Freeloaders and retired investors

Burdensome old age
The state has catastrophically not enough for pensionersGeorgy Osipov, "Newspaper.
Ru»The reasons for the shortage of money in the Pension Fund are in the bad investment, business and legal climate in the country.

And only by raising the retirement age and increasing taxes, this disease can no longer be cured.

The Pension Fund is no longer able to independently pay pensioners their money: its budget deficit amounted to 1 trillion rubles by March and continues to grow. The growth of treasury revenues from the increase in oil prices does not save, taxes have to be raised. That is, the disease has become dangerous not only and not so much for the elderly, it affects those who are still trying to earn money not in the civil service.

Government officials now talk a lot about this trouble. Their diagnosis: the number of pensioners is growing faster than the number of workers, as well as all over the world, hence the trouble. This is true, but not all of it. If we limit ourselves to demographic data, then there is no other way out, except by any means to find money to plug the holes in the fund's budget. In practice, this means an increase in levies from those who have not yet lived to retirement.

This is how old people turn into freeloaders, and every honest Russian should feel very ashamed if he does not die for a long time. In fact, these old people have been paying taxes and contributions for decades, actually lent the state "long" money on fantastically favorable terms, without even any guarantees that they will not be stolen or simply squandered.

Such money is tidbits in many countries, where pensioners are in fact the most powerful investors. By the way, they read the Wall Street Journal and other similar publications with interest: how does our money work in the markets? And they can get full information on the fate of each cent at any convenient time. Money works well. Although the general aging of the population now makes investments insufficient.

But feel the difference. Pensioners are freeloaders and retired investors. Problems of shortage of budgets of pension funds due to the lag in the growth of investment profits from the rate of aging of the population. And the same problems due to the insufficiently rapid growth of prices for hydrocarbons. If we also remember how many years the average Russian lives – a dozen or two less than the Western man in the street, then the incorrectness of the vulgar comparison of pension problems in Russia and in many civilized countries is obvious.

It would be necessary to admit why our "long" money does not make a profit, but it shrinks and is generally not particularly needed by anyone, since most of them play "short". Why is there nowhere to invest at home or is it scary (you can't go abroad)? The answer is clear: the climate for money in the country is so rotten that it is difficult to dispose of a twenty-year loan with profit. In general, it is not worth making a wish for more than a year.

Climate is not a journalistic thought. The other day, the participants of the VI Congress of the CCI of the Russian Federation were asked to fill out a questionnaire. 387 sheets were filled out not by revolutionaries at all, but rather by entrepreneurs loyal to the authorities (every fourth of the survey participants is the owner or co-owner of enterprises/companies, about 70% of them are headed by firms, most of which operate in the field of production and construction, 72% of respondents represent Russian regions).

Here is how they answered the question whether there will be a significant improvement in the investment climate in Russia in the coming years. "Yes" – 2%, "not excluded" – 25%, "unlikely" – 61%. The remaining 12% found it difficult to answer. It is not so much the answers that are curious – they are predictable, but the fact that clerks from the Chamber of Commerce automatically formulate a question based on the axiom about bad weather. There is no climate – there are no investments, there are no profits when trying to make them, and risky investors "get".

The officials also have a ready answer to this: our people are entirely financially illiterate, they do not choose, they are not good, they have funds for themselves. This is a universal answer to all cases of life – about the fact that a wise government was unlucky with the people, like Gaddafi. But in fact, where does literacy begin? Starting with the question about the guarantees of the safety of your investments. If they bring in 7 percent per year with inflation per ten, then it is necessary to be illiterate to invest their hard-earned money in such an undertaking.

Among other things, the head of the Center for Strategic Research, Mikhail Dmitriev, spoke on this topic the other day. He proposed not to raise taxes to plug the hole in the PF budget, but... to reduce. But to expand the tools for investing pension savings and, importantly, to guarantee their safety by creating a special fund with the participation of the state. By the way, the same Dmitriev in the late nineties accurately calculated the current situation with the pension disaster, at the same time he proposed mechanisms for investing long money in Russia and abroad under state guarantees.

Most officials criticized Dmitriev's idea. It was as if a doctor at the bedside of a consumptive patient was telling his relatives that it would be necessary to ventilate the room, wash the floors and take the patient out into the sun at all. And the relatives would be offended: what, we are dirty, or what, we don't sleep at night, we are happy about the disease, we tear off chicken broth from ourselves for him, and you'd better give pills and go…

So, the climate for investment is bad. There are no guarantees for depositors. Therefore, it is naive to wait for improvement. Really – to prepare for an increase in excise taxes and taxes, for other joys.

But the problem of long money is also not the whole problem. In fact, the ratio of working citizens and pensioners is shifting towards those who deserve a rest. At the same time, both labor productivity and earnings of our worker are less than those of a German or a Frenchman. What to do?

The easiest way is to threaten to raise the retirement age, and not to raise it, of course, on the eve of elections. But it can be assumed that many people over 55-60 would not mind postponing retirement. Recruitment agencies are still noting that more and more elderly people are looking for work.

But it is not the investment climate that comes into effect here, but the business and legal climate. Although Russia recognizes international conventions on the inadmissibility of discrimination in the field of work based on race, gender or age, such discrimination flourishes in our country.

Job advertisements may contain both gender and age restrictions. A couple of years ago, the Center for Social and Labor Rights (CSTP) implemented a project to study discrimination at work. The analysis of job advertisements in three cities was carried out: Moscow, Samara and Kemerovo. In 29% of cases, the employer formulated their preferences for the gender of employees, in 43% of cases, age priorities for the candidate were determined, and 53% of vacancies had restrictions on both age and gender. This is impossible in the EU, and in the USA, even an oral question about the age of the applicant from the employer is an excuse to go to court and win a lot of money.

Both in Europe and in America, decent firms are now planning development based on the growing number of elderly consumers. There, by the way, there is another problem: the company prefers to improve the qualifications of an experienced employee, rather than hiring a beginner. It is no coincidence that students often protest against the same increase in the retirement age.

In our country, article 64 of the Labor Code also prohibits age discrimination. But in practice, the courts are deprived of the opportunity to protect the interests of employees, which is described in detail by the lawyer of the TSTP Anna Gvozditskikh, giving an example of how the court did not protect a person who was sent to work in the company by the labor exchange and who was not hired because he was over 35 years old and not a woman at all ... The verdict was: "...it was established that the employer wanted to see a woman under the age of 35 as the chief accountant of his organization, which is confirmed by his applications to the employment center... The establishment of these requirements for their future employee is dictated solely by the interests of the employer, which <...> is his right."

According to statistics, in Russia in general, the salary of a specialist in most cases increases, as a rule, up to 35 years, and then stops. In such a climate, of course, society will not welcome an increase in the age of retirement.

Meanwhile, the hole in the pension budget is growing. And nothing can be done with it until these two tasks are solved. About long money and guarantees against their drying up. And about the right to work and guarantees of protection against discrimination at work. Only the authorities can solve both of these tasks.

But you can not solve anything, but continue to hope for new bloodshed and a rise in prices for domestic raw materials, weeping from the stupidity of the people entrusted to you.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru25.03.2011