This is yet another question that excites much heated commentary in the “Ukraine debates.”
There is a “school” of thought amongst the more ideological Russophiles that the Ukraine has completely emptied out. Here is an article by Andrey Fomin in which he argues that it only has 22-24 million people versus the official figure of 42 million. This article is typical of the “genre”.
I debunked such ridiculously low estimates in my “Ukrotriumph” article from last year.
Even so, while the Ukraine has more than 24 million people, it is still way short of 42 million. But by how much?
- The official Ukrainian figures exclude Crimea, but include all of the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts (including those controlled by the LDNR).
- The official population of the LDNR is around 3.8M – let’s consider it to be 3.5M in practice.
- There are approximately 5M Ukrainians temporarily or permanently abroad at any given time (as will be reflected in the next Census in 2020).
So my best guess is that the real population of the Ukraine is currently around 33.5M (official: 42.0M).
More recently, Dean Fantazzini – an economist at Moscow State University – estimated the Ukraine’s population to be 32.0M on the basis of regression of birth data for east and central Europe. As he notes, Igor Kolomoysky recently made the exact same estimate.
The blogger acer120 estimates 32.0-32.5M based on voter rolls.
Incidentally, commenter AP estimates that Ukraine’s real population is 35.0M. So we can see a pretty good convergence of estimates from people all across the ideological spectrum.
For comparison, Russia’s real population is around 150.1M (official: 146.8M). Perhaps the one bright spot (from Russia’s POV) in post-Soviet relations between the two countries is that its population advantage over the Ukraine has increased from less than 3:1 in 1992 (148.5M to 52.1) to almost 5:1 today (146.9M to ~33M). It is ironic that Ukrainian independence has been worse for Ukraine’s population balance vis-a-vis Russia than anything that Lazar Kaganovich and the Nazis did.
And it’s rather likely that this dynamic will continue, especially if the Kremlin continues to make serious steps on my recommendation of vacuuming up Ukraine’s remaining human capital.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
That low, huh? Could it support a similar pop density as Germany? What would that be, about 140 million?
I suspect Eastern Europe will have a growing pop, if it can hold the line against multicult – though I am not sure it can.
Considering that the authorities use all sorts of pretexts not to conduct census (violating their own constitution, but who cares about the law in Ukraine?), there are a lot fewer residents than the authorities would like to admit. FYI, when it broke away from the USSR, there were 52 million residents in Ukraine.
How does the Ukrainian fertility rate & median age compare to Russia, Belarus & the Balts?
Interestingly enough, Russia nowadays also has something like two times the number of Jews that Ukraine has. (In practice, this ratio might be even further in Russia’s favor than that, but in terms of official census data in 2020, I suspect that Russia is going to have something like 100,000 Jews while Ukraine is going to have something like 50,000 Jews. I do suspect that Russian Jews are going to be undercounted this time just like they were last time, though. Basically, I suspect that some Russian Jews are not going to want to put Jewish on their census entries.)
Anyway, this is an extremely massive inversion from the pre-World War I era, when Russia proper had something like ten times less Jews than Ukraine (including Galicia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia) had. Even in 1941 the Russian-Ukrainian Jewish ratio was still something like 3:1 in Ukraine’s favor. The Holocaust and emigration really did hurt Ukrainian Jews much more than they hurt Russian Jews–though Russian Jewry was also significantly affected by emigration (but not that much by the Holocaust due to the Nazis not being able to occupy most of Russia proper).
BTW, how many people do you think that there genuinely are in Belarus and Kazakhstan right now? After all, those two countries form the core of Eurasia together with Russia and Ukraine.
BTW, I have looked at the AP quote and you appear to have misunderstood him here, Anatoly:
5 million plus 35 million equals 40 million–not 35 million. The 35 million figure is only for ethnic Ukrainians; there are also 5 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine according to AP.
Maybe AP can clarify whether his figures here include Crimea and/or the Donbass, though.
I don’t want to deviate this thread, but some time ago (forgot where) I read that the Russian minority population in Kazakhstan actually has birthrates that are quite high and above 2.1 children on average. Is this completely wrong? Or is there truth to the fact that the Russian minority population in Kazakhstan isn’t sterile and simply going to get overrun by Kazakh Muslims?
I think it’s possible that the Russian minority population in Kazakhstan may be just fine, because with Muslim populations it’s always treated as a simple stereotype that they have aggressively high birthrates regardless of anything. I know that in the Balkans, Muslims in Bosnia, Sandzak/Raska, Albanians/Shiptars on Kosovo and in Albania, currently have very low average birthrates, many are sterile, and most are eager to emigrate. Most Muslim populations obviously have especially high birthrates when they are able to have access to foreign gibs/welfare which is currently the case in the USA, EU and West in general. This also used to be the case in the Former Yugoslavia and USSR.
Of course, there are exceptions like in the case of the Rohingya around Bengal and Burma that are extremely poor but simply breed aggressively regardless of anything. This is a part of a political strategy by the Bengali state to expand into Burma. I guess populations breeding aggressively with high birthrates could simply just as much come down to low average IQ primitive behavior or because of tradition, religion, custom and habit. I don’t think it has been really clarified whether birthrates are affected much more by gibs/economics or by society, religion, culture, custom, tradition, IQ and so on.
While this might have been true in Soviet times, I’m less sure about whether this is still true nowadays. Kazakhstan’s TFR went up over the last 20 or so years, but did it also go up enough among Russians there to reach replacement level fertility?
I should have better worded my original starting question and statement. I read and have the impression that from 2000 onward the Russian minority population in Kazakhstan actually has an average birth rate above 2.1 children per family. The Kazakh Muslims may also not have as aggressively high birth rates as most people think all Muslim populations have. So, is this true or not? What is really the current demographic situation of the Russian minority population in Kazakhstan?
Since it seems like you are not knowledgeable on this matter either, my original question as to whether my statement or perception is true still stands. You also literally rephrased my question in the parts of your reply that I put in bold. That is, in a much more simple and clearer way than I originally stated it.
Your information is mistaken. Kazakhs currently have a much higher fertility rate than all Europeans in Kazakhstan. The Europeans in the country have a sub-replacement fertility rate. Although the Kazakhs do not reproduce at the very high rates seen in the middle east and Africa, they are still much more fecund than European muslim ethnic groups and the Europeans in the country. Europeans, who once formed a majority of the country’s population, are becoming a smaller and smaller minority, partly due to this birth rate gap, and partly due to emigration to Russia.
Anatoly is of the opinion that the remaining Russians should be repatriated to Russia, as he sees them becoming ever more beleaguered in Kazakhstan as a result of the above-mentioned factors, but I disagree. Northern Kazakhstan (Southern Siberia) has been Russian for ages, and Kazakhstan as a whole is a critical territory for Russia. When the circumstances are favourable, Russia should annex southern Siberia directly and subjugate the rump of Kazakhstan more effectively, in order to preserve Russian control of the land and guarantee the future of Russians in central Asia.
So that means that the Ukraine’s per capita GDP is around 4000 if that population is really undercounted and GDP is not?
I think there are fewer people everywhere than what is officially reported. I am not buying the global population at 7.5 billion, and I am certainly not buying the huge numbers cited for sub-Saharan Africa. “The most important graph in the world” is also one of the least accurate.
The problem is counterintuitive because the cities continue to grow. The adult population of the urban centers swells and swells because they keep drawing in more people from the country and the smaller towns, but these urban centers do not produce enough children to organically replace themselves. And the more urban they become, the lower the fertility rate drops. Therefore, the more people who move into cities, the greater the proportion of humanity with sub-replacement fertility.
Cities are basically where humanity goes to die.
Are there some positive effects of lower population in Ukraine? Lower housing costs, less wear on infrastructure, agriculture not being pushed to its limits?
lol I remember us arguing about this issue in the past, and you always sided with official estimates, because TFR, or something. What made you reconsider?
Nothing at all: Ukrainian agriculture mostly serves foreign markets now. Ukrainians are facing rising cost of basic staples even as production booms. Soviet-era infrastructure and housing are in dire need of repair, but the regime steals all the money, and the people are broke.
For a couple of centuries, no? Also, large-scale Russian settlement only began in Kazakhstan in the 1890s, no?
Israel is overwhelmingly urban and yet has significantly above-replacement TFR, no?
Let’s hope that there would be less stealing now that one party controls a majority of the seats in the Ukrainian parliament. I mean, if there is less competition and intrigue in parliament, then this would mean that there is less room for various actors to engage in corruption, no?
Let’s hope that there would be less stealing now that one party controls a majority of the seats in the Ukrainian parliament. I mean, if there is less competition and intrigue in parliament, then this would mean that there is less room for various actors to engage in corruption, no? Plus, it helps that Ukraine’s parliament is full of newcomers.
It’s not an actual party, more like an agglomeration of various oligarchic interests under a single brand. I expect it to fall apart once the new president loses his popularity.
In 2018, Ukrainian TFR was at 1.30 children per woman, but that uses the official population estimates. The average age is 41.6.
Here is the population pyramid according to official data (42.0 million inhabitants).
https://i.ibb.co/dLjhSJ2/ukra.png
They might be gone after the next elections.
Why not steal as long as they have time to steal?
One additional thing on the TFR. If Ukraine’s population is really overestimated by the numbers that are discussed here, it also means that the official TFR is underestimated seriously as well. Instead of the official 1.30 childrne per woman, Ukrainian TFR could be closer to 1.6, which is higher than in Russia or Belarus. Is that really realistic?
Ukrainian data also shows the city of Kiev having a TFR of 1.54, which is well above the Ukrainian average. For a country without any high-fertility migrants, this is very unrealistic. In other words, while the population of Ukraine might be overestimated, it might be underestimated by a long shot in their capital! That also means that Kiev is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe in reality.
I guess that also answers LH’s question about whether population decline will make it easier. It won’t, because more and more Ukrainians concentrate in Kiev.
I would guess Belarus is around 9.2M – just a bit less than 9.4M official figure (they don’t have euroassociation and living standards are higher than in the Ukraine, though lower than in Russia). I would guess that Kazakhstan is around 19M, higher than the 18.2M official figure – it is a major magnet of Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Tajik labor in its own right.
That’s the total population of Ukraine including expats who may or may not return. Here is his typical estimate of actual population: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/free-butina/#comment-2444599
No, I never sided with official estimates – that certainly never happened. I was against extreme estimates such as 24 million based on speculative projections based on bread consumption or whatever.
So not even a country that tightly cooperates with Russia can be safe?
I noted this problem as well:
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/950866806016757761
One idea: AFAIK, the Ukraine doesn’t actually count births in the LDNR: http://database.ukrcensus.gov.ua/PXWEB2007/ukr/news/op_n_mov.asp
I mean, how could it?
However, if it calculates the TFR based off the total Ukrainian population, while not being able to count LDNR births, then everything is explained. The LDNR cancels out the emigrants.
Could it really be as trivial as this?
That makes sense. I get the impression that the gap between Kiev and the rest of Ukraine is larger than the gap between Moscow and the rest of Russia.
I could see myself living and having a good time in Kiev long-term – minus politics, anyway.
I just checked their numbers, and it looks like for the TFR calculation, they disregard data from Donetsk and Luhansk completely, so neither their births nor their population is included, which is sound. Numerator and denominator refer to the same area, so the error is not due to wrong calculations.
I just don’t believe Kiev’s TFR should then be higher than the rest of the country. What I do believe is that since the start of teh war, many people moved to Kiev but didn’t register there because they rent inofficially or etc. etc.
Here’s an interesting discussion regarding Kiev’s true population: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g294473-i3662-k12390715-Kyiv_population-Ukraine.html
Lol where is all the youth? There are more 80 year old women than 16 year olds.
One of the things that we can observe when an entity is about to collapse is an ever-increasing concentration of everything in the metropolis. All goodies are distributed in the center, it is also the ultimate in what some here like to refer to as ‘government welfare‘ – in reality all people who manage to get into the center benefit no matter how much they like to pose as self-sufficient. Migrants know this, thus their extreme proclivity to mass into the centers of Western civilisation. What we see in Kiev, Paris, London, Washington,… is not a positive sign.
The reason this usually signals a coming collapse – or at least a massive correction – is that centers don’t generate much, they are a point of distribution and control, the ultimate power node that sets the parameters, determines wealth, sucks production from the rest. It is rational for an individual to partake in this metropolitan plunder, but it is deadly for the society as a whole. Bigger the disparity, harder the eventual fall.
Ukraine is among the worst and one under-appreciated aspect of the Crimea-Donbass-Galicia conundrum is the pressure this growing gap creates in already unstable societies. But the same phenomenon can be observed all over the world. History has always been largely driven by provincial uprisings and attempts by centers to control them (=their resources).
To address the topic: Ukraine has 35-38 million people left, but is heading towards 30 million in less than a generation. The kinds of wet dreams this is generating among the globalist thinkers in the West is hard to comprehend – in a world of less and less space, and more and more migrants, there is this land of milk and honey that is depopulating. What do you think they are thinking?
Official estimates minus population of LDNR, i.e just under 40 million people – that was your belief for a long time.
I did try to explain that TFR isn’t really an issue, since it is calculated based on a particular subset of a population (women of reproductive age). Just because the country’s aggregate population is 30% smaller than estimated, doesn’t mean this ratio must hold for every subset including young women.
Correct, but migrants are mostly in the age range of 20-40 as well. If anything, these age groups are even smaller than official in comparison to the whole population.
Most migrants are men. Young people could be more likely to move, but older people had a lot more time to actually move.
Keep in mind that authorities in post-Soviet countries are downright inept when it comes to tracking migration. They must have a good idea of how many children live in the Ukraine. But as these children grow up and some of them start to move, statistical errors begin to accumulate. I wager there are millions of middle aged Ukrainians living abroad on a permanent basis, and Ukrainian authorities still think these people live at the their “propiska” residence. 🙂
The limit to population density in an industrial society is simply the limit of one’s ability to pay for imports of food and energy.
Germany itself could presumably support a population of a billion (German) people in light of its colossal current account surplus.
And as it is Germany is actually one of the world’s largest food exporters by value (not caloric content).
Technically true. But it is like saying that the limit of one’s alcohol consumption is passing out. (I get the sarcasm.)
There will not be a “billion Germans“, end-of-liners don’t reproduce. But there might very well be a billion Nigerians or Pakistanis. People eager to give them the means to make it to a billion also presumably have plans on where they will live. It is a bit of a hot potato, some want Germany, but Germans probably prefer it being Ukraine. And most migrants themselves prefer London or US. At the end it won’t matter much, they will be everywhere. My rough calculation is that ‘the end’ is around 2050. By then there will be only around 30-40 million ethnic Germans left (and we are back to Ukraine).
Looking at job advertisements. Salaries in (for example) Lvov for ordinary jobs, are quite a bit lower than a city like Chelyabinsk.
However, if you look at Donetsk before the war, it seemed there was more money there than in most Russian cities.
Also if you look at footage (photos, videos, reports) of Donetsk before the war – you can unusually large amounts of new BMW, Mercedes, etc. And you can see billboards were advertising for luxury goods, Lexus automobile shops, etc.
And media articles from before the war, also match this impression for Donetsk
https://web.archive.org/web/20120813005732/http://focus.ua/society/241242
Donetsk before the war was almost at a Kiev level, – although now it is just a disaster.
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On that topic – What happens in Ukraine, is pretty tragic.
Donetsk was ranking in 2013 as one of the country’s most competitive regions.
https://i.imgur.com/yyRIJm8.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/20160512033731/http://feg.org.ua/uploadfiles/ckfinder/files/reports/2013/FEG_report_2013_body_rus.pdf
Hard disagree. South Korea is one of the worst offenders of the capital draining smaller towns phenomenon in the world but the country still makes shit and lives well with no collapse on the horizon. All of this just depends on what country you are on. If you live in an advanced state where information economy is a big deal then capital is much more than from where distribution comes.
Millions of Ukrainians are in Poland and Russia.
However, Poland counts them quite carefully, as Ukrainians need a lot of paperwork to stay there. So we can look up accurate information for the number in Poland.
There are around 2,5 million Ukrainians now in Poland.
And in Russia, we can look at number of Ukrainians who are naturalizing, and assume the total number is multiple times higher than naturalization numbers.
80,000 Ukrainians become Russian citizens last year, but so did 30,000 Armenians. Armenian immigration to Russia might be almost 40% volume of Ukrainian immigration to Russia, as Armenian citizens attain Russian citizenship at almost 40% of Ukrainian numbers. (But Armenia has less than 3 million people in Armenia!).
There are tens of thousands in most countries. For example, how many Ukrainians live in Turkey? Ukrainian media claims it is only 35,000 Ukrainians who have permanently immigrated to Turkey.
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Similarly in Western Europe, I see small numbers of Ukrainians, but do not see large numbers of Ukrainians. (Whereas you will see Poles everywhere in very large numbers).
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In Israel, around 8000 Ukrainian immigrated legally each year. There will be also perhaps 50,000 illegal immigrants from Ukraine at any moment (but these are rapidly deported back to Ukraine).
According to English media – “According to the latest available census information, nearly 24,000 new permanent residents from Ukraine landed in Canada between 2006 and 2015.”
South Korea is a dependency, it is not an independent player, so the dynamic is slightly different. I would also argue that a less Seoul-centric S Korea would be a more liveable and prosperous country.
My general point is that as geographic entities centralise their wealth distribution becomes increasingly unstable. Wealth is to some extent an illusion, it is what people agree to value. If almost all people who do the valuing concentrate in a metropolis, the temptation to live ever more richly and shift resources to themselves is simply not manageable. You end up with very substantial and growing gaps – often just physical presence in the metropolis leads to increased wealth. The reverse is also true and ‘provinces’ – no matter how rich in resources and productive – tend to be exploited ever more thru financing, taxes, and endless other means.
Geographically balanced countries like Germany, Switzerland and a few others tend to be more stable and prosperous. The extreme cases in Europe are London dominating England, Paris France, and some Central European countries. It leads to political split between the center, almost always fanatically globalist and liberal, or ‘open’ as they would claim, and the rest of the country. The center’s total control of institutions makes it into an uneven fight until it breaks down.
Ukraine with Kiev has it too – if it had chosen a more Germany-like model with a federation and multiple centers (Lviv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Doneck,…) it could have been a more stable and prosperous country. But then people in Kiev would have it worse or would actually have to work for a living.
Sounds about right, sadly. But as the nonEuropean and Muslim population of Germany grows, there may be a marked acceleration in “white flight” to Eastern Europe, the USA, wherever will take them.
As there are fewer Germans, and they are older than ever, intimidation of Germans will turn more often to violence, beatings to killings, and civil disruption into outright riots and secessionist or takeover movements. A trickle of Germans fleeing Germany can turn into a flood pretty quickly.
Personally, I’d close the US border with Mexico and instead let in unlimited numbers of Germans fleeing Germany, French fleeing France, English fleeing England, etc.
You could be right about millions of Ukrainians living in the West on a permanant basis. Here are some of my own personal observations. For the Ukrainian diaspora already in place for 3-4 generations, this has been a lifesaving measure. Many Ukrainian immigrants of the WW2 generation including their offspring have assimilated into the larger American community. So the influx of new, young immigrants from Ukraine has breathed new life into slowly dying churches and civic organizations. A geat proportion of these new immigrants keep very live contacts with their relatives back home, and often travel back and forth, bringing with them their kids. The real question has to do with their children, who seem quite adaptable to their new environment. How long will they be committed to uphold the Ukrainian cause in the US? Of course, this should be less of a concern in Canada, where the public school system often enough incorporates Ukrainian studies into its curriculum.
Most Ukrainians in Poland are not counted as residents though, and only come there seasonally. According to official Polish statistics, only 204,940 Ukrainians are registered as living in Poland by the end of 2018 ( https://migracje.gov.pl/en/statistics/scope/poland/type/statuses/view/tables/year/2019/ ).
The rest I guess just travels back and forth, but maintain their residency in Ukraine, hence they cannot be considered as emigrated.
Why would Germans flee to the US, of all places?
GDP numbers are just as fake as the population numbers. Divide one fake by another and what do you get? A fake.
Thanks for this information! BTW, I wonder if Kazakhstan could be smart enough to increase its population even further by accepting Uyghurs and Kazakhs from China en masse.
Because six million of them did just that in the 19th and 20th centuries?
Then Russia would have a greater reason and incentive to intervene.
Don’t you think the world has changed a bit in the last 100 years?
Because they may not be able to get in elsewhere in massive numbers,
because it would likely be a lot easier to learn the English language (or boost their English knowledge and proficiency) than the Russian language (especially at age fifty or sixty),
and because it would probably be easier to assimilate to our culture — at least, what is left of our traditional white European christian culture — than to Russia’s culture.
For reasons of cost and safety, if not also greater cultural compatibility, most non-wealthy middle-aged or older Germans fleeing Germany would flee to relatively more normal, safe, white, and Westernized parts of the USA, not heavily non-white, anti-white places like Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore, Miami, etc. So the proper comparison is how older Germans would assimilate to white/Asian non-urban American culture versus how they would assimilate to Russian culture.
I do know that here in Sioux Falls, I particularly enjoy riding my bicycle on the trails on the eastern end of town. Because all the Ukrainian refugee women really make it a more aesthetically pleasing experience. It’s kinda weird to encounter a large immigrant community that’s actually from Europe.
But Germany has one of the best geographies in the world, pleasant and varied. Giving it up is not a simple matter. The ‘white flight’ is today mostly internal – to parts of Germany that are more traditional. Moving en masse to North America is also not something that the current institutions are capable of facilitating. There is also the head-in-the-sand liberal self-denial attitude that is very common among Germans. True end-of-liner philosophy that has basically given up. It is a real problem with massive constraints.
And if other places that have gone thru this are an example, it will lead to a shift in political power, with the migrant criminal tendencies justified, excused and even celebrated. Police is a state employment – one of the last cushy well-paid sinecures in the West – I don’t expect them to put up a fight, they prefer the pensions. Slowly large cities will become uninhabitable, Germans will choose even smaller families, and a gradual die-off will commence. Maybe a part (East Germany, Bavaria?) can secede and preserve itself. But there is no future for the rest if the current trends continue.
Please tell us more about this influx of “Amazonian” women to your neck of the woods?…I knew that at one time there were a lot of Ukrainians that had emigrated to South Dakota, and had by doing so acquired lots of valuable farmland, and land sitting on valuable oil resources. But that was a long, long time ago…I suspect that this new wave of immigration is part and parcel of Pentecostal evangelizaiton…
Why?
Oh, certainly! Both countries became much more diverse since then. That said, though, both countries are still major economic hubs even right now–something that is unlikely to change anytime soon. If Germany really does go south, though, then a lot of Germans could move to the US if it still remains a major economic hub.
Even if the USA does not remain as much of a major economic hub, this is not something that would necessarily deter older Germans from settling here.
This is especially true of retired Germans, who wouldn’t need to find jobs, start a small business, or get into a good university program upon moving to the USA.
Since Germans are an old people, and growing older on average all the time, there will be a lot of Germans in their 50s and 60s compared to the number of Germans in their younger decades. Thus, the need or desire to settle in a country that is a dominant economic force, or provides excellent job and study opportunities, will not be a critical factor for many of the Germans who might seek to settle here in the next few decades as Germany becomes nonEuropean.
On the other hand, as someone has remarked here, the Germans have a frightening and bizarre ability / willingness to deny the reality right in front of them. Numerous Germans of our acquaintance are insufferable cowards and flat-out LIARS. They refuse to acknowledge facts that are not debatable, and they will make every excuse for hostile, criminal, parasitic, intimidating, even violent aliens among them. They get angry at the person pointing out the growing abuse and dispossession of Europeans in Europe, not at the aliens doing the abusing and dispossessing. They might just stay where they are and take the abuse until the end. And it will be a final and irreversible end for the German nation. Terrible.
From what we are reading and hearing, the only part of the Germanic countries we might consider sending our children to — for a summer or year abroad in high school, or in college, or for a corporate internship or job — would be the less populous, somewhat less brainwashed eastern part of Germany. Maybe some smaller town in Austria or Switzerland.
But it seems that the African, Turkish, Arab populations of Germany will just naturally expand into the eastern and rural parts of Germany. Germans don’t have children, so there won’t be enough Germans to fill the existing jobs, to occupy the existing houses and apartment buildings, to staff the police forces, to staff the military, simply to defend and maintain their towns physically and culturally. Just a matter of time, probably, before there is nowhere suitable to settle in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
You make an excellent point about the deleterious economic and social effects of such concentration of wealth, jobs, political power, culture, etc., in one or two cities of a country.
Doesn’t russia also suffer from this pretty severely? Seems like Moscow and to a lesser extent Saint Petersburg account for almost all political, economic, and cultural power, widespread high education levels, meaningful bi/multilingualism (what little there seems to be in Russia), and prosperity in Russia.
USA is getting pretty bad in this respect, too, though because of our size the overconcentration is
In half a dozen metro areas: NY City, Los Angeles,Washington DC / northern Virginia / southern Maryland, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, to a much lesser extent Chicago and Boston, and not too many others.
Yes, but obviously the country has changed in some ways that make it more logical, more urgent (dringend, perhaps, in German) to get the Hell out of Germany. There was no immivasion of Germany, for example, back when that branch of my ancestors (and many of our German immigrants) came here from Germany.
To be fair, I’ve put up with hassles and worse in California, and elsewhere, that I never expected to face here “at home.” Moreover, neither California nor the USA as a whole is getting safer, more welcoming, more economically empowering to most people, especially officially disfavored (white) people. We fully anticipate a sustained increase in intimidation, violence, and political measures against white people and our families (including anyone married to a white person or sticking up for us) across the country, not just in California. Yet my wife and I haven’t made any serious plan to leave the USA.
But for all the bad times that seem to be heading our way, Europe has a specifically Muslim dhimmi future ahead if they don’t wake up and fight back soon. That seems even worse, and coming even sooner. But being better off than Europe is going to be a very low bar.
Russia is definitely over-centralized and Moscow-St Petersburg dominance is unhealthy. For a large country, they don’t have enough regional depth. One way to mitigate the ‘liberal’ problem in the modern world is to make the metropolis less powerful.
US is much better in that respect and historically the relatively balanced geography with multiple centers was one if its strength. As you pointed out, it is getting worse with 4-5 mostly coastal cities almost fully dominant.
Liberal disease always eventually takes root in a metropolis, it is a permanent feature of the large cosmopolitan cities and that can’t be fixed. What can be fixed is not allowing all institutional power to concentrate there. US at this point is mainly run by NY, Washington, LA-SF institutions and the end-of-life liberalism mindset that permeates those regions. They are not real people and their disconnect from a lasting civilization should be kept in check. Otherwise they spread the nihilistic nonsense and their own vacuous existence into everything the touch. They won’t change, so what has to change is their geographic control of all institutions in a society.
By the way, this is not hard to do – moving key institutions out of the metropolis can be done quite easily. Yes, some of the rot spreads with it, but the balance is much better. Ukraine could be a much better country if it would downgrade Kiev and go federal. The real reason this doesn’t happen is that the elite groups from NY-Washington to Moscow, from Paris to Kiev, understand that their living standards would drop drastically if they were not in a special position as an all-powerful metropolis. People in the hinterland keep on voting for ‘change’, but since it has to be implemented by these very same elite metropolitan groups, nothing ever changes. Eventually there will be a hard landing because the situation is unsustainable.
You forgot to mention Atlanta as well as the metro areas in Texas and Florida here. North Carolina’s metro areas also appear to be rapidly growing.
Relocating is hard. Even minor relocations face protests.
https://twitter.com/hagstromreport/status/1139247812380647426
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/06/14/federal-employees-protest-agriculture-departments-move-to-heartland-usda/
Yep, real change is hard. But what I see are two dozen entitled losers throwing a minor temper-tantrum. If the anti-swamp people in power – or so they claim – are deterred by a few fat-bellied paper-pushers and some skinny coloured girls, they should had never aspired to power. Do it. And take the leadership of those institutions out of DC too.
You have seen much more of Russia outside Moscow than I have, but my impression is that the gap between Kiev and Lviv or Zhytomir is much less than between Moscow and Chelyabinsk.
It may be a different story for Ukraine’s East, where I have not been and which according to the figures has suffered a lot after 2014. But not from the west and center.
In general, Kiev is not nearly as wealthy as Moscow. And the Ukrainian cities outside Kiev are not poorer than provincial Russian cities, to the extent that Kiev is poorer than Moscow.
Doing some googling – Kiev City has about twice the average salary of the poorest oblast (Ternopil). Moscow has three times the average salary of the poorest ethnic Russian oblast (Saratov)
More than does Ukraine, but Russia is in no danger of falling apart.
Richest cities in Ukraine outside Kiev – are Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk.
And before a war, which has included Kiev started shelling parts of the city, Donetsk was second or third richest city in Ukraine.
It’s so funny some of the garbage I am reading on this thread about Kiev.
Can somebody, ANYBODY, compare the difference between the Moscow Metro in the last 5 years with that of the Kiev Metro.
Whereas there has been about million improvements and expansions to the Moscow metro in the last 5 years, I literally can not even name ONE expansion to the Kiev metro or any improvement from my last visit there ( incredible when you think with the whole country turned into a shithole, most have internally migrated to Kiev where it is slightly less shit and thus should have expected to some some significant infrastructure improvement) ………..maybe an extra bench for some babushkas to beg from?
It is literally no comparison
23 million I reckon
Large scale settlements, cities, education….a state …everything only began in the area of Kazakhstan after the 1890’s – that is not to say that the state is fake ( it isn’t , unlike Ukraine)
In 2017 Lviv oblast had higher per capita salary than did Kharkiv:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ukrainian_oblasts_and_territories_by_salary
I don’t think this has changed in 2 years, if anything Lviv has continued to improve since then.
Interestingly, the remaining Donetsk oblast (Mariupol, basically) with its steel mills continues to have high salaries. This probably contrasts greatly with the DNR. Luhansk oblast, OTOH, is now the third poorest oblast in Ukraine.
errr….no it doesn’t you dumb POS. Anyway ‘9th “richest”(lol) region in Ukraine is like boasting about being the 54th victim on the Titanic you moronic tramp.
Somewhat amusingly the basic premise of the western regions of ukropia being the poorest and the least populated continues to be evermore reinforced – as this has even more accelerated there with even worse governance, people flocking to move to Kiev or Poland, their fantasist IT ‘industry” going nowhere and their agriculture in the west ( and throughout the country) but the agriculture industries there in particular suffering from the lack of EU market, the no-Russia market of course…….and Russia ( and Belarus ) being competitive on produce that before they were supposed to be buying from Ukraine. Plenty of the other industries are still getting (life-prolonging) strong trade with Russia
Incidentally Kharkov ( in a bad list) is still rated far and ahead of any region in the west of Ukraine as better governed ( highest governor rating) , has far more construction per sq/meter going on….and if you can walk there you will see far more high quality European and Korean/Japanese cars there, than if you go to Lvov you idiot
Hmm..idiot who thinks Ukraine has 24 million people makes some claims.
How does Saratov compare with Ukrainian oblasts? In other words, how many Ukrainian oblasts is it ahead of and how many Ukrainian oblasts is it behind of?
And Ukraine is? That’s certainly news to me!
The number 24 million is based on the consumption of bread…
https://ukraina.ru/sn/20190202/1022542638.html
IIRC someone did this calculation with Russia and undercounted Russia’s population by a few tens of millions.
I’ll take some Catholic Mexicans all day, every day over HIV-infested, hate-filled Muslim Africans…
I have no love for Mexicans, but come on. Unofficially ceding territory to Mexicans in the USA is far preferable to living under Islam’s boot.