abc123 wrote:Now only 2% is spent on defence – the education budget is 2.5x larger, health is 4x and welfare 6x.
Let's see now, with a calculator we can assess the same priorities as set in Russia:
military spending in 2018 to 2.771 trillion, but will grow again afterward, to 2.808 trillion in 2020.
- a trillion (rbls) below the 2016 peak, when the unsustainability became evident (for everyone)
let us take the pre-crisis year of 2013, when the federal budget provided 607 billion rubles for
education. It was 597 billion in 2016 and 630 billion in 2017. In 2018, that number will be 653 billion rubles, and in 2020 it will be 668 billion. As readers may remember, prices have already risen by a factor of 1.5. The implication? Dramatic cuts to education have occurred since 2013.
The
health care situation looks even worse: 494 billion rubles in 2013, 506 billion in 2016, 452 billion in 2017, 460 billion in 2018, and 499 billion in 2020. So the numbers, again, have remained level, but what this amounts to, due to inflation, is far less.
In real terms, pensions will continue to shrink, which has been admitted by the authorities: for example the head of the Accounting Chamber, Tatyana Golikova, predicts a decrease of 2.7 percent.
- The deficit will be financed from borrowings and
the National Welfare Fund (starting in 2018, the National Welfare Fund will incorporate the Reserve Fund, which will, in fact, confirm that the National Welfare Fund is certainly not an instrument of long-term investment for the benefit of future generations, contrary to previous claims).[
The part in italics is just code for the Reserve Fund having been emptied, so no need to declare that when you do a "merger"]
- The National
Welfare Fund will hold a little more than 4 trillion rubles, and it is unclear how this money could finance the 2019–2020 deficit of 8.3 trillion, even taking into account new borrowings of 1.8 trillion rubles.
And as there is no one to borrow from (China might give advances for future energy shipments)
- there will be no welfare, going forward
- and printing money will be the obvious solution. Should the Central Bank Governor object, well: fire the person... simple
as that