Posted on 02/16/2024 5:55:52 AM PST by marcusmaximus
Tucker Carlson has been mocked over a fawning video praising Moscow's 'cheap and fresh' groceries - while overlooking the much lower wages in Russia.
The former Fox News firebrand wheeled a grocery cart around a Russian superstore while marveling at the stock as he continued his Putin PR tour.
-snip/
The video drew widespread ridicule from people online, as many pointed out the disparity between the average wage in Russia - which is the equivalent of $9072 - or 6.5 times less than the average US salary of $59,428.
Many joked he was working for free as a one-man 'tourism marketing team' for Vladimir Putin's country.
'Tucker says groceries in Russia cost about 1/4th of what they cost in America,' one person wrote on X.
'What he doesn't mention is the average Russian salary is 1/5th the average US salary.'
Even his fans were disparaging. 'I love Tucker but this $104 charge for groceries is misleading if you look at the average salary for a Russian citizen is about $14,771 according to Google,' one supporter said.
'Tucker should also have to live for a month on an average Russian salary, in an average Russian apartment, and see how his grocery budget looks then,' scoffed one X user.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“Tucker Carlson has been mocked over a fawning video praising Moscow’s ‘cheap and fresh’ groceries”
I think the interview was planned to be “fawning” partially in order to get Putin to do the interview. Now Putin has complained that he got no tough questions.
Now we’ll get a 2nd interview, maybe. Ratings gold for Tucker and Putin.
I live in a suburb in Florida and I am a firm no on sushi. The taste reminds me too much of when, on a dare as a kid, I ate a live minnow from the lake behind our house. But anyone is welcome to visit and eat as much minnow sushi as they can catch. In other words, like most Americans, I am not at all deprived by not eating sushi.
I just have to ask: what is a Zeeper?
That was good
Go to Russia and say the things about Putin that we say about Biden. let me know how that works out for you.
this article is pure bs. basic math isn’t difficult to do but it’s usually far beyond the capabilities of leftist propagandists
—
the amount earned per month doesn’t matter. what matters is how much is earned compared to the cost of living.
US individual (2023):
avg cost of living: $38,266/yr
avg salary: $62,781/yr
ratio cost-of-living v salary == 1 : 1.64
Russin individual (2023):
avg cost of living: $ 5,832/yr
avg salary: $14,771/yr
ratio cost-of-living v salary == 1 : 2.53
as such, the median Russian has a much easier time making their bills than the median American. American COL is 61% of the median salary. Russians are looking at 39% of their check going to COL. that’s a huge difference.
our problem is the jacked up inflation has increased the COL while the crap economy combined with flooding the country with illegals is pulling down the median income, which is heavily effected by the blue collar sector... the jobs taken by illegals.
Compared to the mid-1900s, wages and salaries are now only a small fraction of a US farmer’s costs. The Daily Mail might be correct to criticise Carlson. But their reasoning makes them look like silly, out of touch, Brit academics.
In 1960 I worked in hayfields in the summer. The farmer cut the day with a mower, raked it, then baled it into 50-pound rectangular bales. Four of us teenagers would load bales onto a flatbed truck going through a previous day’s field, with bales stacked by a guy riding on the truck, being driven by another guy. Then we would unload the bales and stack them in a barn.
Not including the farmer, that is up to 6 guys working for a daily wage. Now the farmer cuts the hay, rakes, it and bales it into ~800-pound round bales, then uses a hydraulic lift on the tractor to move the round bales onto the flat bed or just leaves them in the field wrapped in netting or plastic. Those six guys drawing a daily wage? They ain’t there no more. Most farm work has similarly eliminated human labor and wages.
He wasn’t talking about salarries in Russia. He was talking about the quality of the grocery store and the food prices.
We have a steep decline in jobs and a big uptick in food prices with millions of Americans, even our servicemen’s families, needing ebt cards.
And lets not mention the millions of illegal border crossers getting free food at the expense of American citizens who have to pay for it.
And someone is all wee we’ed up over Russian salaries?
Check
When I grew up and traveled and worked the third or developing world an ugly American charictature was an American who looked down on other nations and cultures as inferior
And was snobby or derisive over it
My biz partner and lifelong best pal did this initially which caused some friction between us
Mostly because I found it counter productive considering we were there to strike deals with those folks
It certainly gives one an appreciation of America but there’s no need for him to have been rude about it
And it did cause issues especially in Colombia
Where they are kind of proud and nationalistic despite having civil conflict then
I think Tucker found Russia not as bad as he’d figured
For the record on subways
Few are as bad as NYC anywhere in the world
Even Mexico City and São Paulo
I look around at YouTube of big cities everywhere and what strikes me is everyone has skyscraper clusters now
Even Lagos which didn’t in my day
London and Paris too which is new to me
Ironically back then Bogota was teeming with them already
Caracas as well
I don’t think Tucker had every been to Russia
I know people who love to travel there
I’ve never been either
Eastern Europe was closed in my day more or less or we’d have gone for the girls
Did he? Perhaps Tucker opened a window for Westerners who believe only what they've been told, or who believe Russia is still mired in the 1990s depression that followed the Soviet collapse.
Russians pay a flat income tax rate of 13% - while we still have the Marxist graduated income tax. Rates of public and private debt are very low. In addition, 85% of Russians own their homes and apartments. And anyone who still believes everything outside of Moscow or St. Petersburg is poor and backward can watch countless YouTube videos from all over Russia. It shouldn't surprise us that a rising tide lifts all boats.
Is one a "Putin lover" or "Russian agent" for observing these things? If the last five years taught us anything, it's that we should think for ourselves -- and be suspicious of those who have lied to us, hidden information from us, and bullied and punished us for asking common sense questions.
I have watched street interviews with Russians who have said “to Hell with Putin”. They didn’t look too worried to me.
Tucker just said that to trigger the zeepers. After all, what would we do without our daily onslaught of Tucker Carlson threads? 😁
The salary compsrison is a meanigless statistic influenced by artificial exchange rates In real terms, the average Russian does not consume 1/6 of the food and clothing thst an American consumes, live in a house that is 1/6 as big and furnished as an American’s, see the doctor 1/6 as much, etc. (But they probably have 1/6 of the thugs.)
Isn’t this all kinda picking at nits? I mean it may be that the real standard of living (in terms of material goods) is not equivalent to the average person in the US. However...and this is a big however...it seems clear that a lot of Russians are not poor in real terms.
It’s like the people who try to talk about poor “inner city families” in the US, but when they interview them, they have an air conditioned apartment with fridge full of food with the kids playing on an Xbox on a HD flat screen TV.
I’m not saying that measurements don’t mean anything, but trying to claim that Russians broadly are poor in real terms seems like a stretch.
If Russia is so much better than the USA like he says, Tucker can move there.
**********
He could do this if he spoke Russisn and, for that reason, would not have to start over at the lowest level as an immigrant if he moved there.
Tucker Carlson turns on Putin after Alexei Navalny’s death in jail: ‘It’s horrifying, barbaric and awful - no decent person would defend it’
There’s a larger point being entirely missed here:
Nothing we are told about our own economy - OR Russia’s - is true.
Everything we are told is a lie.
Even if Tucker Carlson was wrong to praise Russia’s prices without taking lower average wages into account - he is doing a service by getting people to ask the question:
How much of our pride in USA’s standard of living is justified? How much of what our government reports has even a grain of truth to it?
I say we Americans have been conned and lied to for a hundred years printing fake money, and we need to wake the f@@I up.
Tucker’s food price analysis may be wrong but his instinct is right: Our government is robbing us blind and we are oblivious.
BTTT
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