Discussion on Russia and UK Relations

It still doesn't explain why Russia would wanna pick a fight with

Britain. It's got a much

larger economy than Britain's by, I think, a basic-

No. No, no, no, it hasn't got a larger economy than

Britain.

It's got a smaller economy than Britain's.

Well, a much-

It's got larger, it's got larger military

But it's a much larger economy. It has m-

No

... much more wealth and resources-

It's, it's-

... and a much larger manufacturing sector.

Its GDP is smaller than the UK's.

Yeah, but GDP-

It's about two-third, about two-thirds

... GDP is not, I mean-

Well-

... the only measure of an economy.

Russia-

It's a pretty important measure of an economy. No.

The, the, the Russ-

Well, it's one measure. We can agree with-

Ru- Ru- Russia is, Russia's an economic failure.

Oh, okay.

That it could have a huge economy,

but it's got a small economy because it's deeply corrupt,

and it hasn't managed to use its resources effectively.

Uh, and the, so although the population of Russia

is bigger than

that of the United Kingdom, very significantly, its GDP per capita is

so much lower that the total GDP of Russia is smaller than

that of the United Kingdom.

Right.

If you were to make a table of countries in

proportion to the natural resources they have,

the top one would almost certainly be Russia.

She has everything:

oil, gas, diamonds, platinum, gold,

silver, all the industrial metals, marvelous standing timber, a

wonderfully rich soil.

But countries are not rich in

proportion to their natural resources.

Countries are rich whose governments have policies which

encourage the essential creativity, initiative, and

enterprise of man, and recognize his desire to do better

for his family.

By the way, in the ranking of stupidity, I put the British number one, and

it doesn't matter whether it's BoJo, Boris Johnson, or Starmer.

They have the worst imperial mentality of

any country in the world. They were at it the longest.

They still think they run the world.

The British are the worst. Starmer, this prime min- this new prime

minister-

Yes

... Labour prime minister, you know who he is. He's quite...

He said, yes, two days ago, he said, "We have to,

we have to punish

Putin to the maximum

because he's relentless." That's what he said.

"We have to punish." So there's a, an aspect, a personal, a

personal thing about Putin,

like Biden made it personal saying he, a thug and a murderer,

and, uh, and Starmer saying he has to be punished.

Putin has to be punished, not Russia. It's bizarre.

We didn't talk like this back when we were mature, back in the '50s, '60s,

when we

talked about Russia as an enemy because we thought it was

adversarial.

Yes.

I have a, we, I disagree with that, but we thought so and we acted as such,

but

we didn't personally insult Khrushchev or Brezhnev.

Of course.

And here we are insulting them constantly.