Goofy infinity: pension reform in Russia has been going on for 30 years, and there is no end in sight

Sergey Baimukhametov

One of the most discussed news of the week is the statement by State Duma deputy Sergey Mironov, leader of the Fair Russia faction, that the pension system of the Russian Federation is bankrupt, 22% of the income is taken away from the bulk of citizens, and people do not have a decent old age. Therefore, it is necessary to restore the old, essentially Soviet system.

Verbatim:

“The idea of retirement insurance with the help of special funds has failed. The average insurance pension in Russia barely exceeds the subsistence minimum, which is actually impossible to live on. With funded pensions, everything is even worse... Therefore, it is necessary to return to the payments of pensions from the budget, and pension payments from the incomes of citizens should be directed there. Firstly, it will reduce the risks from inefficient investment of pension savings, and secondly, it will cut off all non-earmarked expenses, including payments for palaces and the bloated PFR staff. Finally, it will give the Russians at least some solid guarantees".

Sergey Mironov is consistent in his criticism. In August 2018, he called the law on raising the retirement age anti-national. And he spoke about the liquidation of the PFR back in October this year, after the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case on bribes in the pension system:

“The Fund is effective only as a testing ground for corruption schemes. In all other respects, this is an unnecessary intermediary between the budget and pensioners, who, moreover, does his job extremely poorly and is very expensive for the state... Taxpayers have to pay twice - to cover the PFR deficit, and spend even more money on maintaining this armada... At the same time, budget billions in the PFR they steal, and the elderly are underpaid by their already beggarly pensions. The only way out of this absurd situation is the liquidation of the fund and the transition to direct payments from the budget".

But the pension reform began 30 years ago, with the first decree on the establishment of the Pension Fund. It's high time to forget about her. Only here it lasts and lasts, every day is heard. Government officials constantly use these words - "pension reform" - without understanding WHAT they are saying. Something cannot be constantly “reformed” for 20 years! It turns out that it can. We have.

She was absurd in execution from the very beginning. (Or is it quite natural?)

In 2002, 70 million citizens were notified. We were asked to indicate on paper a non-state "management company that has entered into an appropriate agreement with the Pension Fund of Russia", to which we entrust our savings, and also indicate the TIN of this company.

Can you imagine what the milkmaids in the villages thought, looking at this paper? And not only in villages, and not only milkmaids. How many of those reading these lines knew then "the management company that entered into an appropriate agreement with the Pension Fund of Russia"?

A year later, the scientific director of the Institute of Globalization Problems, Mikhail Delyagin, defined the professional, scientific level of those who developed reforms since the beginning of the century: “Yawning intellectual emptiness and poverty”.

May be. But somehow it turns out that this "gaping intellectual emptiness and poverty" has never led the developers themselves to real material poverty, but quite the opposite.

In those notices it was written: if we do not choose any non-state pension fund for ourselves, then our money will be given to "a state company appointed by the Government of the Russian Federation".

It is clear that the absolute majority remained silent. The "silent" money was given to Vnesheconombank. But he was not and still is not a bank in the legal sense of the word. He does not have a banking license. It is a state corporation. Of course, with ramified ties in all areas of the state, financial and industrial system.

Our money was then placed at 6 percent per annum, but only official inflation was 11-12 percent, real - about 20 percent. That is, the savings were melting, the Pension Fund complained (and still complains) about the budget deficit, and banks prospered, lending these billions at higher interest rates.

Nevertheless, the officials promised us mountains of gold. For example, in 2007 an all-federal newspaper published an interview with the head of the Center for Strategic Research, Mikhail Dmitriev, under the loud headline "The average pension will increase by more than half." Dmitriev was presented as "one of the authors of the latest version of the pension reform."

That is, the reform is already 12 years old, and we are still talking about "one of the last options" ?!

Sincerely did they not understand and do not understand what they say?

So Mr. Dmitriev, fearing nothing, said: “The main reason is our demographic situation. And in this regard, Russia is now one of the champions with a minus sign. We already have 1.1 employees per pensioner. And this ratio, according to demographic forecasts, will not improve. "

First, how to put it mildly, a big official, a strategist, misled the people. Or sincerely he didn’t know what he was obliged to know, that is, he simply did not correspond to the position? In 2007, there were 70.8 million employed and 38.4 million pensioners. In total, 1.84 employees per pensioner.

Secondly, the original logic is cannibalistic. Say, our old people have healed, they are sitting on their necks.

Thirdly, here too Dmitriev, to put it mildly, misled the people. In fact, in 2007, the average life expectancy for Russian women was 10-15 years less than in Europe. America and Japan. And for men it is at all - 61.4 years. That is, men in Russia received a pension for 16 months, and then they died, and their savings, made over their entire life, went outright to the FIU.

In the same year, Deputy Prime Ministers Sergey Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev innocently let slip. They talked with young people at the summer camp on Seliger. And, apparently, they relaxed, lost control.

“It's time to think about old age by creating a full-fledged family that should take care of the elderly”, - Medvedev said.

“If you have brought up normal children, they will help you when you get old, and without a pension”, - Ivanov supported his idea.

That is, guys, do not count on a secure old age. Give birth to children!

They themselves, Medvedev, Ivanov, Dmitriev and all other officials did not have to worry. They have long come up with a law for themselves, according to which they are entitled to a pension of 75% of their salary, and sometimes up to 90% comes out with various allowances. (For ordinary Russians - 34%). With high salaries of officials and deputies, their pensions reach hundreds of thousands of rubles. The average pension in Russia in 2020 is 15 thousand. Taking into account the fact that it includes the pensions of officials in the hundreds of thousands.

And that 2007, the head of the Center for Strategic Research, Mikhail Dmitriyev, on behalf of the government, promised: "By 2020 we will catch up with Europe, in particular, in terms of wages".

2020 ends...

I will add that the harsh statement of the leader of A Just Russia, Sergey Mironov - to liquidate the Pension Fund, return the pension system to the state - also provoked objections, including from specialists and experts. So, two professors of the Financial University under the government of the Russian Federation unanimously announced that Mironov's proposal is a return to the past, to the Soviet egalitarianism, and in general - a dead end.

"This was the case in the Soviet Union, today it is a utopia ... There is no other way out, it is everyone's personal responsibility, by such standards they live all over the world, having long abandoned the paternalistic approach to the state as the only and irreplaceable benefactor".

And everything is correct. This is how the whole world lives. And we were told that the pension reform is being carried out according to global standards. It looks like everything is like in the West. But it turns out as always. We have been living in pension reform for 30 years. From year to year, the same mournful music.

Maybe, as the unforgettable Mikhail Zhvanetsky wrote, "to correct something in the conservatory?"