I am often accused of being too sympathetic to leftist ideas. Well, now I run the risk of being branded as an ultra-liberal and a cynic, who, as you know, "always the wrong people." But I will still write: our social policy is truly paradoxical. It is absurd, unfair and humiliating. But that's not really bittersweet - the terrible thing is that the people seem to like this policy. He fully agrees with this policy and for the sake of a penny allowance today is ready to give up certainty tomorrow.
What is the paradox of Russian social policy? It surprisingly combines the promotion of dependency and social Darwinism. How is this possible? Like schizophrenia. And in this sense, it can even seem very logical (as the mentally ill can sometimes look very reasonable). Can the idea of targeted assistance, for example, be unfair? Is it wrong to support the sick and the poor with the strength of the healthy and wealthy? Should this be offensive to the strong and smart, who always win in natural selection? It seems to be not. But if you look closely at what is happening, then everything turns upside down. And targeted assistance from year goes all to the same address (and falls there as if into a black hole), and the unfortunate are not always really that unhappy, and the wealthy are not always really that wealthy, most just plow for three.
The trouble with our social policy is that in the 19th century, when even the Papuans, if they don’t know, then at least guess that the Earth is round (okay, spherical), and its stability is determined by the laws of gravity, it still stands on three pillars . The first whale is a false criterion of need, the second is material concreteness, the third is a corrupting gratuitousness.
The need test is false because it assumes that only people whose official income is below the subsistence level need support. First, it is impossible to proceed from income without taking into account expenses. Secondly, it is impossible not to take into account what kind of property a potential recipient of state aid has. Because then it turns out that support in the amount of two subsistence minimums (children's allowances plus GSP) is received by a non-working single mother living in her grandmother's three-room apartment, and a family with two children, where the mother works as a teacher, and the father is a pediatrician in the clinic, giving one and a half salary for a mortgage kopeck piece, does not receive anything from the state, except for the idea of that very social Darwinism (Spin? So spin on!). Thirdly, you still need to somehow correlate official incomes or their absence with real spending (which is not at all difficult to check). Because the same single mother grandmother's three-room apartment can actually easily rent out two rooms to girl students without a contract, thus receiving two more minimum wages without making any special efforts. And now a single mother has almost 50 thousand rubles a month for herself and the child, plus a lot of free time, and the family of state employees, who work a lot and nervously, after paying the mortgage fee, has 30 thousand for four. Such twisted justice.
The possibility of abuse lies in the fact that assistance is provided to a greater extent in the form of specific monetary amounts. Yes, we still have enough non-monetized social support measures, but in fact many of them do not work. Getting discounted medicines is another quest, sometimes you need to go around a dozen pharmacies to find the right drug (no, online services do not always save, information about the presence / absence of medicines is updated with a delay). Grocery packages can easily be completed out of delay. You can wait for free training through employment services for months.
Of course, money is easier and more convenient to give and take. It is not easy, however, to control and report. But this is not what we have - in fact, our social support is free of charge. Absolutely no conditions are put forward for the recipients of benefits for the future: neither the requirement to find a job within a certain period of time, nor the requirement to learn a new profession, nor even the requirement to at least properly raise their children, who are paid benefits - nothing.
The gratuitousness is certainly gratifying. With the proper development of society and human consciousness. But, alas, something does not look like that our people have grown up to the “trust” rendered to them (in fact, this is not about trust, but about indifferent repayment). I have met welfare recipients who boasted, and even prided themselves, on how cleverly they settled at public expense. Someone received penny payments, saying: “At least a tuft of wool from a black sheep,” and someone admitted that he was so deeply immersed in the topic that he received benefits from the state in an amount greater than the average salary in the region.But there is no public money. And the authorities are well aware of this, and therefore they play these games with the distribution of benefits - it's good to be a benefactor at someone else's expense. “State money” is the taxes of working people. Who then is the "black sheep"? Is it me, the black sheep, a woman working at a school for one and a half times and writing for several publications, a mother of three children, not receiving any of the new wonderful children's benefits?
No, I am not saying that it is not necessary to support people who find themselves in a difficult situation. I am not saying that the majority of aid recipients are some kind of unscrupulous people and parasites. I am well aware, unfortunately, that the distinguishing feature of Russia is the so-called "working poverty" (a strikingly ugly phenomenon). But there are also many abuses. Already a lot. Many fictitious single mothers have already appeared, in reality cohabiting with the fathers of their children. There are already fictitiously divorcing families - after a new allowance for single and divorced parents was introduced in the summer, several men wrote to me that they decided to take advantage of the situation. So it goes, we will have recipients of benefits in several generations, as in the USA, where a welfare worker in some Harlem first receives a mother, then a daughter, then a grandson - and no one works.
Abuse of social trust may not even be intentional, but growing solely out of ignorance and stupidity. Yes, it happens more often. But does it really matter when it leads to injustice?
And the injustice is that while some receive several benefits at once, others plow two or three jobs (for themselves and that guy) and do not receive any social benefits at all. Such benefits, common to all, should be health care and education. But it's all very sad. A person who works a lot cannot afford entertainment in the form of hunting for a ticket to a state clinic and standing with this ticket, snatched by a miracle, in long lines. A hardworking person has much less opportunity to help their schoolchildren who are landed on a distance (although the paradox is that for some reason they are still better able to control their children's studies than unemployed mothers). For a hardworking person, only the law of the jungle applies.
One day, an unlucky recipient of all kinds of subsidies, benefits noticed to me that those who work and earn more than average also have their own bonuses. And quite large. For example, tax deductions. But what are these deductions? This is just an opportunity to return the percentage paid to the treasury from their earnings. And this opportunity is limited in amount. For example, when buying real estate, you can return a maximum of 260 thousand rubles, regardless of whether you buy a studio for three million or a three-room apartment for fifteen. Usually people return this money for one or two, at most three years, and then they pay taxes for another 20-30 years, replenishing the country's budget.
A low-income mother with many children can receive the same 260 thousand in benefits for the year, and then she will receive another year, and another, and another. Because we have separate payments for children under 1.5 years old, separate payments up to 3 years old, separate payments up to 7 years old, separate payments for children from single-parent families, there are still various types of compensation. It is not clear, of course, why the state, through social services, should not help this mother with official employment (you can pick up some options with part-time work and remote work) or with education, if it is precisely its absence that prevents a woman from earning at least something. It is not clear why it is considered petty and redneck to check whether the unfortunate woman earns a manicure at home or cleaning cottages, and take into account the facts of these unstable earnings when calculating benefits.
No, you can, of course, without all these troubles. You can generally abolish social services and the huge bureaucracy associated with them. Just take and introduce some kind of unconditional income for everyone. Not? Too scary and expensive? Then you need to delve into different situations, deal with each individually, not brush aside the little things. Then we must not forget about the common social benefits. Then it is necessary to create jobs, increase labor productivity, raise wages. We must not allow social support to nurture in people infantilism and lack of independence. And most importantly, the principle of justice cannot be neglected.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.
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