Your first link says "With a score under 5, Russian Federation has a level of hunger that is low."
The current situation with Russia and China seems caused by them becoming prosperous. In the 1960s in China and 1990s in Russia they were broke. Now they have money they can afford to put it into their militaries and try to attack the neighbours.
Russia is a massive grain producer and exporter. One of their biggest health issues right now is obesity (from those cheap grains) with 60% of the adult population overweight, and growing. Furthermore, obesity has actually been an issue for their recruiting effort (there's a lot of running in war).
I would wager that states such as Russia and others misallocate resources, which in turn reduces productivity. Worse yet, some of the policy prescriptions stated above would further misallocate scarce resources and reduce productivity. Scarcity doom becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. This outcome is used to rationalize further economic intervention and the cycle compounds upon itself.
To be explicitly clear, the US granting largess to tech companies for datacenters also counts as a misallocation in my view.
Have you tried opening the links? They show Russia at developed country level in terms of food insecurity (score <5, they don't differentiate at those levels; this is a level mostly shown for EU countries); and a percentage of population below the international poverty line of 0.0% (vs, as an example, 1.8 % in Romania). This isn't great — being in the poverty briefs at all is not indicative of prosperity — but your terrification should probably come from elsewhere.
- They export a lot of natural resources but don’t have a strong manufacturing base. They don’t have high tech, they don’t export many manufactured items to developed countries. It’s a mob run country, resources are easy to extract.
Russia has quite large tech companies (compared to EU, which is dominated by US tech). For software think Yandex, VK, Playrix, Kaspersky, etc in addition to lots of software talent. With hardware, don't nuclear reactors, rockets, aircraft still count as high tech?
And they are out manufacturing the combined west on pretty complex stuff like missiles, air defense systems, drones, artillery. Plus, due to sanctions, their civilian industrial sector has grown so much that's theres a shortage of facilities (not to mention labor).
When I looked through their major exports it was mostly centered around natural resources. You are right there are some spots like developing reactors in other countries but in net not much is going well for Russia economically. Yeah they had to start making more things internally due to their invasion but they are not exporting those goods.
But again, I don’t see them out manufacturing the west on military equipment when some of that equipment is getting overrun easily by 40 year old western equipment. It’s still a poor nation being run by the mob with some shining spots.
That doesn't mean much on its own. Their per capita GDP is still low.
Also arguably their GDP figures are worth even less than Ireland's. A huge proportion of Russia's economy is tied in military production (and huge proportion of that is funded through debt).
If you make a rocket worth $1 million and then blow it up the next month that cost is obviously included in GDP but it's literally the equivalent of burning money/productivity.
Their debt to GDP ratio was 14.6% at the end of 2024, a decrease from 2023. US is 123.1% of GDP while Ireland is at 42.7%. And PPP is the number that matters - its one of the big factors which governs quality of life, at which price you can produce and sell widgets, bushels, etc. And btw, that guns/butter calculus also applies to the US, etc.
> Their debt to GDP ratio was 14.6% at the end of 2024, a decrease from 2023
Allegedly almost half of their defense budget since the war began was funded through private forced loans issues by banks directly to (effectively state owned?) military contractors. So that's not reflected in their military budget.
Also I doubt Russia could borrow a lot on the international markets even if they wanted to. Certainly not cheaply (like the US or especially Eurozone countries)
> And PPP is the number that matters - its one of the big factors which governs quality of life
Again... Russia's GDP per capita is still quite low (even if significantly higher than nominal).
Also if your nominal GDP is inflated by defence spending and energy exports and you multiply it with PPP (i.e. consumer price index) what exactly do you get?
Generally low prices indicate that the country is poor overall.
> its one of the big factors which governs quality of life,
PPP adjusted GDP per capita? Really? That's certainly not the best indicator of those things (even if there is strong correlation overall).
Do you think a median person in Ireland is 30% better off than the average Swiss or 2x better off than the average German?
Anyway, going back to Russia. If e.g. $100 comes in into the country through energy exports and is spent making bombs and other equipment what fraction do you think trickles down to the local economy?
No, no, just no. I don't care what the website says. People in Russia are quite economically depressed. You might want to visit and talk to real people instead of web pages. Visit the Far East.
Yes, and anyone saying Russia isn’t poor either has not done those things or is blind/deaf or unable to comprehend what those people are saying, or possibly not interested in the truth.
