Quote:
Originally Posted by Pointman
Three months in, and things are not dire at all in Moscow. Our company had some layoffs but is hiring in certain departments. Shops are full. Street crime still barely exist. Dollar is actually cheaper than it used to be. There are some occasional fires here and there, but it doesn't really affect mundane lives. Rumors of conscription, mobilization and such do exist but it's not happening and panic somewhat cooled off. We can't fly to the west but it only affects vacations. No flights and higher prices are the only tangible things that have changed this far. Also can't pay online to the western world, so we can't enroll our daughter to online USA school. I didn't try but I assume we can't buy games in Steam and movies on porn hubs. Nonetheless if sanctions were supposed to send Russia down the spiral of death it definitely hasn't happened yet.
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Economic effects usually take a long time to be felt on the ground. Even during the global financial crisis in 2008, it took a good 6 months or so before unemployment really spiked at all and that had a more direct impact on the US economy than sanctions will on Russia. But there's no real getting around the fact that Russia's GDP is likely going to decline by 10-12% this year, which is going to have an impact. That's basically '90s level of economic contraction and the effects back then were significant (life expectancy in Russia cratered in that decade). But it's going to be a multi-year process of the effects filtering through the economy.
That said, I do think people in the west overestimated the effect of sanctions, and it's not going to be the '90s again. Russia still exports a lot of energy (which they now get a better price for) and non-aligned countries are happy to still trade with them. And obviously life in Moscow is going to be even more insulated from the effects compared to poorer regions.