Last month, the Russian government released a draft of the proposed 2026–2028 federal budget, which purports to show the near-term priorities of President Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Milov, a Russian opposition politician who left Russia after Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has released a pessimistic assessment of the former KGB lieutenant colonel’s chances of being able to continue to bankroll his war in Ukraine.
In his latest report for the Foundation, he projects rough times ahead for Moscow due to a series of unfavorable trends.
According to his analysis, Russia’s budgetary situation is anything but “normal.”
That is not how economics work either.
Inflation is kinda irrelevant, what matters is the people’s buying power, i.e. how much they can afford to buy based on their wages.
And the wages are determined on the labor market based on supply and demand: If there’s high demand for human workers, wages are higher.
And demand for human workers largely depends on how much employment opportunities the state creates. Like, if the state just begins to randomly construct public transport and public infrastructure and more energy production sites and also clean water pipes and lots of other stuff, that creates construction jobs and drives up wages which means people can buy more stuff.
That has literally nothing to do with how much money the government prints, and it doesn’t really matter if the cost of bread is $2 or $20 as long as your wages rise just as quickly.
Printing money does not create wealth. I.e. it does not create new jobs. What it does is it dilutes the wealth.
It can be tool to revitalize the economy in hopes getting people to spend more and help them pay their loans or getting new ones, ir short term help goverment build something/try to pay their debts, but on its own printing money just creates inflation.
So when somebody on internet says “oh, they can just print money” its not how it works.