How to stop destroying your homeland and start living
Today Russia faces the task of liberation from the colonial model of economic development: the transition from stimulating financial speculation and export of raw materials to the production of added value, that is from the plunder of natural resources and the Soviet legacy to the creation of our own civilization.
This comprehensive task means recreating (and in many ways, taking into account the transformation of society by information technology, creating anew) a qualitatively new economic and, therefore, political mechanism for the current generation of officials.
The task must be solved (although the state does not dare to even set it yet) in unpredictable external conditions. We are unable to predict even the part of the future that has already arrived: the collapse of unified world markets, a breakdown into a global depression (with the loss of part of the technologies that are becoming too complex), a migration flood, and supra-market mechanisms for regulating life (based on artificial intelligence, realizing itself through digital ecosystems).
But the unpredictable future does not cancel the mechanisms and patterns of the past, just as market economic coercion did not cancel pre-market violence, and Lobachevsky did not cancel Euclid.
Therefore, normalizing the economy in new conditions that are not yet fully imaginable still requires the implementation of the basic truths that were realized during the creation of the industrial world.
First of all, since the key driving force of the economy is capital, it should serve Russia, and not the countries (including those trying to destroy us) to which it is running headlong today. To do this, it is necessary to prohibit its withdrawal (except for the productive investments and advances of imports that Russia needs), including the cashing out of large sums as “internal emigration” to invisible authorities and therefore crime-prone areas.
This will be a terrible test for the state, since the capital it has locked up in the country will require acceptable investment conditions from it. Since today's “rules of life” mean the destruction of most capital, these demands will be dictated in the literal sense of the word by the threat of death, that is, they will be furious, desperate and not restrained by any framework, including laws.
To channel the energy of capital into a creative channel, it is necessary, first of all, to reorient it from financial speculation destructive to the country to productive investment. The temptation of the former forces us to limit them, as all major countries that have become developed did upon reaching the current Russian level of maturity of the financial system. Those who ignored this need (like the rich and developed countries of South America) simply deprived themselves of their chances for progress, since capital left the real sector for financial speculation that was more attractive to it, but was killing the country. Therefore, Western Europe limited them until the 80s, the USA until 1999, Japan until 2000, and India and China are still doing this. The most elegant is the Japanese mechanism: investments of financial market participants in speculative instruments can be any, but only after investing in the real sector (including loans to the population and the state) five times the amount.
So that it would be profitable for capital to invest in the real sector outside obviously limited government benefits, a tax and customs revolution is needed, turning all economic stimulation 180 degrees.
The fiscal burden should be removed from domestic production of added value and transferred to excisable goods and imports that compete with Russian production that is getting on its feet.
It should stimulate productive investment instead of unproductive consumption (as it is now), that is, it should be progressive in terms of consumption, so that the poor have no reason to work «in the shadows», and the rich invest in factories, not castles.
Reasonable protectionism will create all the conditions for this: the very presence of a production plan for a private investor should lead to the allocation by the state of a customs quota, providing the investor with a growing share in the domestic market as production increases, protected from external competition. Of course, if an investor does not fulfill his obligations to the state, he must be punished.
The accumulated wealth of private individuals should be subject to imputed income tax, following the Swiss experience. Thus, the state establishes that the owner can spend no more than a quarter of his income on the maintenance of expensive property (including real estate), and the cost of this maintenance (routine repairs, cleaning, insurance) is determined by regulation. Thus, the owner’s income cannot be less than the fourfold increase in the normatively established expenses for the maintenance of his property. If he declares less, he pays tax on the undeclared portion of the imputed income and becomes subject to investigation.
Transferring the fiscal burden to the export of raw materials will be impossible, since locking up capital in the country will sharply strengthen the ruble (and reduce the profitability of exports). The strengthening of the ruble will be softened by an increase in money emission, obviously backed by the foreign currency remaining in the country, but physical and managerial restrictions will not allow production (and therefore emission) to increase too quickly.
Therefore, we should expect the ruble to strengthen by more than third — up to 60 rubles/dollar. This will force current exporters of raw materials to reorient themselves towards processing them — with understandable indignation, but with enormous benefit for the country.
Of course, the liberal understanding of the state as a non-interfering “night watchman with a ministerial salary” in this situation will wash away the economy (even before the inevitable landslide devaluation) with a flow of cheaper imports.
Therefore, the state will have to act extremely quickly as it strengthens ruble, introduce flexible protective duties, withdrawing to the budget the difference between the remaining previous prices on the domestic market and the importer’s price that has fallen due to the strengthening of the ruble.
At the same time, import duties should protect not only Russian production, but also the power of the Russian people. So, now on the way from Tashkent to Moscow, a truckload of tomatoes becomes 5-7 times more expensive, and a critically significant part of these funds goes to ensuring the already quite tangible power of diasporas in Russia. It is clear that the state is obliged to take the bulk of this excess profit for the needs of the budget for the development of our society, and not the forces destroying it, while ensuring price opportunities to satisfy 90% of the country's needs with domestic tomatoes, including greenhouse tomatoes.
As a result of the application of flexible import duties, compensating for the strengthening of the ruble, a third of the amount of modern imports will become the income not of speculators and resellers of all stripes, but of the budget. Then, as domestic production develops, replacing imports, revenues from these duties will decrease, but this decrease is more than offset by increased taxes from domestic production.
Naturally, this will require the restoration of a market economy in the form of an effective antimonopoly policy. (After all, the market is, on the whole, an equivalent exchange, and the arbitrariness of the monopolies, which is not restrained by the state by raising prices, makes this exchange as a whole unequal, not even distorting, but simply canceling the market.)
The Antimonopoly Service should become an analogue of the KGB in the economic sphere: gain the right to check the cost structure of any company based on suspicion of abuse of its monopoly position, and in case of sharp price fluctuations, as was the case in impeccable Germany back in the 90s, first return prices to place, and only then find out what it was. (After all, the damage caused by non-market price distortion to the economy as a whole can become critically significant over many months of investigation and cannot be compensated by any fines.)
The measures described will finally make it possible to realize the constitutional right of Russian citizens to life not in empty words, but in deeds, guaranteeing them a living wage, and not the officially lowered one, but the real one. (To understand: the minimum pension in 2024 is estimated to be 43.5 thousand rubles, and the state, despite all military expenses, right now has the financial capacity to pay it.)
It’s clear, that by limiting the arbitrariness of monopolies, an increase in citizens' incomes will sharply increase domestic demand, making it a true locomotive of Russia's development.
Since the economy is an integral organism, changing its model from theft to creation requires a coordinated impact on its key sectors. The transformation of only its individual elements will cause (as for a person, for example, taking antibiotics without protecting the digestive tract) the destruction of the existing system without creating a new one, that is, destabilization instead of development.
This makes strategic planning based on intersectoral balance vitally necessary — and that is precisely why it is hysterically denied by the savage liberals in power (according to the patterns of the Washington Consensus back in the late 80s).