>Gil Skillman wrote: > >>Although I certainly agree that the West has played a key role in turning >>Russia into a socio-economic basket case, there may be more here than meets >>the eye. First, concerning the statistics, there is a potential double >>measurement problem. The USSR might have overstated GDP and understated >>negative social indicators, while the underground (and thus undermeasured) >>economy is probably a much bigger factor in present-day Russia. >Gil, you're taking a more conservative approach than the World Bank >and the EBRD. The 1/2 fall is based on EBRD stats, and WB literature >is full of worry and puzzlement about the fall in population & life >expectancy. OK, it could be. I get some of these points in conversation with a "transition economies" specialist in my department, and just wondered how they stood up. And I wasn't questioning the population fall. But I didn't quite hear a response to the substantive points about measurement problems. Does the EBRD or the WB have a handle on the extent of the underground economy? How? Do we know about the margin of error in USSR data? I'm genuinely curious about the comparative state of data, and have no particular axe to grind, as addressed below. >> Second, >>population is now shrinking in very modern and not-at-war Japan, and has >>been shrinking in the non-war past (it may still be true) of very modern >>Scandinavia. > >According to the August ish of International Financial Statistics, >the latest population figures from Sweden are flat (1997-98) for the >first time, with Denmark, Norway, and Japan all positive, though >growing slowly. OK, you're obviously more on top of this than I am. Re Japan, I was reporting a memory of a very recent NY Times article--but maybe its point was falling population just in certain regions of Japan? >Russia: > >1994 147.97 million >1995 148.14 >1996 147.74 >1997 147.10 >1998 146.54 > >What is this, an outburst of left anti-communism? I don't see the logical connection. I could believe your numbers and yet be stridently anti-communist, or doubt them and yet be an unregenerate Stalinist, without contradiction or cognitive dissonance. Statistics are statistics, not position statements. If being pro-communist or socialist depends on statistics moving a certain way, then we're in trouble. To turn your apparent inference around, would we all have to become rabidly pro-capitalist were it to turn out that the Russian population and underground economy were both booming? Gil
