I grew up in Appalachia, and have spent a lot of time there.
I'd love to have you show me where there are towns without electricity, ambulance access, running water, easily accessible paved roads, hospitals within easy driving distance, broadband access, etc.
Even the smallest of towns I can name in Appalachia, have such things.
In fact, I grew up in an exceptionally poor part of Appalachia, with 15% to 20% unemployment at a time when the nation had 5% unemployment. Technically I grew up quite poor, and we had all the modern conveniences everybody else in America took for granted in the 1970s or 1980s.
Incomes have doubled since then, and are roughly three times that of the average wage in Russia, much less the average wage in the dilapidated Russia (probably 8 to 10 times higher than that).
I don't think you've actually spent much time in Appalachia. It's not a bustling and booming metro, obviously, but it's not even remotely comparable to what this article describes in Russia.
Russia has a GDP per capita of about a fourth of the US or other Western countries but it also has a very large inequality among regions and rural/urban areas. So the difference between rural GDP per capita in the US and Russia is something like 5-6. So when people in this thread are screaming how this is all propaganda and the rural areas of Russia are comparable to any area of the US they are claiming things that can't possibly be true.
It can be true, but Russia also has the largest land area in the world, and a population less than half that of the US. Fixing it is not a challenge I would take on lightly.
I'd love to have you show me where there are towns without electricity, ambulance access, running water, easily accessible paved roads, hospitals within easy driving distance, broadband access, etc.
Even the smallest of towns I can name in Appalachia, have such things.
In fact, I grew up in an exceptionally poor part of Appalachia, with 15% to 20% unemployment at a time when the nation had 5% unemployment. Technically I grew up quite poor, and we had all the modern conveniences everybody else in America took for granted in the 1970s or 1980s.
Incomes have doubled since then, and are roughly three times that of the average wage in Russia, much less the average wage in the dilapidated Russia (probably 8 to 10 times higher than that).
I don't think you've actually spent much time in Appalachia. It's not a bustling and booming metro, obviously, but it's not even remotely comparable to what this article describes in Russia.