Poverty in Russia is too expensive
Revolution from above
The wave, as you know, was the first to launch the famous entrepreneur Araz Agalarov, the owner of the Crocus shopping and entertainment and exhibition complex. He seems to be about to run out of buyers in wealthy Moscow, although he is most likely familiar with the legendary thesis of Lord Keynes, the founder of all modern economic theories, about effective demand. Without it, as you know, in the world of developed post-capitalism no one will even dig a ditch. Effective demand implies a prosperous solvent population, also prone to savings that can be accumulated and invested.
The wave of Agalarov was picked up right up to the very top, and almost because of this, the government suddenly dissolved. The government, by the way, has been steadfast for eight years, like a rock, despite crises and sanctions. No, individual characters in it changed, some were even planted, and for a long time, but the continuity of the course, practically indicated by the maxim “there is no money, but ...”, has not gone away.
However, not so long ago, it became clear to every student that, in fact, there is money, and there is so much money that it was poorly understood in that government what to do with them. For investments in dollars and something else like that, you can only receive praises from the IMF, and the people at some point, actually, have the right to ask: “Where is the money, Zin?”
Fortunately, they managed to crank up the pension reform before "the eyes of the kittens erupted." Now it’s time to turn the shafts. Well, how not to resign here. Moreover, the moment is so suitable, and the guarantor himself suggested that the constitution be taken seriously.
In a social state, caring for citizens in the ranks of those in power has long been considered almost a bad manners. All attempts by the communist factions to at least raise in the Duma the question of raising the minimum wage, as a rule, met with fierce opposition from fellow legislators. Poor people usually prefer to “make happy” with a direct order from above, and best of all - from the very top.
Just the other day, they raised pensions and social payments, allocating as much as 26 budget billions, while trillions hang around idle, and they steal from us, according to the accounts of the Accounting Chamber, tens of times more. And this is annually, mind you. And this is only what the auditors of the joint venture of the Russian Federation managed to calculate.
Pensioners will fall for a thousand and a half with the best scenario, for children - a little less, for disabled people and veterans - a little more. According to the chairman of the Duma Committee on Education and Science Gennady Onishchenko, with whom you can not argue, although the increase is small, it is very important socially.
Thank you, of course, especially for the mother’s capital for the first child. What’s called, it was high time. Otherwise, just die out.
By the waves of his memory
Few today will recall that the idea of introducing fixed minimum wages for public sector employees has surfaced more than once before. And even more so, it has long been forgotten what obstruction of colleagues and even business media once fell upon Alexander Pochinok (now deceased), who was almost the first to formally make such a proposal.
Alexander Nikolaevich Pochinok was a recognized liberal, but managed to remember people
By the way, Pochinik was one of the predecessors of the new Russian prime minister as the head of the tax service, and in the rank of minister, he was not particularly generous in this post either. He remembered the poor later, passing the post of Minister for Social Affairs, and becoming "only" an adviser to the government apparatus.
But many have not forgotten that in the Soviet Union, despite all the declared meagerness of salaries and pensions, saving up for old age was considered the norm. By and large, the foundation was laid by the notorious Stalin bonds, which all government employees and most hard workers were given up to half the salary.
Many years later, on bonds, by the way, they were settled without any recalculations and cuts. They didn’t deceive anyone, unless people themselves managed to get rid of the “pieces of paper” without price. This, alas, is their fundamental difference from deposits in Sberbank, and more specifically, in savings banks, which at the turn of the transition from the USSR to Russia, as well as to other republics, were safely burned in the fire of Gaidar's “shock therapy”.
No plans are real, and not fake, as was done not so long ago, no one even voiced indexation or compensation of old deposits. But at the same time with the bank deposits of so many old people, inflation in the early 90s ate their “grave" ones too - savings in cash, hidden under mattresses or in secret sections of pre-revolutionary buffets.
Since then, people in Russia prefer not to save seriously and for a long time. And after the prospect of “burning” even pension savings became quite real for most Russians, an unfavorable trend turned into a norm. In modern stories In Russia, periods of substantial growth in incomes were so short that the habit of saving from the vast majority simply did not have time to develop.
The rest of the time, limited finances did not allow citizens to put off anything at all. But almost always, for many, rather, the desire to live on credit prevailed. The majority of the population, according to various estimates, up to 70, or even 75 percent, has for decades been limited to spending on utility bills, food and the most necessary.
For obvious reasons, no one perceives the Soviet experience as a worthy example, and in order to adopt foreign experience, not only not enough funds, but also a certain sense of practicality are lacking. In Western Europe, the USA and Japan, there are long-standing traditions of investing in commercial pension funds, as well as in insurance funds, to put not only themselves, but also children and grandchildren into old age, using the proven unsinkability and attractive plans of these pension funds.
Our pension and insurance companies in the years after the reforms did not earn any other reputation than the reputation of scammers and robbers, who at any moment dissolve in the global space with our money. Their services are used either exclusively by “their own”, or in the most extreme case, for example, when the law requires it, as with mandatory insurance.
Old age will not find me at home?
But besides, we must not forget that in Russia the poor too often have to pay for the rich, skillfully knocking out all possible benefits for themselves, up to transferring the business to offshore. For some reason, even the free parking spaces in the center of Moscow go primarily to the cars of the coolest brands.
The prospect of remaining in old age without a livelihood actually threatens almost three-quarters of the country's population. And these are not some expert assessments, but the accumulation of opinions of the citizens themselves, revealed as a result of a survey conducted by the Sberbank Non-State Pension Fund, actually a bank, albeit a commercial one, but quite state-owned in terms of capital.
The aging population of the country is frankly frightened by the fact that raising pensions does not actually outstrip actual inflation, but rather lags behind it. Indeed, for the older generation, the main expenses are payments for communal services, food and medicine, which are becoming more expensive than anything else. In addition, due to truly epoch-making changes in the pension sector in Russia, many of its citizens of pre-retirement age have practically lost their last chance of digging up at least something significantly more than what the state can still give them.
So, hard pessimism in assessing their own financial prospects was noted in 72,8% of respondents. It is characteristic that in the regions people feel much more confident than in relatively prosperous cities. Moscow, with its high salaries and living standards in this regard, is generally the leader in terms of negative levels. 75% of the capital's residents are worried and worried about their financial well-being in their declining years.
At the same time, only 13,8% of the Sberbank NPFs surveyed over the past 10–20 years have put aside funds for old age. It will be more accurate to say that they were able to afford such a luxury as long-term savings. However, almost a quarter of the survey participants, 24,8%, expressed regret that they did not make savings. However, such regrets alone do not mean at all that all these 24,8% had real opportunities to make any significant savings.
It will be very difficult to break the negative trend, especially given the openly predatory pension reform. All pathetic attempts to somehow soften the blow from her are now doomed to failure, but even for some reason they are shyly postponed. This happened with the new deduction system, which was initially advertised in connection with the availability of state guarantees and as a chance to independently manage deductions for old age. But then they did not even include the government in the work plan for 2020. Maybe the new government will return?
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