Rich and Poor

When Western journalists want to stress how poor Russians are they write about old people who have to survive on $200. Does it mean that if the Russian Central Bank decides to stop supporting the ruble and the dollar fall to its “natural” rate of about 16 rubles (from 28 rubles today), all poor Russians will become twice richer? This trick also solves the great Putin’s challenge to double GDP not in 10 years but in one day. The CIA Factbook uses its own methodology to calculate purchasing power parity. This way one gets a much better impression on how rich or poor different countries are. Here’s a list of GDP per capita purchasing power parity of the former Soviet republics. In brackets I put other countries to compare with.
Estonia $14,300 (Uruguay $14,500)
Lithuania $12,500 (Argentina $12,400)
Latvia $11,500
Russia $9,800 (Mexico $9,600)
Kazakhstan $7,800
Ukraine $6,300 (Colombia $6,600)
Armenia $4,600
Azerbaijan $3,800
Georgia $3,100 (India $3,100)
Moldova $1,900 (Sudan $1,900)
Uzbekistan $1,800
Kyrgyzstan $1,700
Tajikistan $1,100 (Afghanistan $800)
Also in the list:
Luxembourg $58,900
United States $40,100
Germany $28,700
United Kingdom $29,600
World $8,800
China $5,600