The debt pit will grow

“Somewhere the president will have even more rights, but somewhere the parliament will have more rights. But the first and second chapters of the Constitution remained inviolable ”

(A. Makarkin, Deputy Chairperson, Center for Political Technologies, Professor, HSE)



On January 15, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a "message to the federal assembly." The first part of the “message” was devoted to social issues. In fact, the head of the Russian bourgeois state acknowledged the existence of a social crisis in the country, but disguised it in his words, calling it “demographic problems”.

In Russia, mortality exceeds birth rates, people cannot start and raise children because of poverty, but to admit these circumstances is tantamount to admitting the failure of their own policies, so it turned out to be easier to talk about the demographic crisis, silent about its causes. Although words were made about the significant inequality of Russians in comparison with Soviet times.

However, further proposals for the “solution” of demographic problems showed that President Putin and the government he formed intends to maintain a liberal economic course, only tinting it with social handouts to the population.

The main innovation of the social proposals made in the “message” was the indexation of “maternal capital” and its distribution to the first child in the family. What is “maternal capital”, by and large?

"Maternal capital" is difficult, almost impossible to legally cash out. For this reason, a significant part of families invests “matkapital” in “improving housing conditions,” that is, in mortgages, in paying off part of the debt on mortgage payments.

Thus, if we trace the path of budget money allocated to “matkapital”, it will be as follows: from the state budget, money — through a certificate for “matkapital” and registration of a mortgage — goes to commercial banks. Thus, the “matkapital” program is a program for transferring budget money to commercial banks.

But there are few budget funds. After all, “matkapitalom” can pay off only a smaller part of the mortgage. And most of the apartment you have to pay from your income to the family that got into the mortgage. Thus, “matkapital” not only transfers state money to banks, it also helps to bring families with children into debt mortgage bondage. Many people would not take an apartment on credit, on a mortgage, and for many years give part of their salary, but the likelihood of paying off part of this debt with a certificate on “matkapital” seduces and makes Russian families debtors.

If the authorities really cared about Russian families, they would give them apartments for free, and the money pledged to the “matkapital” would be given out in the form of salaries, allowances, etc. Then citizens would spend this money on the purchase of goods, which would multiply lead to an increase in industrial and agricultural production. But the authorities in Russia are not socialist or even “patriotically oriented,” their goal is to support “business sharks” from the banking sector. Therefore, government money is dissolved in commercial banks. And someone later acquires yachts, villas, castles and football teams abroad on them.

At the same time, apartments that people buy on mortgages in new buildings are of very low quality. The Internet is full of video recordings of cases where, somewhere, people cracked bricks from masonry with their hands - due to poor-quality work, the use of cheap cement, etc. Some experts believe that modern new buildings will begin to "crumble" in twenty years.

Well, the rest of the social promises in the "message" of the president were really very miserable handouts. How else to call the allowance at half the minimum wage (5.5 thousand rubles per child for the poorest families) or "hot meals" for younger students? Instead of paying normal salaries to people so that parents can feed their children well, it is proposed to nourish them with a "gang" of dubious products at prices set by dubious entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, today for many families, even such a “balance” will be a serious help in life - because of the poverty into which the Russian government plunged them with their policies.

Danila Sedoy


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