If you are an able-bodied citizen under 46, then most likely next year you will be robbed of several tens of thousands of rubles. This is not a prophecy from Vanga (a famous Bulgarian mystic) and not a generic statement like “the country is horribly corrupt, so we’re all constantly being robbed.” This is a decision by the Russian government, and if it is approved by the State Duma (the lower house of parliament), then 25 million citizens will have their money taken away. Not some abstract share of resource rents or taxes, but their own specific pension contributions, earned through their labor. Newspapers have written a lot about this, but unfortunately very few people really understand it, so for now we are not seeing much public outcry. Let me try to explain it in super-mega-simple terms. 1. If you work legally, insurance contributions are charged on your salary; those contributions pay current retirees now, and later they are supposed to pay your pension. 2. If you were born after 1967, you are part of the “funded pension” program, meaning (the government said) that the size of your pension depends on you: special “pension savings contributions” are taken from your salary. Higher salary = higher contributions = higher future pension. 3. You can choose to direct your “pension savings” to a non-state pension fund (NPF), or make no choice at all—in that case you are labeled a “silent one,” and your “pension savings” are managed by the state development bank VEB. 4. Some time ago, the government decided that “silent ones” would no longer have anything transferred to the funded part, while those in NPFs would still get 6%. 5. And now the government is saying: there is suddenly not enough money in the Pension Fund, so in 2014 we will confiscate that 6% from everyone who signed up with an NPF. Still not clear? Then look here:
25 million people are working-age Russian citizens born after 1967 who have savings in NPFs and direct 6% of their salary there. For all of them, the math is very simple: - Let’s say your take-home salary is 40,000 rubles a month. - That means your gross salary (including 13% income tax) is 45,970 rubles. - That means the funded insurance contribution (6%) is 2,750 rubles per month, or 33,000 rubles per year. That is exactly the amount that will be confiscated from you in 2014 and used to plug budget holes created by the government’s incompetence and thievery. Once again: this is not some abstract oil-and-gas money. These are very specific contributions that belong to you and are supposed to make your life in retirement a little better. This is an astonishing robbery taking place in plain sight. The government expects to find an extra 244–300 billion rubles this way. Let me remind you that, by official estimates, 1 trillion rubles a year is stolen from the budget through government procurement. But no one seems concerned with reducing theft in public procurement (for example, by adopting RosPil’s proposals) — it is much easier simply to take away the savings of millions of people. And we are not talking about oligarchs, the highest-income citizens, a “luxury tax,” and so on. They are taking money from the most active and able-bodied part of the population. Ordinary people. Even if you yourself are not affected by this “pension robbery,” someone close to you certainly is. As for me, for example, I am a “silent one,” but even in our Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) there are six people who transferred their savings to NPFs and whose savings will now be taken away. It is very hard to imagine any European government surviving after robbing 25 million people this way. Young, able-bodied people—the very ones most capable of overturning cars in protest. In Russia, not only are these 25 million people quietly and gloomily watching their future pension being taken away, there is not even a political force organizing a campaign against this “pension robbery.” This is terrible, and for me and my colleagues at ACF it is doubly terrible, because polls showed that working people under 45 were the core of my electorate in the mayoral election. These are the people among whom internet penetration is close to 90%. These are the people actually reading this post. Several late-Soviet and post-Soviet generations of citizens united by similar cultural codes. We have to defend ourselves. If there is no political force ready to launch a campaign of public pressure on State Duma deputies, then we must do it ourselves.
Here, go here
http://pension.fbk.info/ This is a website we created specifically to organize a public campaign against this “pension robbery.” Here you can enter your take-home salary and calculate exactly how much money will be stolen from you.
That is the entertaining part. The substantive part is that we want to personalize responsibility:
The website lets you send appeals to government bodies and, most importantly, to the State Duma deputy elected from your region. The submission form is connected to the official State Duma letter form taken from its website. So this will be your official appeal. The point of the campaign is very simple: There are 450 deputies in the State Duma. We will send letters to every one of them. Tomorrow we will also deliver official written demands to each of them on paper. We are demanding one very simple thing: vote against the law on “pension robbery.” Each deputy’s response will be published. Everyone who votes “for” it, regardless of party affiliation, will be responsible for the confiscation of pension savings from 25 million people. We will publish a list of these “enemies of the people” and try to make sure that list reaches those 25 million people. Our combined efforts and the internet give us that possibility. We know that even within the government this “pension robbery” is viewed ambiguously; the main argument in favor of it is that it is the easiest option, and no one will protest anyway. We must show that people will protest, and that deputies will not be able to blur their responsibility through a collective decision. The people who carry out this “pension robbery” will be known by name, and a “lobby” of 25 million people will always vote and act against them. Take part right now: http://pension.fbk.info/ It is easy to participate: write an appeal, share the link to http://pension.fbk.info on social media. It is very important to participate. As I wrote above, at least 90% of the 25 million people we need are internet users. That means we can reach all of them by fairly simple means: clicking the “share” buttons. Every deputy from every region must receive dozens or hundreds of appeals and understand: DO NOT VOTE FOR THE LAW ON “PENSION ROBBERY.” 25 MILLION PEOPLE WILL BE VERY ANGRY. THEY WILL NOT FORGET. THEY WILL NOT FORGIVE. No one will protect us and our pension savings except ourselves. http://pension.fbk.info/