Russia in the darkness (anxiety of a simple entrepreneur)

    I want to invite everyone to read the article by the director of the company where I used to work - a smart, experienced person who thinks a lot.
    This text was written a year and a half ago, and then many took it with hostility - it seemed to them that everything was too good and would continue, and only alarmists screaming about a brewing crisis.
    But what do we have now?
    Look at the RTS chart , its fall during the month, the price of oil and its dynamics, the growth of inflation and the decline in labor productivity, and then read this article, written a year and a half ago. Who is the prophet?

    So, the article (author's spelling and expression is observed):

    I want to live in the Motherland !!!, but God !!! how tired I am of all this ...

    So, Russia has entered into a full-blown economic crisis. Have you noticed this yet? Nothing, soon you will notice ...

    Of course, the eye is obscured by a continuous stream of “socialistically” uniform victorious and optimistic news about taming inflation, about the steady growth of GDP, about the power of the domestic currency that wins the dollar, etc.



    However, if there is even a drop of common sense, then this spinning flywheel of a comprehensive crisis is hard to miss.
    For mutual understanding, I would like to clarify what I mean by “economic crisis”. If in the ordinary, crisis is a turning point in changes, then in this sense, of course, the crisis has not come. People, from old memory, consider a crisis in the economy - a kind of default, when that very compressed spring of accumulated negative processes in the economy is unclenched. But in fact, the crisis of the economy (and the economy of any country is disproportionately large compared to the current personal welfare) is when positive changes do not exceed negative changes. Think about the wording - it means that there are more negative phenomena than positive ones. The economy is a lot of vector, in it, even during default, someone won. So this is precisely the wording that is most correct in defining a crisis. The default of 98 in itself, in my opinion, was not a crisis, but the self-liquidation of an obsolete system. It brought more by and large positive than negative. Life in loans, putting off problems for later, deceiving oneself and the people, asexual foreign policy of indulging someone who will give loans, theft and irresponsibility - all this collapsed into the head of those, including those who cherished all this. If everything happened (opening the spring) slowly and sadly, then perhaps this is a much worse option, since the consequences would be more catastrophic. Actually, we have such experience, the whole system of socialism (created and built by the founders who never worked as creators themselves) was a slow compression of the spring of crisis phenomena. Especially in the early 70s, this process of negative change has ceased to be properly compensated by the positive directions. On the one hand, it’s not psychologically scary that what can happen (or not happen) is not at all soon. But one does not have to be a conductor of the psychology of a butterfly - its happy life is fleeting. We already had everything, and again there is no point in stepping on the "old rake". Actually, the psychology of the "little man whose hut is on the edge" leads us to such events more than once. But how is it sung in the song “It seems that they are not idlers, and they could live ..” It is evident on Mondays that our mother gave birth to us? and again to step on the "old rake" there is no point. Actually, the psychology of the "little man whose hut is on the edge" leads us to such events more than once. But how is it sung in the song “It seems that they are not idlers, and they could live ..” It is evident on Mondays that our mother gave birth to us? and again to step on the "old rake" there is no point. Actually, the psychology of the "little man whose hut is on the edge" leads us to such events more than once. But how is it sung in the song “It seems that they are not idlers, and they could live ..” It is evident on Mondays that our mother gave birth to us?

    We have become more informed, we see the world more with our own eyes, and not with the eyes of central television news observers. Internet - finally broke through the monopoly of television on the news truth. Social networks are expanding and becoming a conductor of the instant dissemination of information and a diverse assessment of it.
    Well, so what do we see, let's try to figure it out?

    When looking at our country from the outside, you can immediately notice various economic absurdities:
    1. In one of the poorest countries in Europe - Russia - the most expensive prices for almost everything, except (so far) gasoline. But even that one in America, the richest country in the world, is cheaper than ours. And at the same time, they buy oil from us, pay not a weak export duty, drive it through half the world, reload it, process it with expensive American hands, transport it to consumers, and in the end it costs less? So, someone has a lot for free?
    2. All other goods - from eggs, meat, wine, fish, to real estate - are cheaper in Europe, not to mention America. At the same time, it’s absolutely not clear how, for example, pig meat grown by a German, with his obviously higher salary, more expensive energy sources for working agricultural machinery and ensuring pig farming, is much better quality than what is sold here, with large costs in trade. As a result, it is cheaper ????
    3. At the same time, price increases are continuous and significantly exceed the inflation declared by the government. How is this possible? After all, you can’t deceive yourself, confirmations every day on the price tags of stores! The ruble is growing relative to world currencies. And prices are rising in rubles - therefore, all prices are rising twice - for the first time in rubles, and then also in foreign currency due to the artificial growth of the ruble exchange rate.
    4. With the growth of ruble prices in trade, the ruble itself is constantly growing relative to world currencies !!! This means: either - the whole world is rolling in tartars, and we are in a “white coat”, or that the ruble is being artificially strengthened in order to hide real inflation. And this in turn suggests that real price increases are even higher.
    5. Real estate prices have exceeded prices in many Western countries. It is overestimated by the pumping of unsecured funds to the economy from the raw materials sector at least 2 times. With disgusting quality, and the highest risk in the acquisition. Housing and communal services prices almost equaled world prices, with the same quality. The main result of the implementation of the National Project “Affordable Housing” was a tripling in 2 years of the cost of housing, and as a result, its complete inaccessibility to the population. With the cost of a one-room apartment of $ 100,000 and a loan interest rate of 15 percent per annum, does a young HIGHLY PAYED specialist even pay $ 1000 a month (which is VERY much even with Western salaries) risks never paying this cost? The financial situation is monstrous, renting a one-room apartment in Moscow costs $ 700 a month, a communal apartment of 70, transport to work another 70, total only for the apartment and the road to work need to spend 840 dollars. Despite the fact that rent has not risen in price following the price of real estate by three times, and this process has just begun!
    6. The prices for renting commercial real estate also began to skyrocket, and anyone who starts a business or expands it is already deliberately put in unfavorable conditions, if not impossible. We rent a square meter of office already costs from 30 to 70 dollars in the ordinary. In not the cheapest country, Germany, renting an office in Leipzig costs 11 euros a meter, in Berlin - 16 euros, and only in Frankfurt experiencing an acute shortage of space - 30 euros a meter! What kind of production of competitive products and global competitiveness can we talk about?

    I do not want to give detailed political assessments of what is happening. So it’s clear that the roots of what is happening go back to the origins of “market” reforms.

    But guys !!! A sense of self-preservation should be at least elementary? Is it necessary to step on the same rake more than once? We remember the guilty smiling Lifshits, our chief economist during the default period, who, with a bewildered smile, said before the television camera that they said "we thought that a strong ruble policy would be an anchor for our economy." Yeah, an anchor on the neck of a sinking economy! And well done! And his son, I suppose at MGIMO, and champagne for $ 1000 per bottle do not hesitate to buy. And we remember that the course of the “fortified” anchor, beyond any measure, collapsed 6 times. A pension heroically raised by how much since then?
    Woe - half-educated, our economists, and no one has deprived of a diploma of higher education, not to mention all the docents-professions-doctorates there. Peeeyediaiators ... But this Lifshits should have deservedly lived in a village in the Perm Region in a house - a chicken coop that has been rickety in retirement in the amount of 5000 rubles. To each according to his abilities! And that would be the height of humanism! Where is that damn “feedback”?
    Where is the feedback at which the official may suffer during disgusting and disastrous work? Is there a management system that monitors world prices and tariffs of end consumers and regulates the internal prices of monopolists based not on their astrological forecasts by stars, but on the basis of a real picture of world prices and preferably with orientation to those countries in which there is a serious increase in these areas of the economy. And if the price picture does not create conditions for the prospects for growth in the competitiveness of industries, then it would flexibly react to this by market mechanisms rather than administration, creating attractiveness and soft conditions in this direction, providing there benefit and interest for entrepreneurs and employees.
    Here on the TV channel they show the main sanitary Onishchenko, who complains about the “slowness” of entrepreneurs who could not fill the vacant niches after his department banned the import of wines, mineral water, meat, fish. He is in the White Coat, and the fact that salmon in stores jumped 1.5-2 times in price, and Moldovan wines could not be fully replaced by Krasnodar wines - the business is not agile to blame ... And it turns out that we cannot get off the oil and gas needle - the same is to blame slowness of businessmen !!! There you go !!! It turns out all the guilty have long been known !!! And how long does it take to get land, plant vineyards, grow a vine and harvest, install processing equipment, provide aging and storage, bottling lines, logistics, promote new brands - he even remotely understands what IT IS WORK, and how much time and effort should be put for this ???? And can he guarantee that the entrepreneur, having done all this, will not run into the fact that Moldova has decided not to join NATO and agreed to buy Gazprom’s gases at a price of $ 250? Why did I receive benefits for returning my wine to Russian markets? And with a more favorable climate, with low salaries of the Moldovan peasant, with less corruption of the authorities, will his costs be lower and his competitiveness will be completely higher than the Russian who hit winemaking? that Moldova decided not to join NATO and agreed to buy Gazprom’s gases at a price of $ 250? Why did I receive benefits for returning my wine to Russian markets? And with a more favorable climate, with low salaries of the Moldovan peasant, with less corruption of the authorities, will his costs be lower and his competitiveness will be completely higher than the Russian who hit winemaking? that Moldova decided not to join NATO and agreed to buy Gazprom’s gases at a price of $ 250? Why did I receive benefits for returning my wine to Russian markets? And with a more favorable climate, with low salaries of the Moldovan peasant, with less corruption of the authorities, will his costs be lower and his competitiveness will be completely higher than the Russian who hit winemaking?
    What will create impossible conditions for the sale of their products to the poor, who decided on another feat of kamikaze to a Russian entrepreneur? But for him this is the end ... The end of his family, work, work ...

    What is the point of fighting pig-breeding methods for improving demography if the whole structure of the emerging state-monopoly capitalism is aimed at over-exploiting the people? What causes the people to multiply and die a lot? We have not a low birth rate, we have HIGH mortality !!!
    And this high mortality rate is not only from the agonizing state healthcare system.
    Let's look at what additional burdens the middle class undergoes — the foundation of any market economy, and why this “foundation” dies like flies:
    ...

    Habr does not allow posting very long articles and simply trims them, so who is interested - read the continuation where the original was published a year and a half ago - there are also 1,500 interesting comments.


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