Are you feeling the crisis?

[peacetraveler22]

We see the word "crisis" constantly thrown around in text and news articles, but I want to know the reality of the situation for the average person living in Russia. I understand almost nothing about the financial markets, and my investments are all handled by stockbrokers with expertise in the area. Yet I go to the gas station each week and see the gas prices continually drop, which is great for me given that I commute a very long distance to work now. Travel is also less costly with the strength of the dollar, whereas many Russian friends no longer can afford to go abroad due to the continual decrease in the ruble. So, are all of these stories on LJ simply written by alarmists and pessimists, or do you feel there's a real crisis now in Russia as a result of sanctions and economics, which dramatically impacts your life? If so, in what way? Do you have hope for improvement in 2016?

Comments

[morang.livejournal.com]

To understand and learn for good that throwing stones while living in glass house has consequences. That when you have 'bread', you'd better settle on living without state-provided 'circuses' of superpower grandeur than risk losing both due to defeat.

The lesson that an oil country should invest in diversification of its industry is already failed, I'm afraid. That ship has sailed.

Crisis feels in slow creep of some domestic prices and communal wages, in jobs shrinking, in prices on foreign goods (there are many, compare RU exports vs imports - remember me scared by ), in political rhetorics. Patriarch of Russian Orthodox Church has recently claimed that people who feel affected by crisis are 'unviable'. This week unviable pensioners in the famous Sochi held a protest against cancellation of mass transit discounts for them, blocking the street.