giant corporate pump-and-dump scheme.
Yes, financialization builds factories, ships, automobiles, power plants, and more. It increases the efficiency of capital allocation away from things that generate less value to things that generate more value. Besides, intangible goods such as software, branding, and services now generate more value for people than nuts and bolts. You might not care about those things, perhaps because you lack the ability for the abstract thought required to understand the value of intangible goods, but the market is the proof of real consumer demand.
And that is the problem.. you actually believe that neolberalism works- in spite of all the evidence before your eyes that says otherwise.
Here are some things you might want to look at first-
Why was the development of Boeing 787 much costlier and lengthier than any previous Boeing airliner- and what did have to do corporate consolidation, financialization and managerialism. Why did Airbus not have these issues?
Why was Boeing unable to anticipate and develop a proper successor to the 737 series of airliners. Also why has the quality control for Boeing products been so bad for past 15 years? Again, why does Airbus not have these issues?
Why has USA been unable to develop a successor to the LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM and why has the project suffered so many cost overruns? How have Russia and China, among other countries, developed multiple new families of land and submarine based ICBMs during the same time period?
How did Intel fall so far behind TSMC, despite being far ahead for most of the later's existence. What does this have to do with Intel spending most of their corporate profits for stock buybacks, while ignoring R&D?
Why can't NYC maintain, let alone upgrade, its subways? If you think this has something to its age- London, whose main subway lines are even older, does a much better job than NYC. Why?
Even a year after the collapse of that large bridge in Baltimore, work on repairing or rebuilding it hasn't yet started. What does that tell you about the real life capabilities of this country- compared to China, Russia, India.. well almost anywhere outside the West- and how did we get there?
There are many more examples, but this is a good list to start.
All of those problems you mentioned with the US are related to the public sector. The US public sector underperforms many other countries. But the vibrancy of the US is in its private sector. It's something you strongly feel living in various countries youve mrntioned, where various hobbies, consumer goods, services, software, banking services are much less competitive and vibrant than in the US.
Regarding the US military sector, after the collapse of the USSR the US intentionally reduced investment in the sector and encouraged consolidation. Thats why companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin have fallen so far behind; the US Government had a policy of encouraging mergers and discouraging competition. Most of that sector has been run as a job and economic development program for 30 years. It's only in the last 5 years that a need for military investment has become apparent, and the US has two leading ones; Palantir and SpaceX both of which have no parallel in China or Russia.
You're also cherry picking the worst problem cities in the US and ignoring the regions that are in growth. The west coast and boston-nyc-dc corridor are both in decline. The strongest growth is in the mountain west, southwest, and south. If you want to pick the worst parts of the US, you should compare them to the worst parts of other countries - and trust me, it's not pretty elsewhere if you know where to look.
I did not know that Boeing, Intel, Northrop Grumman etc were public sector. Perhaps corporations such as GM, Ford, GE, Microsoft etc are also public sector- by your definition. Products made by FakeBook are inferior to their Chinese counterparts and other than YouTube and Gmail, Google no longer builds things that are useful and popular.
Out of curiosity, what does this private sector in USA do? Buy cheap products from China to rebadge and sell at huge markups in USA (Walmart, Costco, Amazon etc)? Or maybe outsource services to India without reducing prices for American consumer (too many to name)? Or maybe they buy bulk chemicals and drugs from China and India and sell them at astronomical markups in USA (every American pharma company)? Perhaps they are private equity firms rolling up everything from cheerleading uniforms, dental and veterinary practices, chain restaurants and stores etc to crapify products/ service and raise prices- then load businesses with loans, cash out, bankrupt business and the move on to next victim (once again, too many to name).
But feel free to show me examples of successful private sector business in USA whose business model is not based upon custom-written government regulations to favor them, monopolization and oligopolization, charging huge markups through regulatory capture, private equity raiding and other shady business practices seen in late capitalism. As far as Palantir is concerned, it is entirely supported by government money obtained via exaggeration and back room deals- and its products are mediocre compared to their Chinese counterparts. SpaceX too is heavily dependent on government support- and we all know who actually funds Starlink. Also, the cost of space launchers using Chinese rockets is still similar to SpaceX.
Try and read a bit more carefully, please. Both in this comment and the last one you seem to only catch a few sentences. You're mixing up what I said and about issues with the US public sector with the military sector.
You just cannot grasp that virtual goods and services are valuable. Try using VK sometime - Facebook is superior. Or how about weibo? Maybe you hate how hard it is to get an X account or hate shadow bans - weibo is far worse. Or let's say wechat? Worse than whatsapp, again very difficult to get an account, less privacy, fast bans.
Investors around the world don't have to buy US stocks - so why is the US stock market the largest?
Regarding private equity, what you would prefer zombie companies to continue to drag on destroying value as they do in Japan? Ruthless PE is a huge part of the US vibrancy, destroying the weak companies that need to go under and allowing new ones that are more efficient to grow in their stead. Without that, you'd get the kinds of issues many countries face - stagnation.
What's kinda hilarious to me about this is most of the world has been in an economic recession post covid. There was a time when your arguments might have carried a bit more weight. That time isn't now.
Russia is lost a lot more the 90k dead. At least have the honesty to admit the casualty numbers because I simply stopped reading after that even though you may have something worthwhile to say but your outright lying on this makes the remainder a nullity.
>Ukraine lost 2 million soldiers while Russia just 60k
>Proceeds to lament total lack of expertise and loss of touch with reality in others
Lmao
The whole post was interesting mixture of solid points about the false exceptionalism in the US/Europe and fully insane anti American/European propaganda. Plus talking about the differences in home prices while ignoring the differences in home square footage is wild.
If you are using the square footage argument, would it also apply to houses in NE of USA (NYC, NJ, MA) to those in the Midwest (MI, PA, WI, MN?
Around 90k for Russia is a figure based on actual counting of obituaries etc. Ukraine, on the other hand, does not admit losses and one has to use indirect methods such as counting number of fresh graves, number of cellphone numbers deactivated, numbers of "fresh" 50 year olds being "recruited" into army etc. The number is somewhere between 1 million to 2 million.
Given that most deaths and casualties in modern war are due to heavy weapons, having a massive advantage in such weaponry + an enemy that is willing to sacrifice tens to hundreds of thousands for PR stunts, it is easy to see why that ratio is so lopsided.
But you want to live in your make believe world, and you should keep doing that.
As was pointex out to you, the Mediazone / BBC numbers are minimum counts.
Not full estimates.
https://kyivindependent.com/a-very-bloody-war-what-is-the-death-toll-of-russias-war-in-ukraine/
If they could not find more, even after having every incentive and trying hard- what does that say about the numbers? Ya.. those are accurate numbers, not just in total but also chronologically.
An interesting analysis, and one I’m in general agreement with. Having lived and worked in many of the areas you describe in Rest of the World, the main takeaway I have, relative to their western counterparts, is both cultural and political time preference orientation. These tend to be very low time preference societies, willing to sacrifice in the present for a better future for themselves and their families. The post WW2 west shifted into a high time preference deficit spending economic ideology, which only accelerated right up through the Great Financial Recession of 2008. Since then for western nations, it’s been an orgy of mortgaging the future for immediate gratification in the present, burdening future generations with unsustainable debt and lower standards of living.
For many countries in the collective west, decline is a choice that’s being fostered on their citizens by a globalist rent seeking elite class. I think this is why we are seeing so many populist movements within many of the countries, as the citizens wake up to this reality and struggle to choose a different path.
Future time orientation is only relevant if that society can guarantee a stable future. Financialism rewards short-term profits over everything and anything else, so there is no likelihood of a stable future. Consequently, the rest of society moves away from long-term thinking.
I agree that is the outcome. It hollows out the economic base chasing ever greater efficiency, while simultaneously creating a high and low against the middle sum zero mentality.
"Financialism rewards short-term profits over everything and anything else, so there is no likelihood of a stable future".
Beautifully summed up in Lenin's remark that "the capitalists will sell you the rope with which to hang them".
That’s a form of globalism that is truly toxic
Fadi Lama’s “Why the West Can’t Win” is a great synopsis of these global shifts/trends, especially as pertaining to the over-financialized and un-productive economies of the West
I have read that book and agree with many of its conclusions.
Excellent post. Thanks. As an elderly white man, I took it to heart, although I think I manage to keep up better than many or most.
"Even the USA, with the largest military budget in world, has been unable to make more than a fraction of weapon systems and other consumables that Russia has been able to make..."
That phrasing highlights a way of thinking that is particularly illusory and damaging. Military budgets really don't matter at all; they are just imaginary numbers. What matters is purpose and process. Russia spends far less on defence than the USA, yet gets vastly more value in far shorter time. Why? The Russian system's goal is to produce and maintain the equipment that the Russian armed forces need to defend Russia. Whereas the US system's goal is to make enormous profits for corporations and their shareholders. They hardly even bother to pretend that their products aren't useless.
Money is very much overrated in "the West". It is just a way of keeping track of resources and costs, which becomes useless or worse than useless if it is cynically abused. In "the West", however, it has been the main religion for a long time.
"As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value".
– Morris Berman, “The Moral Order”, Counterpunch 8-10 February 2013. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/08/the-moral-order/
The MIC at heart is a jobs program. Has nothing to do with efficient production of materiel. When the wars hit in 01-03, the first task was to get rid of the civilian holdovers who were impedimentia and put rule breakers in charge. And in 08 and after when it was wound down, the persnickety bureaucrats were brought back and a bunch of rulebreakers careers ended.
The real issue is the US dollar. The petrodollar. The ability of the US to use its financial and military power. Once that ends, the whole house of cards collapses
1990’s? Ha!! Most of the older white people I know are still living in 1967. Blissfully unaware of anything that’s changed since then
Get out more, then.
You're both on and off in big ways. 95% of all counties know they're not living in the 90s because they're living in a wasteland of 1910's poverty and industrial collapse. ...However, +50% of the POPULATION is living in a few Blue cities that have mere SECTIONS of the 90s strip-malls, etc. Remember, a sub-portion of these "90s" areas are inner-city collapsed wastelands, either housing or factory. So you have a huge portion of the population dead-set against this...as the election likewise demonstrated.
However, the THOUGHT people won't share power and won't listen to anyone, with the effect that, all discussion and action is carefully relegated to a few PMCs who are locked into their air-tight fart bubble. Those are the ones you read and run into, and they're jaw-dropping in ignorance, arrogance, and lack of awareness to the rest of us. ...The rest of us being anyone who makes, does, or moves anything, or has been anywhere outside the Vacation Zones. We're all well aware there is zero grain elevators, zero rail, zero steel, zero supply chain, and have been screaming about it for 30 years straight.
Since they make money by cannibalizing our section -- then denying that's what's happening -- obviously they can't realize this or they'd make themselves poor overnight. So the crews we have are dinosaurs who think Russia and China are 1979, a few who think they're merely 1999, and a flyover of uneducated who may not know what THEY are, but are all too aware that we're in no shape to do anything and need to focus on ourselves first.
How does that shape your article? Have to digest that for yourself. More and more I read "They" say/think/do this, and I ask "WHO"? Who, specifically?
Perhaps I should post a new article with links to some of my older posts on this general topic.
Oh, and that means it's not "White People". I have no idea what that word would mean.
I guess they mean rich white people? I’m not white but cut people some slack.
No one has even mentioned the boomer retirement, and the consequences therein
I have some thoughts on that topic..
https://pharmaheretic.substack.com/p/upcoming-structural-issues-with-providing
https://pharmaheretic.substack.com/p/mcmansions-as-secular-mausoleums
https://pharmaheretic.substack.com/p/ongoing-decline-of-manufacturing
If Russia is doing so well in the war how come it is not over? When Russia invaded the expectation was they would capture Kiev in a week. Didn't happen. Three years later it is still a stalemate. The Soviets made a lot more progress against the Germans in WW II than their modern counterparts have against a much weaker Ukraine.
Because Russia always had a different plan from what most in west believe- and this is something I have written about in the past. It was about ‘demilitarizing and denazifying’ Ukraine which is shorthand for killing off as many military age men in Ukraine as possible while taking minimal casualties. The next goal was to cause as much emigration from Ukraine as possible, destroying its ability to rebuild. Next step was to make sure that Ukraine as it existed from 1991-2022 was gone forever. Reacquiring historically Russian parts of Ukraine was probably next in list of priorities. That is why Russia has slow walked this war.
All I see here are assertions. You provide no evidence. Why should anyone believe you?
You don't have to believe anything I say.. just keep trying to find whatever bit of information makes you happy.
Right??
Sorry, but 2 million dead Ukrainian soldiers to 60k dead Russians needs a massive citation. I have seen plenty of numbers, I have never seen these and I am highly, highly skeptical of them.
The numbers you presented about the Russia/Ukraine war are so far detached from reality and unsupported by evidence that I had to stop reading at 2 million.
Yeeppp
On Russia's economy and losses since invading Ukraine, you need to read much more thoroughly and widely.
Yes, there were some stupidly optimistic headlines in western media outlets.
https://researchingukraine.substack.com/p/russias-economy-is-crashing-right
But it is ludicrous to claim that the Russian economy suffered no disruption since February 2022 or is steadily growing. Look especially at the effects of inflation, the percentage of GDP funneled into the war, and the Russian labour market.
https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/war-deficits-and-the-russian-economy
https://beefeaterresearch.substack.com/p/russian-economic-data
https://geopoliticsunplugged.substack.com/p/after-the-guns-fall-silent-russias
As for Russian losses, do you understand that the Mediazone/BBC figures are an absolute minimum? Those are figures compiled from what can absolutely be confirmed, despite the fog of war and active Russian attempts to keep the real casualty rates away from the public.
https://bbcrussian.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-tuva-and-buryatia-pay-highest-price
https://daxe.substack.com/p/russia-lost-the-equivalent-of-10
https://yoursukrainian.substack.com/p/why-russian-disinformation-is-so
You are welcome to believe whatever you want to believe. The problem is that we can all see Russia's economy doing rather well (good growth, investment within the country, low unemployment, higher wages etc). We can also see how Ukraine and western Europe is doing- the former being a unrecoverable disaster and the later stuck in a downward spiral. No amount of articles and posts can change what is obvious to anybody with eyes and ears.
You can repeat those lines all you want.
They won't change the economic consequences of Russia's war.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250321-russian-central-bank-holds-key-rate-at-two-decade-high
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/22/what-have-three-years-of-putins-war-done-to-both-nations-economies
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/12/11/a-perfect-storm
Your worldview reminds me of the western "economic experts" who have been predicting the economic collapse of China for past 20-30 years. How did that work out?
You refuse to engage with facts that contradict your narrative and attack the poster instead.
Your worldview is either one of selective naivete or a pro-Russian propagandist.
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20240730-russia-relying-on-fellow-americans-to-spread-election-disinformation-us-officials-say
https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/News/Display/Article/3789933/understanding-russian-disinformation-and-how-the-joint-force-can-address-it/
https://cepa.org/article/were-winning-say-russias-fake-news-manufacturers/
“The most accurate assessment of Russian deaths to date suggests a number between 60-90k, which still high but a small fraction of the almost two million that Ukraine has lost.”
Lol, no. Not even close. Where in the world do you get these “most accurate assessment” from? Russian Defense Ministry? I’m sorry but those numbers are so delusional and detached from reality that they have to be called idiotic.
For soldiers, “most accurate assessment” all say that Russian dead are roughly two to three times the Ukrainian dead. Which puts them at around 170k for Russians and between 50k and 90k for Ukrainians. Not “millions”. That’s dead soldiers. For wounded soldiers it’s closer to parity but still something like 400k vs 600k in Ukraine’s favor. For Ukraine’s civilians, estimates range from around 12k to around 50k, hard to tell because difficult to count the people Russians massacred in territories they occupied. Still far from million.
This nonsense alone makes reading the rest of the article not worth it.
Western government funded outfits such as Mediazona were able to count only a bit over 60k Russian deaths (total) a few months ago- and then they stopped publishing such data because it was too embarrassing for their paymasters.
There is a reason why USA has so many derogatory jokes about the mental abilities of Polish people. But you know what.. keep believing whatever you want, because Ukraine as the state which existed between 1991-2022 is gone for good. I would be more concerned about how many more Ukrainians will move to Poland in next few months.
My guy, you took bullshit numbers straight from Russian Defense Ministry and then… you doubled them for some reason and tried to pass them off as “most accurate assessment”. And now you’re trying to call me stupid? You know what, if you want to call me a dumb polack then just go ahead and use the slur, you little chickenshit.
And I don’t know what numbers Mediazona published since I never pay attention to them. The numbers I gave are from multiple *independent* sources.
Edit: I just looked up Mediazona since you brought it up. You’re even lying about their numbers. Seems they’ve been able to identify 95k, not 60k as you claim, Russian dead *by name*. And of course those identified by name are going to be only a fraction of overall dead (especially since this is Russia we talking about)
That is why I said 60-90k. It used to 60k about 8-9 months ago- on their site.
Feel free to explain why Ukraine found it necessary to expand cemeteries all over their country on such a large scale- but Russia has not. Also, why are exchanges of dead bodies between the two countries so lopsided, with Russia exchanging 10 dead Ukrainians for one Russian body? And why is the median age for Ukrainian soldiers in the late 40s? What happened to all their younger men?
“Western government funded outfits such as Mediazona were able to count only a bit over 60k Russian death”
“That is why I said 60-90k”
Stop lying guy. And these are only those identified by name.
I expect your other claims about cemeteries and median age are as full of shit as your claims about numbers of dead, which are even more ridiculous than ones claimed by Russian Defense Ministry.
You are welcome to compare old and new satellite images of cemeteries in Ukraine (Google earth). Also there is a ton of video (esp on Telegram) about large numbers of new military graves in various Ukrainian cemeteries.
Yeah I seen the video. It says “to accommodate thousands of dead”. Thou-sand-s. As in some number with three or four zeros. Not two million. As in 2 with six zeroes. Hell, even Russian Ministry of Defense, which itself is wildly exaggerating Ukrainian casualties, only claims ONE million of dead AND wounded., not dead alone.
Come on, you made up some stupid shit. It’s time to correct the “mistake” (that’s me being generous)
I didn't bother to read the rest of the article after reading a claim that loss ratios are 40 or 20 to 1. Lol.
Having lived in a variety of countries, there's some truth to what you're saying especially in regards to Europe, Canada, etc. It's less true in regards to the USA. The US is quite vibrant and very far ahead of other countries in widely held wealth. Housing prices in the US aren't that bad unless you pick a shitty city. There's huge amounts of growth happening in the south west, mountain west, and south. Meanwhile the amount of poverty that still exists in both Russia and China is incomprehensible. In thr case of Ukraine, it's more a sign of European weakness than American weakness - the US has no core interest there and the democrats are using it as an easy layer for money laundering, there's no actual interest in winning (see the applause at Trumps speech for 5 more years of Ukraine war). Other than for money laundering, and that almost solely for the left, the us has no core interest in Ukraine. Europe is an empty shell, with zero or even negative growth over the last 15 years.
You vastly underestimate the value created by financialization and software technology, a common mistake of post Marxists everywhere. Just because something is invisible does not mean it's worthless. The virtual worlds are extremely valuable, soon far more than the physical realm. Just as agriculture was superceded by manufacturing.
USA was sorta vibrant in the 1990s.. maybe the early 2000s. Since then it has stagnated, decayed and gone down the drain. You could argue that the situation in USA is not as bad as UK, but saying that you are doing better than UK is not a flex. That country is basically a few nice neighborhoods in London and vicinity within a sad and already decayed nation.
As far as your defense of financialism is concerned, here is something yo think about. Can financialism build automobiles, ships and ship yards, new and reliable power plants, new and better factories or anything that people can use? Money (USD) is useful only as long as it can buy you goods and increasingly services from other countries- and that era is starting to end.
Forget about advanced computer chips like those from TSMC, as things stand right now USA cannot even manufacture Tylenol without purchasing precursor chemicals from China. This country can also no longer scale up the production of simple artillery shells, let alone design and make new airliners , nuclear submarines or new ICBMs- something it could do easily even two decades ago.
Finacialism has made USA into one giant corporate pump-and-dump scheme.
Yes, financialization builds factories, ships, automobiles, power plants, and more. It increases the efficiency of capital allocation away from things that generate less value to things that generate more value. Besides, intangible goods such as software, branding, and services now generate more value for people than nuts and bolts. You might not care about those things, perhaps because you lack the ability for the abstract thought required to understand the value of intangible goods, but the market is the proof of real consumer demand.
And that is the problem.. you actually believe that neolberalism works- in spite of all the evidence before your eyes that says otherwise.
Here are some things you might want to look at first-
Why was the development of Boeing 787 much costlier and lengthier than any previous Boeing airliner- and what did have to do corporate consolidation, financialization and managerialism. Why did Airbus not have these issues?
Why was Boeing unable to anticipate and develop a proper successor to the 737 series of airliners. Also why has the quality control for Boeing products been so bad for past 15 years? Again, why does Airbus not have these issues?
Why has USA been unable to develop a successor to the LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM and why has the project suffered so many cost overruns? How have Russia and China, among other countries, developed multiple new families of land and submarine based ICBMs during the same time period?
How did Intel fall so far behind TSMC, despite being far ahead for most of the later's existence. What does this have to do with Intel spending most of their corporate profits for stock buybacks, while ignoring R&D?
Why can't NYC maintain, let alone upgrade, its subways? If you think this has something to its age- London, whose main subway lines are even older, does a much better job than NYC. Why?
Even a year after the collapse of that large bridge in Baltimore, work on repairing or rebuilding it hasn't yet started. What does that tell you about the real life capabilities of this country- compared to China, Russia, India.. well almost anywhere outside the West- and how did we get there?
There are many more examples, but this is a good list to start.
All of those problems you mentioned with the US are related to the public sector. The US public sector underperforms many other countries. But the vibrancy of the US is in its private sector. It's something you strongly feel living in various countries youve mrntioned, where various hobbies, consumer goods, services, software, banking services are much less competitive and vibrant than in the US.
Regarding the US military sector, after the collapse of the USSR the US intentionally reduced investment in the sector and encouraged consolidation. Thats why companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin have fallen so far behind; the US Government had a policy of encouraging mergers and discouraging competition. Most of that sector has been run as a job and economic development program for 30 years. It's only in the last 5 years that a need for military investment has become apparent, and the US has two leading ones; Palantir and SpaceX both of which have no parallel in China or Russia.
You're also cherry picking the worst problem cities in the US and ignoring the regions that are in growth. The west coast and boston-nyc-dc corridor are both in decline. The strongest growth is in the mountain west, southwest, and south. If you want to pick the worst parts of the US, you should compare them to the worst parts of other countries - and trust me, it's not pretty elsewhere if you know where to look.
I did not know that Boeing, Intel, Northrop Grumman etc were public sector. Perhaps corporations such as GM, Ford, GE, Microsoft etc are also public sector- by your definition. Products made by FakeBook are inferior to their Chinese counterparts and other than YouTube and Gmail, Google no longer builds things that are useful and popular.
Out of curiosity, what does this private sector in USA do? Buy cheap products from China to rebadge and sell at huge markups in USA (Walmart, Costco, Amazon etc)? Or maybe outsource services to India without reducing prices for American consumer (too many to name)? Or maybe they buy bulk chemicals and drugs from China and India and sell them at astronomical markups in USA (every American pharma company)? Perhaps they are private equity firms rolling up everything from cheerleading uniforms, dental and veterinary practices, chain restaurants and stores etc to crapify products/ service and raise prices- then load businesses with loans, cash out, bankrupt business and the move on to next victim (once again, too many to name).
But feel free to show me examples of successful private sector business in USA whose business model is not based upon custom-written government regulations to favor them, monopolization and oligopolization, charging huge markups through regulatory capture, private equity raiding and other shady business practices seen in late capitalism. As far as Palantir is concerned, it is entirely supported by government money obtained via exaggeration and back room deals- and its products are mediocre compared to their Chinese counterparts. SpaceX too is heavily dependent on government support- and we all know who actually funds Starlink. Also, the cost of space launchers using Chinese rockets is still similar to SpaceX.
Try and read a bit more carefully, please. Both in this comment and the last one you seem to only catch a few sentences. You're mixing up what I said and about issues with the US public sector with the military sector.
You just cannot grasp that virtual goods and services are valuable. Try using VK sometime - Facebook is superior. Or how about weibo? Maybe you hate how hard it is to get an X account or hate shadow bans - weibo is far worse. Or let's say wechat? Worse than whatsapp, again very difficult to get an account, less privacy, fast bans.
Investors around the world don't have to buy US stocks - so why is the US stock market the largest?
Regarding private equity, what you would prefer zombie companies to continue to drag on destroying value as they do in Japan? Ruthless PE is a huge part of the US vibrancy, destroying the weak companies that need to go under and allowing new ones that are more efficient to grow in their stead. Without that, you'd get the kinds of issues many countries face - stagnation.
What's kinda hilarious to me about this is most of the world has been in an economic recession post covid. There was a time when your arguments might have carried a bit more weight. That time isn't now.
Russia is lost a lot more the 90k dead. At least have the honesty to admit the casualty numbers because I simply stopped reading after that even though you may have something worthwhile to say but your outright lying on this makes the remainder a nullity.
Yeah the dude is kinda Russian biased