As part of a broadcast on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio, a well-known economist explained whether it is necessary to introduce excise taxes on foreign labor, commented on the opinion of Mikhail Mishustin, the president's plenipotentiary representative in the Far Eastern Federal District, Yuri Trutnev, and spoke about the "pact of normality."
“Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy Mishustin, Presidential Plenipotentiary in the Far Eastern Federal District Yuri Trutnev, is an extremely experienced person, for many years he worked as a Deputy Prime Minister, a Minister, and a Governor, that is, a person who just says so little, and by himself, he is taciturn and does not like to talk too much with the media, he proposed introducing excise taxes for companies when hiring foreign employees.
At least for new projects in the Far East and the Arctic. Moreover, in an interview with RBC, he spoke completely unambiguously and simply.
I quote verbatim.
“With regard to future projects, I have a great desire to make companies start paying for foreign labor. If you want to attract someone from abroad, please pay the excise tax. " And, so quietly, incrementally. It is assumed that it will grow. “If you don’t want to pay the excise tax, hire our workers. We are concerned about the large number of foreign labor employed in the construction of facilities in the Far East. There, tens of thousands of people work from all over the world - from the republics of the former USSR, from China, from other countries. Everything is good, but only governments exist in order to give work, first of all, to the citizens of our country. "
Pay attention, on the one hand, these things are self-evident. On the other hand, not so long ago people were imprisoned for this thought, expressed a little less correctly.
I will quote again:
“Governments exist in order to give work, first of all, to the citizens of our country!” Said Deputy Prime Minister Trutnev.
Well, if he has not yet been imprisoned for these words, it will turn out that at least one person in the government, in a good position, is quite reasonable and says what almost all citizens of our country say and think about.
We see that the country is flooded with streams of guest workers.
We see that the state organizes the attraction of foreign labor, not allowing Russian citizens to the appropriate jobs.
Simply because a Russian citizen is not ready to give half or a third of his salary as a bribe, as, say, what people in Moscow complain about, when a small salary in some places, and even a significant part of it, just needs to be given.
People complain about this, but they understand that it is completely pointless to contact the law enforcement agencies with this, because you will be jailed for libel.
In fact, this is a slave system that is being built.
And suddenly it dawned on Deputy Prime Minister Trutnev that, it turns out, the government should first give work to its own people, not to strangers.
That in general the state as a whole should serve its people, and not a foreign people. This is a revolution!
Maybe, of course, he just let slip, maybe he will be called to order, of course, but I want to vote.
I am putting this question to a vote. In fact, the licensing fee for foreign labor is very reasonable. Because foreign labor is putting pressure on the economy, on society. Need additional spending to curb the related crime, yes.
Everyone understands that these are other crimes caused by other reasons - at least because a huge number of men live extremely crowded and without women. If only simply because they are people from a different culture.
These people place an enormous strain on the healthcare system. When they linger here, they put a strain on the education system because there are children. At the same time, not a very large part of them has been legalized. Accordingly, to say that they pay mandatory social contributions and mandatory taxes - well, some part pays, but a disproportionate majority does not pay.
That is, we are actually talking not only about the measure of reasonable protectionism in the labor market, about which Deputy Prime Minister Trutnev speaks, but also about compensating the state for the costs of socializing foreign cultural elements that are invited as labor. That is, even from an accounting point of view, from a liberal point of view, from a narrow market point of view, it is absolutely a reasonable and sane thing.
Well, I'll tell you on my own. I wrote out a number of requirements, about 20, which unite the absolute majority of our fellow citizens, based on my conversations with a variety of people. I have formulated this "pact of normality".
And every day, starting from January 11, when we have all moved away from the holidays, we will go to work, and I understand that on January 4 it is a little incorrect to force normal people to vote, because everyone is celebrating, why think about difficult economic topics?
But starting from January 11, I will open each program with a vote on one of the points that, it seems to me, unites the majority of Russian citizens. If you support this point, I will include this point and will promote, as they say, in all my possibilities. If you do not support any point, then I am wrong, and accordingly, I will remove this point.
... The country should, as it were, collect rent for the right to work on its territory. If this worker is not categorically necessary, is not some kind of unique Newton, Einstein, etc.
Indeed, indeed, scientists say that the economy to which we are moving from a market economy, an economy based on management through social networks and social platforms, and not through money, is the economy of rent relations. And in this regard, the initiatives of Russian businessmen are very interesting, who are still speaking in a whisper, because people are afraid that they will be disconnected from all global social networks, including Russian ones. But the point is this.
The fact is that modern social networks use us, their users, as a resource. As a raw material. Firstly, we leave digital footprints in huge quantities, these digital footprints are not used to spy on us, few people are interested in most of us, but are used to train artificial intelligence, and only then to solve large problems, such as urban management. Well, of course, it's not about Moscow...
Secondly, they are used for management. Social networks are used to manage us. Government is a thing of the past, finance is a thing of the past, and most importantly, social platforms. We see this happening in America. We see, in part, how this is happening in Belarus. And only in the third place is the management of our purchases, that is, marketing not in the sense of adjusting to the market, but in the sense of managing the market through managing the behavior of consumers and investors. Therefore, we are, in essence, the same raw material for social platforms as natural resources are for the ordinary economy.
But when a foreign company comes, say, to the territory of another country - to Russia, and if this country is not some African territory, then the foreign corporation pays for the right to develop the natural resources of the respective country.
The corporation pays for the right to extract oil in Russia. This is called a license. Well, in the days of the liberals, licenses were cheap, now they are more expensive, it all depends on the situation, it all depends on which country, but the principle is the same. If you develop someone else's raw material, you have to pay. Sorry, but the same principle should work on social media.
Yes, the Russian state is not yet capable of creating its own social platforms, even Yandex has fled from Russia and is a foreign corporation, if I understand correctly, it is registered in Holland, although the state has a critically significant share there. I think it has a golden share.
But even in these conditions, the foreign company still uses Russian citizens. It is not for us that the service is provided to upload our photos on Instagram. No, it seems to us so.
In fact, we are the raw material for the modern information economy. Whether you like it or not - it doesn't matter - this is the harsh reality.
This means that a foreign corporation must pay for the use of national raw materials.
I have to pay a license fee, the principle is very simple. One account - well, first, to work out the mechanism, you can enter one euro cent per month for one account. 8.7 million people, conventionally, 12 accounts each, here you go, 170 billion rubles. Not so few.
And when the technology is worked out, as Trutnev says - quietly, quietly - you can raise up to 1 euro for one account a month and then there will be 1.7 trillion. And several problems will be solved at the same time.
First, the networks will not be interested in creating artificial bots, that is, the armies of bots will be eliminated in the same way as empty accounts will be eliminated. On the other hand, no matter how they go anywhere. Because, firstly, in order to govern Russia, to influence Russia, to influence the Russian state, social networks are necessary for this, and social networks, as an instrument of global control over us, will not dissolve anywhere, they will not give up on it, not in the strength to refuse.
On the other hand, in order for artificial intelligence to be full-fledged, developed, it must be practiced on different cultural models, and we have a certain cultural specificity and, accordingly, due to this, we are disproportionately valuable for training artificial intelligence. Therefore, social networks will not run away from us anywhere.
Naturally, there are technical problems related to how to determine the territorial affiliation of this or that account, especially if we do not start it for the activity that we are ready to admit - there are such people. But this is a purely technical question, in fact, it is being solved in an elementary way ... or, perhaps, it has already been solved long ago.
And this, it seems to me, will be correct - the format of interaction with foreign social networks. If Facebook completely ignores Russian laws, it still hasn't placed its database here with us, processes our information outside of Russia, even if it pays for it stupidly.
Let real, real money pay for it. And who knows, maybe even Yandex will return to Russia. And again it will become a Russian company. In my opinion, that would be nice. Of course, the business climate is bad here, but then Yandex will have an incentive to contribute to a change in this business climate, and not run away somewhere.
I think this is a very correct, very positive idea that has a good perspective. Of course, the license fee should not be charged to Russian companies that are registered in Russia, which have social networks in Russia.
And, accordingly, they should not be charged from small networks, for example, if there are less than a million users in Russia, then such a network should not pay anything to anyone. Perhaps, in the region of three million, the threshold can be established - it is necessary to look. This is already a question for specific calculations".
You can listen to Mikhail Delyagin's full commentary here.