Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that «abstract promises» to provide credit holidays «no one needs.» This was announced by the head of state at a meeting on measures to support the Russian economy in terms of bank lending.
According to the president, the banking community should not just in words, but in practice help citizens. In the current difficult economic situation, banks play an important role in supporting the population in the current conditions and have already taken on a serious additional burden in the form of losses incurred in connection with anti-crisis assistance to their customers.
However, in many regions, people are faced with what to get from a bank credit vacation. The same difficulties are experienced by entrepreneurs who want to get soft loans. Credit institutions either immediately refuse them, or drag out time or agree to grant a loan on completely impossible conditions.
“Nobody needs abstract promises that don’t affect people’s lives, and the effect of such decisions and allocated resources will be low,” the Kremlin’s press service quoted Putin as saying.
It is not enough to announce the decisions made, they need to be worked out at all stages, the president emphasized.
The coronavirus crisis is an ideal time to change Russia’s deadlock economic program
The crisis, and even more so on the scale that we are now witnessing, is a good time to rethink many things that seemed obvious.
The first example of this was the ongoing discussion caused by the coronovirus epidemic on the comparative importance of preserving the greatest possible number of human lives and ensuring economic development, which is now taking place in many countries in connection with the closure of state borders, industries and the forced isolation of tens of millions of people around the world. Although the debate is still ongoing, consensus is growing that “in general” life is more important than the economy. However, if you go down to a slightly lower level, it turns out that so far little has changed.
Today in Russia, the main directions of economic policy for the near future are being actively discussed: what to do with the budget deficit, how to collect taxes, whether to help those who have lost their jobs, whether to support the entire business or only “systemically important”, how much it is worth fearing inflation, use mainly reserves or build up state debt? At the same time, the purely economic concept of efficiency serves as the most important starting point in all these debates, and the main constraint is the question of what we can afford. In my opinion, no matter how reasonable this framework may seem, staying in it can have disastrous consequences for any state and for the legitimacy of any government — after all, effectiveness characterizes only the success in achieving the previously set goals,
Russian society is effective, but internally painful. The authorities redistribute huge amounts of money through the state budget, clean out activists who are objectionable to them, and take control of attractive businesses. The state can drive everyone into their homes, close borders and force them to issue digital badges. It can replace education with propaganda and optimize medicine up to its actual destruction in a significant part of the country. At the same time, the government can provide a certain living standard for millions of dependent people and convince them that such a state is the limit of the possible. However, it is now becoming clear that it cannot do too much, which is required not so much by efficiency as banal philanthropy.
Russia is a country in which, as is commonly believed, what is recognized is not so much what is legal as what is fair. But justice is a very complex concept, and I would suggest shifting the emphasis a bit.
Is it fair to feed those who have never worked? Is not a fact. But is such an act merciful? Undoubtedly. Is it fair to introduce a progressive taxation scale? In a modern economy, the success of which is determined by the individual abilities of a person — at least it is not obvious. But is it moral to demand to share with the state pennies of those who cannot buy banal chocolate for their children?
In no case. If the current crisis picks up pace, questions about a moral assessment of the state’s actions will begin to multiply at an unimaginable speed — all the more so as a poor society, not seeing itself caring and ways out of a difficult situation, easily breaks into violence and chaos. Therefore, I propose to think about what priorities can be if ethical elements and principles of humanism come to the fore in determining public policy.
I can be mistaken, but for a person — not only today, at any time — there are four undoubted priorities: food, housing, health and children.
Eliminating the most egregious problems in all these areas is a critical task of a merciful state.
Now in Russia, more than 18 million people live in poverty; of which about 30% say that the income they receive is not enough even for decent food.
Such a situation seems unacceptable regardless of the financial capabilities of Russian society.
The most obvious solution is direct food subsidies through food stamps; This measure has proven itself even in the United States, while also providing additional effective demand for food products. 300-400 billion rubles a year could significantly change the situation for 10-15 million people. In addition, other measures are needed. According to last year’s research, in Russia more than 17 million tons of products are emitted annually with a total value of 1.6 trillion. (!) rubles. I believe that at any point of sale, a place should be allocated where goods with an expiration date on that day would be exhibited so that anyone can pick them up for free. Finally, given the continued rise in food prices and the extremely low quality of many of their species produced in the country, immediate cancellation of food “anti-sanctions” and import of food deflation are needed (in the days of the crisis, consumption in developed countries will decline — along with prices). I am convinced that in none of these cases can economic and geopolitical considerations be higher than moral law.
If we touch on the housing problem, it turns out that now in Russia more than 3.5 million people live in houses officially recognized as shabby, and another 1.8 million live in emergency homes. Given the quality of bureaucratic assessments, you can safely multiply this number by two to get the number of Russians living in conditions unworthy not only of the 21st, but also of the 20th century. All of them either work or give the country tens of years of life, and it is our responsibility to give them normal housing. The construction sector will face enormous difficulties — most major builders have already taken care of including themselves in the list of «backbone» companies. In my opinion, a merciful state cannot build high-speed railways or bridges to Sakhalin under the guise of anti-crisis investment projects.
However, it’s more than realistic to put into operation 15-20 million sq. M of cheap standard housing that officially all emergency housing is a little over 11 million, and dilapidated — 65 million square meters. To this they can say: is it fair to give people housing? But I don’t think at all that it should be donated: it may well remain in municipal ownership, and tenants can only use it — the task is not to redistribute the property, but to create normal living conditions. Even in the current situation, its solution seems quite possible.
The issue of health is also crucial. Russia today is an objectively uncomfortable country for life. It is impossible to reverse the low birth rate trend in the foreseeable future. Therefore, there is nothing more important than preserving the health of already living Russians — and the logic of a merciful state should be the opposite of the logic of economic calculation. Financial calculation requires abandoning the elderly with diabetes, children with cystic fibrosis, and at the same time sick with HIV, drug addicts and alcoholics. The moral approach requires the opposite: the smaller the reference group, the easier the problem can be solved — and the more actively it should be addressed. The country has no more than 4 thousand patients with cystic fibrosis, thousands of people with other rare diseases, about 100 thousand children with heart defects.
The inability to solve these seemingly particular problems inflicts on the moral foundations of society and on people’s faith in its capabilities at times a greater blow than some general shortcomings in the healthcare system.
Inside this system itself, it is probably worth revising the attitude to the primary focus on “high-tech care”: the majority of deaths in the country are not from its shortage, but from the banal lack of normal hospital wards, quality medicines, competent medical staff and even normal dietary nutrition for patients . A country in which parents collect almost alms for the treatment of children, and people are afraid to get to the hospital, can not be considered an example of either morality or humanism.
Children today are not so much the greatest asset as they wanted to write in the new Constitution, but rather a huge problem of the country. With the official share of the poor in 12.9% of the country’s population for children under 18, this figure is a blatant 26%. Given the growing problems, I would suggest thinking not so much about increasing the child allowance, but about introducing a unique analogue of the pension system for all Russians under the age of 14. Russia can and must allow itself to allocate “unconditional income” to children in the amount of the regional subsistence minimum — it would be possible to start this experiment with children living in single-parent families, gradually spreading it to an ever wider circle of recipients of such rents. Most people in power simply cannot imagine the scale of moral damage, which childhood poverty and frustration in a rich country are causing to present and future generations. No matter how experts criticize the domestic pension system, in a number of regions and social groups, it makes senior citizens almost the main source of cash income. Children in Russia should become the second similar group.
Of course, anyone will ask: where to get the money, especially today, when “our everything” (I mean Urals brand oil) has actually been reset? I think there are two sources. First of all, it is worth saying that the total cost of all these measures will be 3-5 trillion. rubles per year — and this, at first glance, is a monstrous means. However, when you consider that in the budget for 2020, 1.48 trillion. were laid down on the rule of law and security, it would be worth thinking about cutting this by at least a third. The main basis for security in society is not the number of police officers, but the lack of despair and hatred, the growth of social trust. Investment in charity is the best way to use budget money, traditionally used by the siloviki. Besides,
The idea of mercy, moreover, does not contradict the idea of economic development. First of all, you need to understand that the money invested will go either for the creation of human capital — the main asset of any modern economy — or for the current consumption of goods and services produced mainly in Russia, which means they will go to the economy and provide additional growth and additional taxes . By creating a moral society not by replicating temples and icons, but by real concern for our neighbors, we will build that social trust that is more important than any formal institutions; nurture the patriotism that will save the country in the event of difficult trials more effectively than corrupt state propaganda. I am convinced that the main asset of Russia in the 21st century should not be oil and gas, neither territory nor cheap labor — it should be a kind and sympathetic person, respecting himself and his country, believing people and people, putting life and dignity — not only man, but also our smaller brothers — above any material considerations. Creating a cult of kindness and love for one’s neighbor embodied in a merciful state is an unprecedented task and an inevitable goal of our country, the achievement of which is almost equivalent to its survival.
And the time of common misfortune, permeating all fears and “hanging in the air” of economic uncertainty is an ideal moment for a radical change of the deadlock paradigm of statism, chosen in the 2000s.
