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Comment by general_ai | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of Russia (which is the only one of those countries/localities that I can speak for, since I grew up there), I will say that Putin is inarguably the best thing that happened to Russia in the past 100 years.

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Not very many good things have happened to Russia in the last 100 years.

That's exactly right. And if someone is going to protest Putin, may I suggest that they peruse the following graph: https://www.google.com/search?q=russia+per+capita+gdp+ppp&oq.... That's Putin.

No, that's the price of oil. Anyway, to use GDP as the prove for how good a president is, is nonsense anyway. Eg.: https://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=venezuela+per+capita+....

Some of it is price of oil, sure. But if you're going to compare to Venezuela, you should be comparing PPP GDP, and not just GDP at exchange rate, which is kinda meaningless. Scroll down to "GDP at parity" here: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=venezuela+russia+per+c.... As you can see, price of oil alone doesn't guarantee that the economy will get any better. And Russian economy did get dramatically better under Putin. I go back every 3-4 years, and the country is barely recognizable now compared to how things were 15 years ago. I could now actually imagine living and working there.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=poland+per+capita+gdp+ppp...

Look at that. Russia and Poland are almost exactly the same. Czech Republic looks somewhat better, Romania somewhat worse but all are similar shape.

I guess Putin is a pretty amazing president! Or maybe there is something else going on...

There's a lot of other countries that are not led by Putin with similar curves.

Even better than Stalin?

Or was your use of the word "inarguably" some kind of code?

Even though most people in the US don't understand why, Putin is really liked in Russia.

I guess those same people will have a lesson on what it's like to have a leader most of the world doesn't like/respect/understand :)

It's very hard for people to step into the perception of another locale. One of the examples I see is in Congress, people often lament members of Congress and wonder why they continually get reelected. But while everyone else all over the country may hate that Congressman, there's a pretty good chance the locals love him and feel that he's representing their community well.

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