Is Russia really that bad?

[onodera]

How vast are Russia's oil reserves? When is oil extraction expected to peak or has it already?

My wife's writing a PhD thesis on oil prospecting, I'll ask her.

[Myrddin]

My wife's writing a PhD thesis on oil prospecting, I'll ask her.

Careful, that's probably a State Secret.

[TheDarkness]

If you fall in a dung heap and upon rising, wash your hands, you're better off than you were, but you're still covered in crap.

Sounds like Presidential elections... Senator Coveredincrap vs. Governor Coveredincrapwithwashedhands

[Hauldren Collider]

Sounds like the us, only we aren't all ready to immigrate yet

WTF.

Yes, it sounds exactly like the country people risk their lives in the Arizona Desert to get to. Totally familiar. I absolutely identify with Russia.

[Asher]

I kind of like Putin's style of blatant abuse of power and womanizing and unrepentant corruption.

It's certainly a welcome break from the corrupt "Christian values" politicians in the US.

[onodera]

I kind of like Putin's style of blatant abuse of power and womanizing and unrepentant corruption.

It's certainly a welcome break from the corrupt "Christian values" politicians in the US.

It's not that blatant compared to Berlusconi's. Putin doesn't play MC Hammer to the courts.

[Asher]

You should move to Canada, onodera. We've got the oil money, but without any of the Putin.

[Zevico]

I was under the impression that the Russian economy is improving as is the standard of living in Russia, however, a young Russian woman I know from another web forum recently posted on her Facebook page about a job she landed in London, UK: "I have now realized the dreams of every Russian woman. Getting the hell out of here and moving to the west."

Russian posters of Apolyton, is it really still that bad in Russia? Is it true that most young people still want to immigrate?

Yes.

[Zevico]

I'm not that big of a hater, but my position in the last year or two has changed from "I want my children to grow up in Russia!" to "I wonder what country I should move to?"
Putin was a welcome break from Yeltsin's vodka-fueled incompetence and his clique of oligarchs back in 2000. By 2010 he has replaced them with his own clique. As for the incompetence... We had seven years of sky-high oil prices. What have we achieved? At the very least, the money could've been reinvested into the oil industry that is still exploiting the old Soviet wells. I have seen no new shiny American-style highways. I have seen no army reform. I have seen no new power stations built. I haven't heard about any scientific breakthroughs made by Russian scientists in Russian institutes.
On the other hand, I have seen a road from Moscow to Vladimir that has more potholes than tarmac and is considered a good one. I have seen that it took our army several days to curbstomp an insignificant country like Georgia. I have seen a terrible accident on the largest hydroelectric power station in Russia that happened because there were no competent engineers left to watch the old equipment made in USSR. I have heard a Russian-born Nobel Prize winner tell the Russian government to **** themselves when they invited him back to lead the new pet project of the president.
I know that it would be impossible to do all of this at the same time with our oil money, but whither has it gone?

Swiss bank accounts.
What else do you expect from a former member of the KGB?
Fact is, Russia's revolution was clique-led, clique-owned, clique-run. The "Communists"/nomenklaturists, taken as a whole, never really left power. They just changed their job titles and instituted better economic policies.

[onodera]

You should move to Canada, onodera. We've got the oil money, but without any of the Putin.

Get rid of the Chinese in Vancouver, and I'll get there asap.

[giblets]

Get rid of the Chinese in Vancouver, and I'll get there asap.

What's wrong with them?

[Asher]

Anything said here would be construed as racist.

But I encourage you to google crime stats for Vancouver by ethnicity.

[Dinner]

Chinese are great. They almost never commit crime, they generally are well educated, they maintain their property, they are willing to work hard for insanely long hours each day, and they have a very high rate of new business creation. Obviously these are all generalizations of the population but the averages are still true at least from my experience.

[Asher]

Chinese are great. They almost never commit crime

I urge you to look at Vancouver's crime stats, and ditto Toronto.

Do you know why car insurance in the Toronto suburbs is absurdly expensive? It's because of rampant insurance fraud. Almost always, this fraud is from new immigrants from China or Sri Lanka. It's rampant. And that's not racism, it's just fact.

[Asher]

The majority of the Chinese immigrants are, of course, upstanding, studious, law-abiding citizens.

There's just a tremendous amounts of rich Hong Kong kids who were sent here after China repatriated Hong Kong with little supervision, a lot of money, and something to prove. It's quite a dangerous mix.