Comment by realitycheck123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by realitycheck123 | Hacker News Reader

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realitycheck123

> It no longer makes sense to move from Russia to US. There may be better living standard in Moscow now.

Let's look at the numbers. I'll chose the capital of a country, out of many, that russia has harassed, stolen territory from, and is actively threatening at the moment, to make it a fair comparison.

Moscow GDP per capita: 22,060 USD 2018 Bucharest GDP per capita: 26,660 EUR 2018

Moscow average salary: 1100 USD 2021 Bucharest average salary: 1,614.91 USD 2021

If you factor in the massive gap between regular folks and oligarchs, and their employees, then the average worker in moscow is probably earning far less than that.

So, at least based on numbers, your statement of "better living standard in Moscow" is a propagandist lie you fall for. Even if Moscow is a Potemkin village, with big fancy buildings, the standard of living appears to be comparable to Bucharest, Romania, if not lower.

And Bucharest, thanks to russian dominance, is considered a poor city in a poor country in a poor EU country (Romania's per capita GDP and avg salaries are also higher than russia's).

His uncle should move to the US at least based on these facts. And if I may recommend, please, leave your country every now and then, so you escape putin's propaganda.

Every statement that paints Russia in a positive light must be propaganda, right? This becomes tiring really fast.

> Moscow average salary: 1100 USD 2021 Bucharest average salary: 1,614.91 USD 2021

It makes precisely zero sense comparing absolute numbers without factoring in cost of living. And we are talking about experienced software professionals. OP's uncle is probably making at least 4x more than that. Imagine making 4x average salary in your region.

I imagine there are people making 4x average salary in Bucharest as well, not just Moscow.

It makes precisely zero sense factoring in a lower cost of living, as likely Bucharest also has a low cost of living. Actually, the numbers I found factoring the cost of living Moscow v Bucharest were much much higher for Bucharest, to the point where I thought they were ridiculous, and wasn't sure about their accuracy, hence I chose those which put Moscow in a more favorable light.

> Every statement that paints Russia in a positive light must be propaganda, right? This becomes tiring really fast.

Yeah well, the statement paints a fake positive light about russia. I am sure even that country has many positives but I focused on specifically OP's statement, because it was simply a lie.

You know what else becomes really tiring? What russia did and does to its neighbours since its inception. Focus on solving that, as people are more than eager to move on past territorial expansion wars and live in the current century.

While I agree to you that everyone who can leave Russia - should do it for now, your arguments about personal economy are wrong. The thing with Russia is enormous inequality, which is not seen in average metrics. Moscow has enormously cheap taxi and delivery services because of abundance of immigration workforce and lack of social security. Imagine US allowing free immigration and work for all immigrants. All low skill professions will be immediately taken by wave of immigrants from LATAM and Asia, which will significantly increase quality of life for US middle and lower-middle class with all the spare cash from cheap householding, transportation and other services. Uber and Doordash will become dirt cheap. Amazon may transform into something even more dystopian.

It will also force Americans who are doing those jobs right now to live on welfare, effectively bankrupt welfare system. They are voters, so due to democratic processes this will never happen, but this is not the case in Russia.

> Every statement that paints Russia in a positive light must be propaganda, right? This becomes tiring really fast.

A hyper violent fascist dictatorship (going on two decades now), with no human rights, where just proclaiming the war in Ukraine to be a war can get you 15 years in prison - yeah, there are a lot of very good reasons why Russia can't be painted in a positive light at present.

This is the same fascist dictatorship that just instructed its soldiers to intentionally genocide, rape and torture civilians by the tens of thousands in neighboring Ukraine.

We're talking about one of the most evil regimes of the last several hundred years. And it all derives directly from the culture of the country, just as the Soviet era did before it.

What positive light?

> where just proclaiming the war in Ukraine to be a war can get you 15 years in prison

Well, to be fair, there are lots of indications that's about to change.

Yes, unfortunately it appears they're about to make it official.

>"We're talking about one of the most evil regimes of the last several hundred years."

On that time scale Russia is no special at all. Atrocities committed by the West will make normal human want to loose sanity. For your own education and as a little sample just check what Belgium did in Congo. England had raped half of the world. The rest of the world was just as bad. Just less powerful. So please cut the bullshit.

Current Russian regime and their leaders deserve to be dealt with for sure. Personally I would dump Putin into meat grinder (not really because I am not a rabid dog he is but these are my feelings).

But to claim that Russia did this because of the rotten nature of Russian people in general - this is not true and is pure racism.

OP's uncle is an engineerig manager, so 7x-8x is closer to reality. Source: I was an engineering manager in Moscow until December 2021.

Well, Qatar has highest GDP per capita in the world, yet it treats immigrants and foreign workers very poorly.

Since we're talking about moving from Russia to the US as a technology professional (and seeing as I am and know plenty of "immigrant and foreign workers" here), I can assure you the Qatar concern does not apply.

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