Retiree Navalny Explains

So that no one can fool you, let’s

take a look at the issue of raising

the retirement age using one specific

pensioner as an example—

or rather, a future pensioner—and let’s call him

Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny

born in 1976, my exact namesake, and

right now he, like me, is 42 years old. At 60, he

would retire, and another 6.5 years later

he would die, because he is our average

Russian man.

And according to statistics, he lives to

66.5 years old.

The president and the government

recently brought good news to Russian citizen Navalny.

They told him: congratulations, this is great—

now you’ll retire at 65, and

accordingly, you’ll die a year and a half

after retirement.

But don’t worry, from every angle

this is very beneficial for you. Rejoice, Navalny.

Now, who benefits from this?

Young people do. Older people do too.

It’s beneficial because it extends the age

at which you can work, be useful, and

earn, in any case, more than

your future pension.

But before we celebrate, let’s

spend one minute on the math

just to understand whether the average

Russian should really be jumping

all the way to the ceiling with happiness, or

maybe just a little lower. The average Russian

earns the average salary, which means

Alexei Navalny’s salary comes to

41,650 rubles per month

and from that salary our dear Alexei

has no small amount of taxes taken out.

Right now, we’re interested in the pension contribution,

because the state told Navalny:

if you want to receive a pension when you become

old, then pay now, save up little by little,

and that’s exactly what he’s doing every

month. From his average salary,

the following goes to the Pension Fund of Russia:

9,163 rubles, and it’s very easy to calculate.

Navalny is 42 years old,

which means that before retiring at 65 he will have to

work another 23 years.

Over all that time, from his average

salary, he will pay the pension fund 2

million 529 thousand rubles. And of course, he

was also working before that—let’s say since

graduating from university at 22—and always earned his

average salary. From every paycheck

he paid

his pension contribution into the pension fund.

And if we look at Rosstat (Russia’s federal statistics agency) data and the average

salary for each year starting from 1998,

use the average tax rate, and

we get that over his entire previous

life

our Navalny has already paid the pension

fund about 1 million rubles. That is,

the total comes to 3.5

million rubles. That is the amount that

the average Russian, Navalny, has earned and

set aside for himself.

These are his own money, which he handed over

to the state in exchange for the promise

of a future pension. And our Alexei Navalny,

being an average Russian, also likes

to daydream, and so he figures:

all right, I paid 3.5 million,

if the wise state and the great Putin

took my money and used it well somehow,

then maybe

some interest has even accrued on that amount.

And even if it hasn’t, then at 65 I’ll go

on pension, and at 66.5 I’ll die. If

the state pays out my pension

based on average life expectancy,

then this accumulated amount of mine

will be returned to me over the year and a half

between my retirement and my death, and

that comes to

104,000 rubles a month.

Wow, that’s a huge sum—I’ll live it up to the fullest

for a year and a half before I

kick the bucket.

But if the state is suddenly so generous,

let’s suppose I turn out to be such a

lucky man

and manage to live another full 10 years after retirement, then

even then, divide my 3.5

million and you get that my

monthly amount comes to 29,166 rubles.

Not much, of course, but still something. In any

case, I won’t be destitute. That’s how

Alexei Navalny, the average

Russian, dreams. But real life—and

Vladimir Putin and his

United Russia party in it—

hit our average Russian

over the head with a club. We go to the website

of the Pension Fund; there is a calculator there

for calculating pensions. We enter all the data

for our Alexei Anatolyevich

and get the size of his pension: 22,136

rubles. And that’s not 22,000 rubles now, but 22,000

rubles in 2041.

How can that be? How can that be? says

65-year-old Grandpa Navalny to the screen. Where— I

worked my whole life—where did my

savings go? After all, if I had taken these

3.5 million that I set aside over

my whole life and simply put them into

even the most basic Sberbank deposit,

I would have ended up with a decent sum. But as it is,

it turns out I gave the state 3.5

million rubles, and even if I

live 10 years after retirement, they still won’t return

2 million 656

thousand rubles to me. Which means they stole

they stole 850,000 rubles from me. But I’m an average

Russian, my friends, and I will die

a year and a half after retirement, and over

those year and a half they will pay me only

398,000 rubles, and the remaining 3,100,000 rubles

where did they go? That's where they went — they were stolen

by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

along with his friends, relatives, and

his dacha neighbors (neighbors from his country house community), and that is precisely the whole point, and nothing else,

behind raising

the retirement age. Remember this yourselves and

tell everyone else: the average

Russian will pay over the course of his life

3.5 million rubles in pension contributions

and then retire

and soon die, and before his death he

will manage to get back only 11

percent of his own money, while

89 percent, or 3,100,000 rubles, will simply be

stolen from him. I'll tell you more: if

our Navalny doesn't live in Moscow

but, say, in Sverdlovsk or Perm

regions, or in Omsk, or in Khabarovsk,

he won't get a damn thing at all, because

there the average life expectancy

for men is less than 65 years — there

a person will simply work until death

and his pension contributions will go to

Dmitry Medvedev, and he will use them to build

himself yet another palace. Medvedev himself

spoke very clearly about this

Dear friends, pension reform in general

is not really connected to the retirement

age. That is just one of the issues

that requires discussion, but it is possible

to carry out pension reform without touching

the retirement age and create

a fundamentally different pension system

Don't let yourselves be deceived: raising

the retirement age

was initiated and is being carried out personally by Putin, and it is

a lie that he knows nothing about it and that everything

bad is being done by the bad government. It is his

order. This was done in order to

steal our money. This so-called

reform

will make people in our country much

poorer, and we must do everything

to prevent these plans from being carried out

After all, this is no longer about something

theoretical, but something completely concrete —

our future. What are officials,

deputies, and parties afraid of? That you will not

vote for them

Then let's say it plainly: never

a single vote should go to anyone who

now supports raising the retirement

age. We have launched a special

nationwide project, Pensiya.org, as

you can see, and there is not a single

mention on the website of my name or our party

This is a public project for everyone, and it is not

just another online petition — it is

a coordinated voting system

against those who supported raising

the retirement age

Leave your signature, and during elections

at any level, we will send you a list

of candidates in your district for whom

you absolutely must not vote

because these people and these parties have robbed us — robbed you

Be sure to take part in this

system, write which city you are from, and

this will be our shared

real mechanism for putting pressure on the authorities

Protest now, otherwise tomorrow you will not

live long enough to retire