Creative Endeavors, The Home of BoxcarOkie.com

The Soviet Union is in serious decline, it appears to be at the point of dying.  How does a country die you say?  From an economic standpoint, it simply cannot achieve the goals that it sets, because of contributing factors. 

In the case of Russia it is workers, they will never achieve their ambitious goal of being the fifth largest economy in the world, because they do not have the workers.

Russia is more than likely headed into an abyss, a steep decline and gloomy future for this once mega-super power of Europe.  Brutally high levels of mortality combine with anemic fertility levels to produce a perfect storm of depopulation.  Russia is sadly devoid of children, newborns, and headed into sharp decline.

All of this thanks to heavy drinking, a well known and documented love affair with Russian Vodka.  Smoking, and now an epidemic of violent crime, with all of this coming into play, it lowers the lifespan of the average soviet citizen considerably.  Russian men have a lower life expectancy than to men living in Bangladesh.  Many of them are expected to die in the prime of their working years.

Women are not much better off than the men, they are having fewer children.  All of this adds up to a lethal mix for the country as a whole.  The population (the working age population) is predicted to shrink by 20% in the next 25 years.

President-Elect Medvedev says he can avert all of this by offereing childbirth incentives.  What is this, a Russian Marriage Enrichment Plan?   Only a politician could come up with a nonsense program such as this. 

Truth is, there is not a single example from modern history where pro-natal policies have been able to achieve a sustainable demographic reversal.  Without some kind of great social change and universal reversal in health, this country is doomed.

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