this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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Murdered by Words
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I guess I'm still missing what point you're trying to make. What I think you're trying to say is that the USSR was the same size of the US in 1991, but this region is the size of the Netherlands so it should have been comparable to the Netherlands.
I'm going to continue assuming this is what you were meaning. I honestly don't know enough about the internal government system of the USSR in the early 90's or much about this region. Taking a look at the statistics it appears that Ryazan Oblast has an area of 39,605 km^2, but a population of only ~1 million. The Netherlands has an area of ~41,000 km^2, but has a population of ~17.5 million. Next, the average annual salary of the region in 2019 (the highest in at least 5 years) was ~31k (RUB) and the highest exchange rate in the last 5 years was approximately 1 RUB: 0.018 Euro.
So in summary, the size is about the same as the Netherlands, but has 5.7% of the population of the Netherlands and the people in the Netherlands make ~23x more money at their jobs even when considering the highest salaries Ryazan Oblast had in the last 5 years and the highest exchange rate the RUB had in the last 5 years.
My example was looking at similar sized, similar population, and similar income groups; by that comparison regions of the US can be compared to Belgium. On the other hand, the only thing in common between Ryazan Oblast and the Netherlands is their size so it's not a good comparison. Why doesn't Ryazan Oblast have more people or make more money so that they can be compared to the Netherlands I don't know, but it looks like these conditions have been this way since at least the late 1980's?
I was trying to say that being big country does not prevent one from having universal healthcare, decent social security and a lot of other social benefits.
Probably real median 1/50 of one in Netherlands. Anyway, this was from an argument about size.
If you want Netherlands compared to something with similar polulation, density and budget, Moscow(which as saying goes is not Russia) is a good choice. Aaaand it's still shit compared to Netherlands. Or Netherlands can be compared to city that was built by dutch long time ago - Saint Petersburg. Shit too. Small polulation? SPb+LenOblast is even worse.
To be fair most of cities excluding ones with insane budgets(Moscow and SPb) have worse public transport that they had 40 years ago. Probably public transport in Ryazan of 1980-1990 was comparable to public transport in Amsterdam of 1980-1990.
For this I'll refer to another comment I made
Decisions such as universal healthcare and national public transportation are Federal decisions and so it's hard to make a comparison between something like the Netherlands and Moscow.
I don't know much about these regions so all I can do it point to the statistics.
Moscow Metro Area
-Average Salary: ~1,100,000 RUB/year = ~24,000 Euro/year
-Area: ~48,000 km^2
-Population: ~21.7 million
Saint Petersburg Metro Area
-Average Salary: ~1,3700,000 RUB/year = ~24,000 Euro/year
-Area: ~11,000 km^2
-Population: ~6.2 million
I don't know enough about how the internal workings of the Russia Federal government works to speak authoritatively. What I can say is that even with similar size and population the citizens of the Netherlands make nearly double the income of the most wealth places in Russia.
In other examples I compared the percentage of income that goes to funding healthcare in the US vs Belgium (~10-15%) either in the form of taxes or direct payments. Looking at this site (https://www.internationalinsurance.com/health/systems/russia.php) only the employer makes a tax contribution on behalf of the employee and it equates to ~2-3% of the employee's salary. All of Russia spent ~88.2 billion Euros on Helathcare in 2020 while the Netherlands spent ~107 billion in 2022.
For the same reasons why it's hard to compare Belgium to the US it's hard to compare the Netherlands to Russia.