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Comment by nicbou | Hacker News Reader

I find this really hard to believe. In practical terms, is life getting better or worse for the average Russian, and how does it compare to life for the average European?

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Worse. Food have become more expensive although prices rise slowed down. Many clothing brands have left and replaced with brands from Turkey etc. But we are not starving, have gas, electricity.

Well sounds like many parts of EU then. In Netherlands restaurant prices have gone up 20-30% this year. When visiting Poland I have seen food prices to be as high or even higher than in Netherlands while they earn 3 or 4 times less on average. It used to be cheap to go to Poland but this year quite crazy. I feel bad for them, looks like their government really fucked up, also the sanctions are backfiring badly over there

And that's not even the whole story. As an SDE, after taxes, SS (that I will not ever use), and rent+utils, I am left with 750 euro of disposable income. My effective taxrate is 38%. To have the same taxrate in Denmark you'd have to earn around 650k DKK, so close to 80K euro, not the 36k I am earning.

> To have the same taxrate in Denmark you'd have to earn around 650k DKK, so close to 80K euro, not the 36k I am earning.

Or just start contacting, like many SDEs in Poland do, then your effective tax rate (taxes + health insurance + social security) is around 15-17%. The reality in Poland is that full-time employment (as opposed to self-employment) is for suckers.

I don't think it's possible to do that with Amazon :/

Yeah, American corporations typically don't allow it. But, they don't extraordinally well in Poland anyway, so they can just be avoided.

*they don't pay

Food prices are higher because global agricultural output had a major drop last year[1]. Every major food producing region of the world was hit by covid induced labor and equipment shortages, bad weather, or war, or some combination of them all.

[1]https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/circulars/production.pdf

Not to mention that a quarter of the world's wheat come from Russia and Ukraine - https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/17/infographic-russia-... ...

what is the average rise in prices since last year?

Hard to tell, prices raised unevenly. Real estate have become very expensive. As for day-to-day spendings my unscientific gut feeling tells me that I spend somewhere 25% more. Official figures of inflation something like 12-15%.

Why real estate become even more expensive?

Several reasons. It started during COVID times when it was not clear if we are facing new economic crisis. So wealthy people used real estate to protect their savings. Then the government decided to support construction companies by subsidising mortgage for young families and as a result stimulating demand. And now again uncertainty of current situation stimulate people invest their savings in something safe. On the other hand sellers were afraid that ruble will fail significantly and raised prices so high that sells almost stopped. Right now prices to real estate are going down a bit.

Thank you for answer. The same situation is in all economies where government prints money and people are afraid currency will lose value so it it better to keep wealth in real estate.

that's as much as it is in europe

Agreed. Real estate got really expensive in Berlin, as did rent. Food got more expensive like everywhere else, and now energy costs tripled (I just got the letter from my landlord).

I'm not cheering for anyone to hurt more than us. It's just a crappy situation all around.

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