How Average Salary in Russia Compares to US

Tucker Carlson was mocked on social media this week over his surprise that groceries in Russia cost less than in the U.S.

The former Fox News host has been posting videos filmed in Moscow following his recent interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In one video, recorded in a Moscow supermarket, Carlson expressed his disbelief about the cost of living, saying he was “legitimately angry” about how much less groceries cost compared to the U.S.

“I went from amused to legitimately angry,” Carlson said.

“So we were guessing what this would cost, everybody here is from the United States [and] buys groceries and we didn’t pay any attention to costs as we were just putting [them] in the cart, what we would actually eat over a week. CHECK

“And we all came in around 400 bucks, about 400 bucks. It was $104 U.S. here.

“And that’s when you start to realize that ideology maybe doesn’t matter as much as you thought [or] ‘corruption.’

“If you take people’s standard of living and you tank it through filth, and crime, and inflation, and they literally can’t buy the groceries they want, at that point maybe it matters less what you say, or whether you’re a good person or a bad person.

“You’re wrecking people’s lives in their country and that’s what our leaders have done to us. And coming to a Russian grocery store, the heart of evil, and seeing what things cost and how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. That’s how I feel anyway, radicalized.

“We’re not making any of this up by the way, at all.”

The video became a topic of ridicule on social media. Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “The Tucker Carlson grocery price video [Russia is so cheap you’ll be radicalized, folks!] is tragic & funny.”

User Armand Domalewski added: “Tucker Carlson bragging that Russia is better than America because groceries are cheaper in the poorer country is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen.”

As they and others pointed out, Carlson did not seem to consider U.S. wages and American purchasing power.

According to the latest figures available from Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service, the average monthly wage in Russia was about $787 in November.

By comparison, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the last quarter of 2023, the median weekly earnings of Americans was $1,142.

Carlson also showed that the total cost of his shop came to 9481.37 rubles. That comes to about 58 percent of the weekly average Russian wage, based on the monthly wage figures provided by Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service.

Data from 2022 by the USDA shows that American consumers spent on average only 11.3 percent of their disposable income on groceries.

Russia also has lower purchasing power compared to the U.S. as data from The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows.

The OECD regularly publishes data on purchasing power parities (PPP) between nations, comparing how much a basket containing a range of goods and services used to calculate GDP would cost in different nations, pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The OECD provides the example that if the “price of a litre of Coca Cola is 2.30 euros in France and 2.00 dollars in the United States, then the PPP for Coca Cola between France and the United States is the ratio 2.30 euros to 2.00 dollars or
1.15 euros to the dollar.

“This means that for every dollar spent on Coca Cola in the United States,
1.15 euros would have to be spent in France to obtain the same quantity and quality – or, in other words, the same volume – of Coca Cola.”

The most recent PPP data, published in 2022, showed that the same basket of goods and services bought in the U.S. for $1 would cost $30.19 in Russia. The World Bank has published similar data.

While these statistics refer to an entire range of equivalent goods and services used to calculate GDP, it further demonstrates the economic strength Americans enjoy compared to Russians.

In short, not only do Americans earn more than Russians on average, they spend less on groceries and appear to get more for their money.

Newsweek has reached out to a media representative for Carlson via email for comment.

The supermarket video is one of a sequence of videos Carlson produced in Moscow following his interview with Putin.

The Russian leader has since complained about the interview. Speaking to Russian journalist Pavel Aleksandrovich Zarubin on state-television Rossiya-1 on Wednesday, Putin said: “To be honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions.

“I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way.”