Raising the retirement age was not enough for the Russian authorities - the first deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Sergey Kalashnikov, proposed calculating pensions by rank. At the same time, he invited the Russians to participate in the process of forming pension savings themselves. For a person with Soviet roots, of whom there are still the majority in the country, such a call to save money on their own sounds extremely unusual, because there is a state that has always been engaged in social security. Whether or not you pay taxes and insurance contributions, everyone counts on a pension in the same way.
Everyone wants to believe that the reforms are designed to improve the well-being of the people - after all, this is what the people's representatives in the State Duma should do. But the government over the past three decades has built up a persistent distrust among the people of the state pension system. SuperJob polls show that only 22% of Russians expect to retire in old age. The rest hope either to work until the grave, or to support their children and grandchildren. Therefore, evasion of taxes and insurance fees in society is not condemned in any way, and even vice versa - "what a fine fellow - he knows how to spin and provide for himself." But they forget to clarify what to provide only now.
The pension fund was created in 1990, in 1992 non-state pension funds already appeared, in 1995 the first reform began with the collection of information on salaries on personal accounts, in 1998 the next pension reform was carried out with the launch of the NPF, in 2002 the equation was canceled pensions for everyone and the transition to insurance principles was carried out - the size of the pension was determined not by the length of service, but by the amount of savings, in 2005 the funded part of the pension for people over 50 was replaced by the insurance one, in 2008 a program of co-financing of the funded part was launched, in 2010 a single social tax was replaced by insurance contributions, the reform of 2013-2015 introduced pension points and new rules for obtaining the right to an insurance pension, in 2014 the freezing of the funded part of the pension started, in 2018 a reform with an increase in the retirement age was approved. Tired of having such a long list? We, too. People no longer understand what is happening with pensions.
However, Professor of the Department of Finance and Prices of the PRUE. G.V. Plekhanova Yulia Finogenova notes that changes in the pension system were inevitable.
- Russia is not a pioneer in this matter. In all countries of the socialist camp, including Poland, and just in European countries - the same Great Britain, there are also constant transformations. In France, there was even popular unrest over the transformation of the pension system. This wave swept almost all over the world. It is associated with demography, with the changed conditions of life, the makeup of society itself.
People perceive innovations quite aggressively. Any layman on the street will say that he does not believe in the pension system and does not hope to live on a pension. But at the same time, when people retire, they start swearing why she is so small. The people do not want to take part in the formation of the future pension, but at the same time everyone wants to have large payments from the state. People need to explain what voluntary pension savings are, which should be formed as early as possible.
So maybe you shouldn't touch anything at least for a while? Let the pension system work in the form in which it exists now. People will at least get used to it, understand from their own experience what points are and how to relate to them. But there is one snag - the Pension Fund's own income is sorely lacking for anything. On October 28, State Duma deputies approved in the first reading the PFR budget for 2021 in the amount of 9.1 trillion rubles, but 38% (almost 3.5 trillion rubles!) Are gratuitous receipts from the federal budget. Insurance deductions are simply not enough for everything. And judging by the dynamics of the development of the crisis, in the near future, employers' deductions from salaries may become even lower.
It is in the financial deficit that Yulia Finogenova sees the main reason for the reforms.
- The changes are primarily due to economic reasons. One of the goals of the state is to care for the welfare of citizens. But lately, this is not the main goal. In the foreground - ensuring the economic balance in the conditions of falling oil prices. At the same time, it is still necessary to avoid a budget deficit. The pension system is not single-tier, not entirely pay-as-you-go, there are additional opportunities. And the state by its actions pushes people to think about independent savings .
The problem of forming a state pension is not only about low wages and layoffs. The reality is that the average life expectancy is growing, there are more pensioners, but the number of people of working age who pay their current pensions with their contributions does not increase - we are simply jumping from one demographic pit to another. According to the forecasts of demographers, by 2050 the share of pensioners in Moscow may reach 50% of the entire population of the city. With the current economic model, the budget simply cannot bear such a load.
What will the authorities do? change something again ... However, the proposed ranking system looks at least suspicious and ill-considered. Julia Finogenova believes that there can be much more problems than benefits. Especially if the Chinese experience is adopted.
- It is not clear for what real purpose this is being done. Because the parameters of assignment to one or another category of workers are rather opaque. In general, it is not yet clear whether there will be objective parameters, or there will be subjective ones. In China, for example, everyone has their own social score. And discrimination comes out: if a person speaks out against the political system, against the authorities, or was suspected of something else, then the social score immediately decreases. There is a lot of subjectivity. I would not want something similar to happen.
Sometimes there are calls to abolish the state pension altogether - no one believes in it anyway, so maybe you shouldn't even bother, but give the money saved on insurance contributions to people? But not everything is smooth here either. Here are the problems Yulia Finogenova foresees:
- For Russia, a complete rejection of the state pension is a completely inappropriate option. He could work in countries with market economies like the United States. There, people absorb the need to purchase insurance and investment products with their mother's milk. People are well aware that no one will help them otherwise in a market economy. Social support in a market economy is generally weaker than in countries with a command-and-control model. The psychology of Russians is not yet geared towards private financing programs and planning future expenses. If you cancel the pension now, it will simply lead to a social explosion. People are not ready for the fact that the state will not provide. If you think about saving at 40, it’s too late. For retirement, you need to save from the first salary. And if you give people just 6% of the funded part, then the pension system and the citizens themselves would suffer. They would spend this money on current consumption. Nobody would put this money aside for old age.
It is not for nothing that all developed countries have at least some kind of old-age pension. Iraq, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, China, Niger, Kenya, Nigeria and Suriname go without state pensions altogether - not the best role models. And the most developed countries practice the combination of state pensions and individual savings. This is how you can achieve the best result - Yulia Finogenova is sure.
- There must be a balance. The state cannot provide everyone with a pension with a high replacement rate, and in order to achieve this desired coefficient, a person must make individual pension savings.
Only in order to form their own savings from the very first salary, it would be good if people's incomes were much higher than the current minimum wage of 12 thousand rubles. There is no time for savings. But it is worth accepting the fact that without these very accumulations - nothing. The further we fall into the demographic hole, the less the state will have the opportunity to make pension payments. "Ranks" are just a test of the pen, in the near future we will obviously face more than one, at first glance, strange, but, alas, inevitable proposal to curtail the responsibility of the state for the maintenance of pensioners. There will simply be too many of them - not to feed everyone.