- I'm sick of hearing about the retirement age from you already! Sure, it's an important issue, but how long can you go on? That's all you ever talk about. You should talk about other things too.
- Like what?
- Well, corruption...
I've had several conversations like this lately. Sometimes the other person adds, "that's populism" or "that's an attempt to ride a left-wing issue."
I really do talk, write, and make videos a lot about the retirement age. And I'm organizing rallies on this issue. More than that, I think we need to talk about it even more. And protest.
First. (Though not the main point.) We have always devoted a lot of attention to this issue and were the only organization that not only consistently opposed this pension robbery, but also organized collective action at every stage of the seizure of pension savings.
Here was the first protest back in 2013. And here is a permanent section on the ACF website.
Second. (And this is the main point.) Raising the retirement age is nothing less than a demonstration of the collapse of Putin's and his government's economic policy.
The final confirmation that they: - have achieved nothing; - will achieve nothing.
Raising the retirement age is itself corruption on a massive scale. Or rather: years of corruption by Putin and his inner circle have led to the retirement age being raised.
The Pension Fund of the Russian Federation accounts for 9% of GDP: 8,439,000,000,000 rubles (about 8.5 trillion rubles, for anyone too lazy to count the digits).
This is the country's biggest pocket—second only to Russia's state budget itself—filled every second by the most important people of all: those who work. They pay 22% of their earnings into it. And they could live much better if employers gave them that money directly instead of transferring it to the Pension Fund.
And it turns out that this pocket isn't exactly empty, but it has a hole so large that the only way to patch it is by directly taking money from millions of people.
They made forecasts, drew up macroeconomic models, promised a welfare state, puffed themselves up—and it all turned out to be nothing.
Now they have to raise taxes, increase the retirement age, and do all the rest of it. And there is still no money, and there won't be any.
The remaining years of Putin's rule will be years not just of the country's decline, but of rapid decline. For each of us, that will mean lower incomes, lost earnings, missed opportunities, and lost time that can never be made up.
September 9 is a nationwide day of protest against raising the retirement age. Choose your city (VKontakte or Facebook) and take to the streets—don't stay silent.