Recently I came across an article in Forbes magazine ranking the wealthiest people in the world. It is always interesting to compare myself to them – I mean, after all, I write a blog that pays me pretty well. It is always with great surprise that I read this annual list and cannot count myself among them 🙁 . It is also with great surprise that I read about how much the wealthiest Russians earn and then compare them to average Russians. The income disparity is astonishing – as it is in many places. According to Rossat, the average Russian earned 34,400 rubles  (or roughly $603) per month in May of 2015; in Moscow, according to finansiko.ru,  it was over 60,000 rubles (or $1,052) per month. Using these numbers, we can say that an average Russian makes about 412,800 rubles ( or $7,242) annually. Getting back to the Forbes list, the wealthiest Russian, Vladimir Potanin – not to be confused with you-know-who – earned $15.4 billion. Consequently, he ranked number 60 on the list. We will examine the contrast that exists between this oligarch and his fellow countrymen.

When you take into account how much the ruble depreciated during the last twelve months – by January it had depreciated over 60 percent – it is impressive that Potanin is still worth as much as he is. To put into perspective just how much he is worth, lets convert his net worth from dollars to rubles. According to Центробанк, on July 7 one U.S. dollar equaled 57.22 rubles. When you multiply 57.22 by 15.4 billion, you get a very large number: 881,188,000,000 rubles per year. Now lets divide that scary number by the 412,800 rubles the average Russian earns annually: 2,134,660. Mr. Potanin is worth on average what 2.1 million Russians earn per year. Not too shabby, is it?

In terms of population, Russia’s top four cities, along with their numbers, are as follows:
Moscow                10,381,222
St. Petersburg       5,028,000
Novosibirsk       1,419,007
Yekaterinburg  1,349,772

If you add the total populations of Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg you get roughly 2.7 million. To put all of this in perspective, Mr. Potanin’s worth nearly equals the amount of money the residents of Russia’s third and fourth largest cities make annually combined. I do understand that there is a difference between a person’s net worth and how much money they earn per year but I thought it would be fun to play around with some numbers. As a side note, there is currently much debate in Russia around the existing flat 13% tax rate; many argue that a system similar to the one in US (where the tax rate increases if you fall in a higher income bracket) needs to be introduced.

Mr. Potanin earns his fortune in part by running the world’s largest nickel producer, Norilsk Nickel. In 1751 Swedish chemist, Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, discovered nickel. Considering Mr. Potanin didn’t discover nickel, he’s doing pretty well for himself.