Rising prices, inflation and poverty: will this year's trends transition into 2022?

This is the leitmotif of the experts' speeches at a press conference on the income of citizens in 2021, which was broadcasted by the Public News Service.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week announced that at the end of the year inflation in the country is expected at 8%. At the same time, the head of state noted that the real incomes of Russians grew by only 3.5%, and clarified that in fact this is an average indicator and that income growth did not affect everyone. The president called increasing the real incomes of people a key task.

Meanwhile, VTsIOM informed that the rise in prices for real estate, food and travel has become one of the main causes of concern for our citizens, yielding first place only to concerns related to the pandemic.

Soon, a law on QR codes may be adopted in Russia, which in the current crisis will put business in an even more vulnerable position and may provoke both a rise in prices and a drop in incomes of Russians.

The current situation in the country was commented on by the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Mikhail Delyagin, Doctor of Economics, Honored Economist of the Russian Federation Sergey Kalashnikov and member of the Presidium of the Stolypin Club, economist Vladislav Zhukovsky.

Mikhail Delyagin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy:

- The growth of income, if any, is purely symbolic. It spreads to a small part of society.

According to the results of nine months of the year, real incomes increased by 4.1% and exceeded the pre-coronavirus time by half a percent. Well, maybe by the end of the year it will be 3.5%, here the president knows better.

You need to understand that this was achieved due to a blatant understatement of price increases. As Nabiullina recently clarified to the president, our official inflation will be more than 8% this year.

It is clear that the inflation that people encounter in stores is clearly higher. Accordingly, the real dynamics of the population's income is much worse.

Since the state turns a blind eye to reality and pretends that it believes the official statistics, unfortunately, no active measures are taken to increase the real incomes of the population.

The main problem is that we do have quite significant industrial growth. It may not be as significant as the official statistics depict, which traditionally underestimates the rise in prices, but it is there, it is evident, it is clearly visible in some sectors: in the agricultural machinery industry, for example.

But this is growth that is based on modern labor-saving technologies, well, with the exception of construction, where guest workers work.

That is, the bulk of the people of Russia receive nothing or practically nothing from this growth. Because our industry works for banks, and not for itself, it is "credited" like the whole country.

Growth does lead to an increase in profits, but, first of all, to an increase in bank profits. On the other hand, all the factors of inflation remain with us.

When the government talks about importing inflation, it is telling the truth. Really. The world is flooded with dollars, the Fed is starting to tighten policy, but the problem remains. On the other hand, the global destruction of the logistics of the entire Coronabesia also leads to higher prices.

But the state, just as it did nothing to protect against this import of this inflation, is hiding behind the WTO and is going to do nothing. This was stated, quite officially, by Mr. Siluanov.

We also have an important factor - the destruction of internal logistics, in addition to the destruction of external logistics. Influenced by the Coronabesia.

We do not know how harshly the apartheid regime will be introduced, to what extent it will be introduced. But in a large part of Russia, the apartheid regime has already been introduced, and has already severely undermined internal logistics.

... As far as can be judged from state policy, the real task, solved not at the level of “blah blah blah,” but the real task is the elimination of the population, this is the extermination of the population of the Russian Federation. In our country, the per capita mortality rate of last year exceeded the number of those executed in 1937.

None of the accusers of Stalin's terror even moved, did not move the sirloin.

And this year we have the highest mortality rate in the entire post-war period, including the famine of 1947, and including 2003, when there was a peak in mortality after the 1990s.

Again, no one moved. Only Putin expressed concern about this topic, and that's it. Not that there were no punishments, even no attempts to ask the question: "What is happening in the country?"

The population is being "eradicated" by artificially created money hunger and the elimination of medicine, turning it into a "public health service."

Sergey Kalashnikov, Doctor of Economics, Honored Economist of the Russian Federation:

- All our reasoning around some numbers is a profanation. The basis of economic analysis is statistics; these statistics are simply not available in the Russian Federation. There is no official body that can provide statistics.

I have a fairly good idea of the formation of final numbers and I see a huge number of information barriers that distort these statistics. Therefore, a comparison based on statistical data published in the Russian Federation by different sources, from the point of view of a serious economic analysis, is simply illegal.

... There is a certain set of well-known recipes that are not even discussed because they are the Alpha and Omega of economics to be taken. The question then arises as to why these measures are not being applied. The answer is simple, it is the root of all evil.

In fact, despite the statements and slogans, the government is not interested and does nothing to solve the problem of poverty in Russia.

... When we say that the situation with covid has led to a disruption in logistics ties, to a decrease in production, this is completely inconsistent with world statistics. The global economy is growing in terms of covid relative to the indicators that were in 2019.

In other words, a comparison of global economic indicators for 2020 and 2021 shows that the main reason lies not in external factors, but in internal ones.

... Growth of real incomes of Russians is predicted. But what is this confidence based on? There are simply no objective reasons or conditions for improving the lives of Russians. In some industries, there is growth from the decline that began in 2014. This is such a meager increase that it does not have a significant effect on the increase in the country's GDP.

The mechanisms that provide growth today are all aimed at imports, and not at increasing domestic consumption. Thus, there are no objective reasons for the growth of people's well-being.

... The population holds about 40 trillion rubles. The exact figure is unknown, but these are expert estimates. It is definitely impossible to invest money in those assets that are hardly liquid. These include the entire scale of assets, from stocks, exchange instruments to real estate. You can buy it, it will be impossible to sell it later. It is important to be careful about the banking system.

Firstly, the banking system is in a fever, and secondly, it is subject not to the economic and financial laws of its existence, but to the decisions taken by the Central Bank.

This jeopardizes the savings that are on deposits. Keeping savings in cash at home is absolutely wrong. The first reason is that money is depreciating catastrophically. Putting 100 rubles, you will see in a day that there are already 90 of them. In addition, starting from 2022, a powerful electronization of money is coming, that is, the transfer of cash into a certain digital form, be it a digital ruble, transfers from card to card. Cash ends.

If you keep them at home, you can find yourself in a situation where they turn into trash. Buying long-term goods for your own consumption, not for sale in a critical situation, but for your own consumption is one of the most reliable ways that allow you to somehow save your existing savings.

... As for the connection between the introduction of QR codes and the economy, this connection is mediated. It will not have any direct impact, because the introduction of QR codes is a political task that does not directly affect the economy. Although the indirect influence is associated with the fact that certain groups of people will drop out of the production process, from the economy, the share of these people will be minimal.

Vladislav Zhukovsky, member of the Presidium of the Stolypin Club, economist:

- When the president says that inflation will be 8% this year, it is not clear how this is possible at all, if it has already reached 8% by the cumulative total by December-month.

That is, it is clear that by the end of the year it will be above 8.5%, maybe even 9%.

But no one believes in these figures, including ordinary Russians and consumers.

When the Bank of Russia conducts its sociological polls, orders these polls from sociological services, they show that the so-called observed inflation has long exceeded the 17.7% line and is at its maximum since 2016.

The same is the forecasted inflation for the next year, it is about 14.5%.

Therefore, if we proceed from this, it turns out that even if someone's income in nominal terms increased by 5-7-8%, which is also hard to believe, it turns out that at the end of the year, incomes did not grow anyway, but the standard of living has dropped - by about 6-7%, maybe by 10%.

So the talk that we are getting out of the crisis, that we will finally stop this eight-year era of falling living standards and increasing poverty, has nothing to do with reality.

... How do people survive? To understand that the strategy of the authorities in relation to us is like new oil. Therefore, the idea of pumping out all resources from our citizens will be preserved. Oil costs $ 73-75 per barrel, but at the same time the ruble exchange rate is stable at us - 71-73 rubles per dollar. That is, the artificially undervalued ruble against the dollar, increasing revenues to the budget system, doing nothing in the economy, increases the revenues of exporters of raw materials.

While the people are tightening their belts, the offshore aristocracy of the Forbes Gold Hundreds has revenues increased by $ 68 billion since the beginning of the year.

Our economic policy is aimed at ensuring that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, so that more and more money is pumped out of the pockets of the population towards the monopolists.

Reducing spending, increasing savings, and having additional income could help Russians during the economic crisis, but most Russian citizens have no opportunity to either cut costs or increase their income.