Publication in Russian on the Zen blog
https://dzen.ru/a/ZmsxtAtRFmZIYLMi

Best Place: USA or Russia. Boston or Novosibirsk

The USA and Russia are easy to compare if you look at 1) money and 2) happiness. 1) Money is a means of measuring the value of various goods. 2) Happiness can be called a certain style and way of life. Let's take two cities comparable in size and importance as an example. Let's say they are Boston and Novosibirsk. Let's compare apples to apples: Boston is the center of the north-eastern part, and Novosibirsk is the center of Siberia. So, let's look at these two cities, and you tell me where you would prefer to live.

Let's talk about two cities. An American city and a Russian city. Let's go into the microeconomic situation. It's economic life and general life in one city compared to another. One city is Boston, the other is Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk is a Russian city, which I think can be compared to Boston, if we talk about numbers. If you ask why I didn't choose St. Petersburg or Moscow, then the answer is that these cities are not representative of Russia, they are a kind of Panem, if you are familiar with the "Hunger Games", that is, there is an aberration in this. If you drive 100 kilometers outside such a city, you will see the absence of roads, but in the city itself everything looks good and beautiful. Moscow and St. Petersburg are better compared to New York or Washington, but Boston is like any other city in the US, maybe like San Antonio, Texas or Savannah, Georgia, so you could say that Boston is a city that is pretty representative of any city in the US, just like Novosibirsk is pretty representative of any city in Russia. And I want to look at these two cities from two perspectives: money and happiness. I won’t provide any charts or graphs, so that your eyes don’t glaze over, I’ll just use available data from open sources, personal opinion and unique subjective experience. Using these tools, I’ll tell you what life is like in Boston compared to a Russian city, from an economic point of view and from a personal point of view. But first, let’s use some numbers.

Boston, the average income after taxes is $5,963, and that’s a pretty good income. Novosibirsk, the average income is $517, and that’s not much. The difference is more than 1000 percent. Okay, you can object by saying what about the cost of "this" and the cost of "that". Yes, many things will cost more in Boston than in Novosibirsk. In addition to salaries, to determine the main income, people care about three things: apartments, transportation, food.

Let's take as an example renting an apartment in the center of Boston in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. These are beautiful cobblestone streets and brick houses. Many may start criticizing me for choosing this area as an example, because you will have to pay quite a lot of money for rent in an apartment. But I will answer you that money comes and goes, it is like water, but no one will take away the memories that will remain from living in this area from you, it will become a wonderful experience in our fleeting life. Therefore, we will pay $ 2,000 for renting an apartment in this area of ​​​​Boston. This is a lot. Moreover, housing prices there are growing and can already be $ 3,000. Renting an apartment in Novosibirsk is about $ 350. This is a huge difference. But if you subtract $3,000 from the $6,000 you earned in Boston, you'll still have $3,000 left. In Novosibirsk, that's $350 against everything we have, $550 (rounded up). So the remainder of your disposable income is, on average, $200. That's all you have left in Novosibirsk.

Now let's move on to the transportation issue. Let's take the same car. For example, a Toyota Corolla with a basic configuration. In Novosibirsk, the cost of this car will be $ 29,620. In Boston, the same car will cost $ 23,800. $ 6,000 is a huge difference. The price of gasoline in the USA is $ 3.62 per gallon. In Russia, it is 216 rubles per gallon. So you can see how much the same car differs from another. Considering the low disposable income in Novosibirsk, there will not be such a big difference in gasoline prices, because the disposable income in Boston will still be about $ 3,000 per month. And in some cases, it will significantly exceed this amount.

As for food, the approximate cost of new potatoes in Russia is 60 rubles per kilogram. And in Boston, about 200 rubles per kilogram. Many Americans also grow different types of food in their backyards, so the cost of the same potatoes can be reduced. Basically, food is the biggest variable that a person can control in terms of their disposable income in everyday life, based on the economic situation. A chicken breast on the bone in Russia is about 200 rubles or more, in Boston up to 450 rubles ($6). For a gallon of milk in Russia you will pay 320 rubles. In the US 376 rubles. This is a small difference. Especially if you buy this milk from farmers. So after all the food bought and utilities paid, you will have 2000 dollars out of 3000 left. This is 2000 dollars more than you will have left in Novosibirsk. And you can spend this money on anything, for example, on beer. But this is not life, because life consists of everyday impressions.

In Novosibirsk it's Soviet architecture, you take a few steps into the inner city and you see all these concrete blocks, linear and boring, incredibly boring. Boston is cobblestone and brick, where every component has its own story. Irish guys came here with shovels and wheelbarrows and built up all of Boston, which started out as a little narrow peninsula, and they expanded it with hard work and heavy machinery, built a city. Churches built of wood have been standing for over 100 years. And the subway, built with shovels over a hundred years ago. I mean interesting historical corners of Boston, and linear blocks of Novosibirsk that look boring, your eyes get clouded and glassy, ​​and you don't know where to run, where are you going to go? Siberia and the Trans-Siberian Railway are definitely fun. From Boston you can often go to Montreal, Canada, just to get groceries, to go to French grocery stores and bakeries, you can take a yoga class there, or just go clubbing. And then because of the high difference between the Canadian dollar and the US dollar, you can fill your car with great French food and come back. Or you can just go to New York, you can go to Boston Harbor, Cape Cod, Newport, Rhode Island, there's so much to see. In Novosibirsk you have a cultural center, yeah, and that's great, that was before the internet, it was cool to go see a play or a play. But if you want excitement, if you want action, if you want to rush, you want to be in Ireland a few hours from Boston. Or just go to Germany for the weekend. You see how cheap things can get when you make so much money that you throw it away or light cigars with $100 bills? It's a metaphor. Figuratively speaking, making more money makes life look great. But is life about money? Boston has super clean air, ocean breezes and all that. Novosibirsk has high pollution levels, where the index is 69. Boston has 38. That's what life is made of: air quality, water quality, the everyday ability to realize yourself and be the best person you want to be, to have freedom, something that many people have forgotten. In Boston, everything is very diverse, different religions, Buddhist meditation centers, yoga centers, Unitarian churches, Quakers, an Islamic center, and all the people there are cheerful and cool. You know, it's like when you're young, single and beautiful, rushing on a train with a cheerful company, when it's so easy and simple. In Boston, on any streetcar, people are smiling, giggling, laughing. In Novosibirsk, everyone is serious, they just look ahead and say, "Wow, these Bostonians are not that smart, they grew their hair long, they goof around and laugh on the tram." In the evening, these Bostonians, if they are not doing yoga, they come to Cambridge Square, right after they have rocked Cambridge Allan, where all the chess players meet and play until the early hours, having a fiery Saturday night. In Novosibirsk, you go on YouTube, watch some stupid people, not like these chess players who look smart and do not take life as seriously as you do. We are all people, we are all the same, we all try to give 100%. It is just that this Russian economic system stifles culture, stifles growth and potential, depriving most of the freedoms of people from Novosibirsk. Imagine if Novosibirsk was the capital of a new Siberia, an independent beautiful republic where there is free movement of labor and capital, freedom and transparency, instead the population's best way to escape reality is the Internet. An Internet that is controlled. Someone said that a revolution begins with one person, I'm not talking about starting a Revolution, I'm talking about a change within, and I'm talking about peaceful ways to start moving and pulling your thinking to change society, to make it a better Society, so that we have free movement of labor and capital, so that we have a free exchange of ideas, entrepreneurship and opportunities to make the world a better place. Yes, you can come to Novosibirsk for the first time, and for the first two weeks of the first month, you can have a honeymoon effect, when everything around you is cool and new, but after that life becomes a quiet life of despair. If you already wanted to live in Boston, then that's cool, because in Boston everything is possible, because all the people are smiling and happy. Yes, people there also spend a lot of time on their cell phones. But all these people have enterprise and ideas that may or may not come true. But in Novosibirsk, all the people keep their heads down because there is a certain agreement between the government and the people of Russia, when you don't interfere in our affairs, we don't interfere in yours, which means that the people have no say in the government, although they say "we have gold, we have oil, we have uranium". Do Novosibirsk residents have gold and oil in their pockets? Novosibirsk residents don't have any of that, it's only the government that does that. And even the last agreement was broken by the Russian government, because people can't live in the shadows and be passive anymore, people can easily be drafted and sent to the front. What is life like in Boston? Life costs $6,000 after taxes, and in Novosibirsk it's $520. Okay, money isn't everything, if you think money brings you happiness, sometimes it's better to be poor, you'll find out later in life. Experience is more important in life, but it is not what people strive for, it is just a symptom that shows the development of your potential and realization in life, that is why life in Boston is fun, and in Novosibirsk it is not interesting. I will repeat it again, life in America is fun, life in Russia is fun in a special way. Good luck to everyone! And the freedom that one can only dream of in Russia.

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Sometimes I can't imagine a tour of city N in Russia. "A man died here. A man died there. Watch your step, people died there..."

I remember the first time I went to Moscow and commented on how nice the road from the airport to the city was, and the driver told me that it was the only road leading to Moscow that was in such good condition because it was the road from the airport!

Use Google Maps or Yandex Maps to look at a couple of random places within a 60 km radius of St. Petersburg. Even the main roads are falling apart, and the side streets are not cleared and full of potholes. Some of the houses look okay, but there are many dilapidated massive concrete buildings. The general impression is that twenty or thirty years ago these places might have been okay, but those days are long gone.

But one of my friends from Moscow, who visited for the first time outside the Moscow Ring Road, somewhere in a large village in Russia, was simply delighted and in utter amazement to see that many of the houses on the main street were still built of wattle, wattle and daub, like in medieval times. There were Soviet-built apartment buildings or adobe houses. Don't get me wrong, the adobe and wattle houses had adequate rooms, gas and electricity, but the problem was that every 15 years the adobe houses had to have their outer skin re-sheathed, and those that didn't had sheets of dried mud falling off the sides of the houses, often because people no longer had the skills or money to do the repairs.

If Russia had invested its profits from oil, gas, etc. into education, infrastructure, health care, industry, housing, etc., it would indeed be a much better place today.

Publication in Russian on the Zen blog
https://dzen.ru/a/ZmsxtAtRFmZIYLMi