Date: Wednesday, 03 July 2024
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/world-bank-finally-reclassifies-russia
https://theduran.com/world-bank-finally-reclassifies-russia-to-top-category-high-income
World Bank Finally Reclassifies Russia to Top Category: ‘High Income Country’
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
On July 1st, the World Bank headlined “World Bank country classifications by income level for 2024-2025”, and reported that, “This year, three countries — Bulgaria, Palau, and Russia — moved from the upper-middle-income to the high-income category.”
Their explanation in the case of Russia (the only large country among the three) was:
Economic activity in Russia was influenced by a large increase in military related activity in 2023, while growth was also boosted by a rebound in trade (+6.8%), the financial sector (+8.7%), and construction (+6.6%). These factors led to increases in both real (3.6%) and nominal (10.9%) GDP, and Russia’s Atlas GNI per capita grew by 11.2%.
The World Bank’s chart showing yearly “GNI per capita, Atlas method (current US$) - Russian Federation” indicates that from the time when Putin began his leadership of Russia on 1 January 2000, till 2013, right before the U.S.-and-allied war against Russia started with Obama’s coup that in February 2014 overthrew Ukraine’s neutralist democratically elected Government and installed a rabidly anti-Russian one and so started also the civil war within Ukraine, and the break-aways of both Crimea and Donbass, which rejected the new rulers — during that 13-year period — Russia’s “GNI per capita, Atlas method (current US$) - Russian Federation” or Gross National Income per capita, rose from what in today’s U.S. dollars is $1,710,000, to $15,160,000 per person in 2013, but then plunged down to $9,160,000, or minus 40%, by 2017, in order for Russia to deal with the U.S. gang’s war against Russia, including economic sanctions that started being imposed in 2012 (even before the coup). That rise from $1,710,000, to $15,160,000 was an increase of 8.87 times over the span of those 13 years till 2013.
Then, from 2017 to 2023, it rose from $9,160,000 to $14,250,000; so, it still hasn’t reached the $15,160,000 it was in 2013. However, in Purchasing Power Parity terms (which is what the workers and consumers actually experience), it has gone way beyond that, and is the highest ever in Russia:
The World Bank’s “GNI per capita, PPP (constant 2021 international $) - Russian Federation” shows that in real terms, the 2013 peak was $36,631; it declined to $34,371 in 2016, then rose to $39,222 in 2023. So: Russians really are better off now than they had been before Obama lowered the boom on them with his coup in Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia. Those figures are in 2021 dollars, but up to 2021, the World Bank was calculating in 2017 dollars, and their chart then showed that between 1990 (the end of the Soviet Union) and 1998, Russians’ PPP incomes declined 45% (which was because American economists virtually ran things under Yeltsin and were interested in cutting Americans in on Russian assets), and the economy rose 20% by 2000 when Putin became the leader; and then by 2013 Russians’ incomes rose 79% so as to become 211% of what they had been back in 1998, at the pit of America’s transforming Russia’s economy into a kleptocracy. And so from the standpoint of the Russian public, Putin’s performance over the 24 years he has been in office has been terrific, and is continuing to be terrific, so that his average approve/disaprove rating throughout his 24 years in power has been 75%/15%, and is now 85%/12%. This — Putin — is the national leader whom the U.S. empire (where those numbers are normally around 30%/60%) craves to replace by whatever the U.S. Government will install in his place. The U.S. empire leaders say that theirs is a ‘democracy’ and Putin’s is an ‘autocracy’, but whatever those terms might mean to them, Russians almost universally reject if not despise it. Yet the U.S. empire keeps demanding this “regime change” there. Maybe they are simply jealous. But if so, that might be a jealousy that could end up producing WW3. In any case, it’s looking outward to blame for their own failures. And now in America, both of the major-Party candidates have already demonstrated themselves to be such failures. And yet, only around 15% of Americans currently want anything else than that. How smart is that?
Right now, America’s Gross National Income per capita on a PPP basis is almost exactly twice what Russia’s is; but at the rate things have been changing since Putin came into power, Russia’s will be higher than America’s within a decade or so, because Russia’s are rising at a vastly higher percentage-rate than America’s have been for the past 25 years. It is official U.S. Governmental policy that all other nations are “dispensable”; only America is not — and that any economic competitor must be put down. For Americans to insist upon being the world’s most powerful country in the future as it has been since 1945, is becoming more dangerous and more insane and more unrealistic with every passing year; it is just insane — and voting as-if it weren’t is going to enormously endanger not only Americans but the entire world, unless that insane voting comes to a halt very soon. Only a revolution might save things this late into where we are heading. Coming this late, can it even possibly be a peaceful revolution? America’s Government can’t be live-and-let-live, unless America’s people demand that it be so, and until they no longer vote for the types of candidates they’ve been voting for. Americans need to be MUCH more critical of at least the major-Party candidates, and to demand: NO MORE NEOCONSERVATIVES!!!
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
