this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 16 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Look at Russia's economic growth in spite of the sanctions.

There's a world economy outside US control and it is only growing. Where do you think the inflation is coming from?

[–] noride@lemm.ee 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

That's the thing about a war time economy, you produce one tank, and BOOM you've added $3.5MM to your GDP. A single SU-35? About 16MM added to GDP.

You can't eat tanks and jets though, the labor and resources used to maintain a war footing are vast, and must be poached from other areas of the economy. The longer you maintain this posture, the more dramatic the contraction.

Gazprom posted a loss for the first time in decades. They sell one of the most profitable substances ever discovered by man and they still couldn't turn a profit.. despite how little the sanctions are impacting them, no less!

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago

The military industry is around 6% of Russian economy, it's not a war time economy LMFAO. By contrast, by the end of WW2, around 40% of US economy was devoted to the military. That's what an actual war time economy looks like. It's absolutely hilarious how people just keep parroting this nonsense without thinking about it even for a second.

The main reason for such rapid growth of Russian economy is due to the fact that decoupling from the west created a lot of economic niches to be filled. Meanwhile, the west effectively doing capital controls for Russia forced the oligarchs to invest their money domestically.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world -4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Russia is in for a harsh wakeup when the Ukrainian war ends (or in 2026 if the war is still ongoing IMO). Their economy is "looking good" right now only because it has been switched to a war economy, and the Kremlin injects tons of cash in it, but lots of it isn't useful for the russians, it's just getting destroyed in the war.

Also the ruble is close to a dead currency, nobody wants to trade in it any more.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I implore you to learn what a war economy actually is. Spending 6% of the GDP on military industry is not it. Here's a starter for you https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/cost-us-wars-then-and-now

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works -5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Turning tanks in a storage base into tanks destroyed in Ukraine is not economic growth, dispite what gdp would indicate.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Go read up on the percentage of the Russian GDP spent on the military then delete your comment. 😂

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works -2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)
[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Again, even if you inflate it to 10%, that's very clearly not a war economy. 90% of the economy isn't oriented towards the war, and the war has practically no impact on day to day lives of the vast majority of the people.

[–] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's oriented towards the war, but it's not a total war economy yet because the population wouldn't tolerate it. It's similar to the US at war in Vietnam, spending only got up to 8% to 10% of gdp.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Most of US economy isn't productive manufacturing output, it's stuff like service industry, software shops, financial economy, etc. Some of it, such as the health insurance industry, is actively harmful to society. There's a great article explaining how US lost most of its productive economy at this point.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/

Industrial output in US accounts for something like 15% of the overall economy, and steel production levels are comparable to Russia. That's a pretty good proxy for the size of industry in a country. So, when you compare US military spending to the productive economy in the country, then it's a very high percentage of the industrial GDP.

Also, the article you linked counts all the military adjacent economy to get to the 10% number, US military spending would also look a lot higher if we did that. US defense spending is currently well over $1 trillion a year.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tom-dispatch-america-defense-budget-bigger-than-you-think/

Meanwhile, US industrial output is around $2 trillion.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/global-manufacturing-scorecard-how-the-us-compares-to-18-other-nations/

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world -1 points 4 months ago

Why not they're consumables/disposable /s