Russia
Basic facts about Russia
Full Name: Russian Federation
Population: 142.5 Million
Capital: Moscow
Area: 17,075,400 (Worlds largest country)
Major language: Russian
Major religions: Christianity, Islam, Buddism, Judaism
Life expectancy: 59 years (men), 73 years (women)
monetary unit: 1 rouple = 0,1157 DKK
Internet Domain: .ru, .su, .rf
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Russia has highest level of Wealth inequality
Written by Oliver Nygaard
New reports show that Russia has the highest level of inequality. An annual global wealth study by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse says more than 110 Russians citizens control 35 percent of the total wealth of the entire country, compared to the billionaires worldwide their total wealth is 1 to 2 percent, which is much lower than the Russians billionaires.
The report shows that Russia has one billionaire for every $11 billion in wealth, but if you look across the rest of the world, is there only a billionaire for every $170 billion which is 1194 billion DKK. One of the authors of the report, Tony Shorrocks said: “Russia is really an outsider,” “Even compared with the U.S., which has more wealth inequality than more countries, [Russia] is still totally separate from the rest of the world.”
Shorrocks says what is most noticeable about Russia’s richest people is that they are controlling natural resources companies like gas giant Gazprom, oil companies or metals firms and use their connections with the Kremlin (which is the house of the government of Russian, which would be similar with the white house in USA) and the use of the Kremlin maintain their fortunes.
Billionaires in Russia obviously have very much connected with natural resource” Shorrocks said. He also said that the fortune is made over a 20 year period. Having a natural resources company requires political support, so the politicians have a good connection with the companies’ leaders.
Storrocks said many reformers had hoped that after the collapse of communism that Russia would evolve into a high skilled economy. But the new report says that it was almost a parody of what happened in practice. "A very large proportion of the Russian housing stock was actually given to their residents. That was a massive privatization and it was, on the whole, relatively equal -- certainly compared with the wealth distribution now. Shares in Gazprom were also allocated to Russian citizens. Obviously, what happened was that there wasn't really enough safeguards put in place and some people managed to acquire more than their fair share of the privatized assets," Storrocks said.
Storrocks said that it is more common to find wealth inequality in former communist countries how have been through an economic transition (which is countries where wealth distribution was fairly equal two decades ago. Storrocks is interesting to see whether the large fortunes is collected by the Russian oligarchs or if it will remain the future generations.
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![]() Yasmin Sulaiman 2.C Langkær Gymnasium
How Russia’s Billionaire Oligarchs Got So Very Rich Everyone talks about Russia’s super rich Oligarchs, because of the economic crisis in Cyprus, and also because one of the Oligarchs, who is named Boris Berezovsky died in London a short time ago. Few Russian people become rich, but those who are rich are extremely rich. Some of them are called Oligarchs. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian economic was very bad in such an extent that the rich people have to take over some businesses. For example If Russian’s government have some economic problems, the rich people will then help and give an economic support. The technique that the Russian government and the Russian banks are kind of “something for something”. If the bank is given an economic support to the Russia government, the bank has the right to own a little part of state-owned companies. To have so much power can sometimes cause a lot of damage. For example Roman Abramovic, who is Berezovsky partner won over Berezovsky to the offer for the company, therefore he beat himself to death, because some believe that he feared losing his fortune. Oligarch: A Russian Oligarch is an another word for “business Oligarch”. A Russian Oligarch is a business man, who is really rich. These Russian Oligarchs have political connections and they also have mafia-connections, therefor they may be dangerous. Boris Berezovsky
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Mikkel Lundager 2.C Langkær Gymnasium
The wealth-gap in Russia increases The rich continues their way to the top, the poor stays the same According to statistics, the wealthy people in Russia are getting richer by ridiculous amounts while the poor stays the same; this in contrary to the rising living standards. It is a well-established fact that Russia is basically owned by the rich. They rob the country from its raw material and make astonishing amounts of money by processing them. Statistics never fail to confirm that every year the gap increases, despite the growth and strengthening of the middle class. The 97 richest people in Russia owns much more than the rest of the population all together does, this makes Russia the number 2 country in the world in terms of how many billionaires the country is home to. State Statistics Services have published information that shows how the richest people keep expanding their wallets while the poor stays the same, a gap that increases every year. This trending gap was first spotted in the 1990’s and has continued growing throughout the 2000’s. All the while this is happening, another significant change also has seen the light of day: fewer and fewer Russians live below the extreme poverty line as the living standards of the middle class is on a rise. The face of those who are absolutely the poorest has also changed, whereas they were employees at state-financed organizations and pensioners before, they are now working-age adults with families that ran out of luck on the labor-market or failed to get a job completely. The government has part of the guilt, analysts believes, and they are however not helping the problem. They are criticized for their effort because they do not help the people with solving the problem by just providing money and pumping money in, the need to provide people with the correct resources and thus enabling them to be part of the solution to this problem. The estimated amount of money that the richest people own is however not entirely valid, because they are notorious for taking their money elsewhere, out of the country and some of the people with the highest net worth are even infamous for keeping their precious savings out of banks, and therefore also off the radar. Figures to express the situation a bit more tangibly: 93 pounds is current minimum monthly wage enforced by the state, however the estimated real minimum cost of living monthly is thought to be around 125 pounds. 97 billionaires are living in Russia at this current moment, these 97 people mostly consisting of men own 236 billion pounds while the remaining population owns 8,07 billion pounds. In this link some tasks can be found for you to do, after you have finished reading: ![]()
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