Record growth in profits for bankers and oil and gas companies amid pension reform

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as of August 1, the wealth of the richest people in Russia has grown by $ 14 billion. The following characters appear here: Alexey Mordashov - his fortune has grown quite a bit, by only 675 million; Vladimir Lisin - he got rich by $ 2.3 billion, let's be glad for him. We can rejoice even more for Leonid Mikhelson - his capital increased immediately by $ 3.27 billion.

By the way, when you see these figures, for some reason you immediately remember another figure: a reform designed to rob millions of people who should have reached the retirement age, but as a result will not reach it, will bring only 200 to 300 billion rubles a year to the treasury. So, only Michelson's increase for six months more than covers the amounts that Siluanov, Medvedev and company are going to siphon out of us.

But the rich news did not end there. Oil and gas companies earned an additional RUB 1 trillion in pre-tax profit in the first half of 2018, 50% more than a year earlier. Let's be glad for the collective Sechin and Vekselberg.

And then we will rejoice for the collective Gref and Kostin. The Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Vasily Pozdyshev said that the profit of the entire banking system at the end of 2018, taking into account the banks under resolution, will amount to 1.3 trillion rubles.

Again, compare with the planned income from "reforms": pension, VAT, budget rule, tax maneuver. Let us also recall the abolition of fines for non-repatriation of foreign exchange earnings - this law was recently signed by the President. Also the other day we learned that offshore special islands are being created for oligarchs. I remember the catchphrase: “Provide 10%, and capital agrees to any use, at 20% it becomes animated, at 50% it is positively ready to break its head, at 100% it violates all human laws, at 300% there is no such crime for which he would not have risked, even if only on pain of the gallows. " Or, even simpler, in the popular dialect: "Five old women is already a ruble."

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We can throw up our hands as much as we like and marvel at the oligarchs' record profits, ask each other: "Have you heard, have you seen ?!" But the dogs bark (they don't even bark sometimes, but they whine quietly from the booths assigned to them for self-expression, which are still available for this), and the caravan continues to go. Our public and state wool should not be confused with private-owned wool. When we talk about pension money, it is state money. And how much each of the billionaires has become rich is their own money. They "earned" them for themselves - what does this have to do with pensions, what does this have to do with the state budget? Therefore, everything is in order, everything is fine, everything is according to the law, everything is as it should be, everything is as we have done since 1991. I don’t understand why there’s anything to be surprised or indignant about. So you can negotiate up to progressive taxation. But it will not be possible to come to an agreement before him, because the court and prison are a logical chain. Progressive tax in terminology, in philology, in the philosophy of Grefs and curls is understood as follows: as soon as you start cutting more wool from the hen that lays the golden eggs, then this hen immediately flies overseas and loses interest in its current habitat. And therefore, as long as we are interested in breeding these hens, and not in taking away their golden eggs (I remind the logic of liberal reformers), then we need to offend them as little as possible, to cherish and cherish them as much as possible. And to do so that all billionaires from all over the world strive to us, "all the flags were on a visit to us" - so that someday the crumbs from these tables finally wake up and reach those very pensioners or low-income citizens, about whom so the naive advocates of justice are worried.

However, it is possible that such a logic is absent from "our" government fellow citizens. Their logic may be as follows: they themselves and their families are somehow serving as servants from the table of the largest oligarchs, oil and gas magnates and bankers. And then, when dignitaries finish their service in the field of some deputy premiership, they become members of the board of directors.

We are trying to get behind the screen and highlight their true plan, but there is an economic program that they do not hide. They repeat at every corner that if you tax business a little harder, then budget revenues will fall accordingly, and there will be no economic growth. Why do we need to reduce pension costs, why do we need to transfer people to this slaughterhouse system? And in order to rapidly recover economic growth. He will never be repaired in the presence of citizen Oreshkin, and now, if there are fewer pensioners in physical terms, in quantitative terms, it means that the burden on the state will certainly weaken, and we will surely have economic growth again. What is the real ideology behind all this? You cannot blame high-ranking authoritative officials or socially responsible entrepreneurs for wanting to fill their pockets or secure an old age that will not depend on pension payments. We cannot go so far and allow ourselves such dangerous conclusions!

Everything that is happening now is natural, unfortunately. We started with the fact that sometimes the wool is state-owned and not very much. As Louis XVI once said: "The state is me." Today our state has long belonged to them, the knackers, the state is they. When now they are trying to remind about a common interest, about the common good, about the interests of the country, about patriotism, then you need to understand that this is their country, this is their homeland, this is their common good, this is their state and their patriotism. They privatized everything - not only the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant.

They are trying to explain to us that ordinary people should fork out for everything: for the wrong toilets in their dachas, for not such trees and not such potatoes on their backyard plots, for, God forbid, self-employment (that is, an attempt to survive in inhuman conditions). We have to fork out for everything, because - sanctions !!! Why, then, sanctions hit us very hard and sometimes become simply life-threatening (in many families it has come down to malnutrition and malnutrition), but the class of owners is swelling by leaps and bounds on sanctions? After all, the sanctions, in theory, hit them. All the sechins and grefs on the US Congress sanctions list - why do they have such profits? Moreover, the more sanctions, the for some reason they have more profit - how to understand this secret?

It's very simple: they are the masters of the situation, and they decide who will suffer and who will gain. It is another matter that when the sanctions were conceived, such a meaning, most likely, was laid by our international "partners" too. Overseas sharks are well aware of the manners and behavior of our small-scale sharks. They understood perfectly well that if they pressed the tail of our oligarchs, then these oligarchs themselves would definitely not want to pay for what was happening, but would try to shift the responsibility onto their workers, onto the population. And then the degree of social tension will rise sharply, and this is what is needed to turn over our entire shaky pyramid at some point. The logic of the “partners” behavior is absolutely clear. They impose sanctions, the sanctions are projected onto the workers' collective of Krasnoyarsk, who are immediately ricocheted for everything that happens to Rusal. You see that the State Duma is the first to run to help not pensioners, but "our" companies that have come under sanctions. How many different acts have already been adopted that will help different entrepreneurs. They took a Dagestani businessman in France - deputies are immediately drawn to the front, senators are in a hurry to help, help, help! But do we see the same energy, the same activity in relation to some other issues concerning the majority of the population? Of course not. This is a class that defends its interests, the class rushes to its own rescue. And when the sanctions were thought about, it was perfectly clear that our class, like any other capitalists in another country, would behave in this way. And in this sense, the sanctions absolutely achieve their goal. They make our rich richer. In order to avoid the pressure of the sanctions, they dodge, find loopholes and shift the responsibility, the burden, the burden of these sanctions onto the most disenfranchised, onto those who cannot stand up for themselves, thereby increasing irritation and hatred in society. Thus, everything is logical, everything is natural, everything is correct. Thus, by inciting, encouraging, provoking discontent and protests, a stronger capitalist state can put pressure on a weaker capitalist state. In this case, we are a weak - very weak - capitalist state, and just like at the beginning of the twentieth century, we are absolutely vulnerable to such measures of influence.

Is there a secret plan for depopulation in this? If we consider a plan of depopulation, for example, a world war, then we can assume that such a plan exists. Another thing: how much is this plan controlled by the planners themselves? This is a moot point. However, there is this secret plan or not this secret plan, and the population of Russia is quite realistically dying out. Sometimes, by acquaintance, you can find out the statistics of the registry offices of the Moscow region. The numbers are terrifying in terms of the ratio of deaths and births. In general, in the region, the ratio of deaths to births is five to three. Any reasonable person understands that if this situation, which has been going on for 28 years, continues for another 30-50 years, then in fact nothing will remain of our country. It self-destructs.

This picture is catastrophic no less and no more than everything that has happened in the country since 1991 is catastrophic. If we talk about whether people realize it or not, then I think that the propaganda machine created by the bourgeois clan and belonging to him works great here, which daily, weekly, monthly injects horse doses of media anesthesia into the mass consciousness, forcing people to switch to anything. apart from their vital interests. I recently spoke with my son's class teacher. She worked in one of the schools near Moscow, retired and said that now, although we hear from all the stands that pensions cannot be less than 10 thousand rubles, including from teachers, this is found everywhere. This is the first thing. And secondly, for each of these people, who turned out to be already unnecessary to the educational system, who faced a terrible cancer diagnosis, the average price tag for minimum chemotherapy is 154 thousand rubles. This is how much an ordinary family near Moscow has to pay, finding somewhere, scraping, borrowing, turning inside out, in order to prolong - not even save, but prolong - someone's life. Isn't this sufficient evidence for a specific person that the catastrophe continues, that it cannot be tolerated further, that it is so impossible, that something needs to be changed? Of course, the bony hand of a collection agency or a fatal disease will someday knock on the life of every person, and an epiphany will occur. Enlightenment has already come to many, but from what we see in the media, what we hear on the streets, an insight has come to an insufficient number of people. Too many still entertain themselves with illusions, too many are still trying to justify what is happening, to find him some kind of rational justification that would allow him to put up with what is happening on a daily basis.

I will repeat my favorite slogan, not invented by me, of course, but forgotten by many now: "No one will give us deliverance - neither God, nor the Tsar, nor the hero." Only collective activity is capable of at least changing something around each person. The main enemy of our agitation is an illusion, it is hope, hope in some people who will come themselves, getting involved in elections or simply making their way through thorns to the administrative-command stars, will be able to change something. There won't be any wonderful people, there won't be any great fellows, there won't be any wonderful, compassionate entrepreneurs - none of this will happen. As for agitation, it was not for nothing that V. I. Lenin in 1902 threw out an appeal, understanding the situation in the country: “We need an army of propagandists. Without this army of propagandists, it is impossible to fight for mass consciousness. " Today this army of propagandists does not exist, the mass consciousness is asleep, despite all the horrors of everyday life. That is, the surgical operation to eviscerate the country continues with the body's non-resistance, the body is not aware of what is happening. Therefore, of course, the most important element is propaganda.

During the First World War, the very structure of society in bourgeois-feudal Russia showed its complete failure. That is, first of all, the midwife of changes was the world war. In these extreme, exceptional circumstances, everything that tsarism and the tsarist bourgeoisie built turned out to be a house of cards, turned out to be an unreliable building that collapsed on those who built it. And only at that moment the Bolsheviks (who were not listened to by many, who were ignored and considered to be German agents, agents of some world banking houses), these people whom no one took seriously, suddenly began to listen. And they turned out to be right, it turned out that the ideas with which they went are the only saving ideas, this is the only possible way to preserve community between those people who are not going to pack their boxes and go by ferry, steamer, train to the West.

Of course, the key role in this was played not only by the party, not only the agitation structures, but also by what was called the Soviets, something that is practically forgotten today. But the power, which as a result of the war, as a result of economic disorganization, fell into a state of paralysis, was picked up by such grassroots organizations. But today it is very difficult to induce our people to such collective grassroots self-government. We are all amazed at the petty-bourgeois, private-ownership consciousness. More than once or twice, each of us has come across the fact that it is impossible to mobilize people even to clean up our own street or achieve order in the entrance, because everyone observes only the interests of his own swamp and no longer thinks about anything. If we do not win this bourgeois, private property, bourgeois consciousness in ourselves, do not learn to act collectively, then we can fantasize as much as we like about the achievements of our ancestors, about how we will restore the Soviet Union 2.0. This will be nothing. It will remain fairy tales and dreams, and the country will die out.

You should not pin excessive hopes on the emergence of an increasing number of young people who are not even connected by birth with the Soviet era, who are trying to voice something in tune with me on the Internet or on the air. There are indeed more such people, but they are definitely not in the majority, they are definitely not the vanguard. Even if they were them, one cannot change something with one avant-garde. It is important that the enslaved class of working people itself rise from sleep - a dormant class dreaming of transforming itself into a huckster, into a bourgeoisie. Today, even a person who pulls the strap in some production, who is humiliated from all sides, has such a dream - to jump into the chair of the one who oppresses him. Unfortunately, this is a very common picture, so I would not want to spread redundant, vain illusions. But I am absolutely sure that history is not asphalt that can be leveled with a roller and forever brought into such a horizontal, level position through which no green growth can break through. No, this will not happen, the contradictions that “our” bourgeoisie creates will sooner or later destroy it. The only question is: how? The logic of the development of our capitalism - yes, in general, and any logic of the development of capitalism - leads to self-destruction. So, the question is, what will happen when “our” oligarchs, “our” bourgeoisie bring the situation to this logical end? Will there be a force in society, will there be at least a handful of people who can bang their fists on the table and say that “there is such a party”, propose a plan for re-creating, building a new something that may not resemble the Soviet Union, but will it be exactly opposite in meaning and objectives to what we see today?