Yesterday at 20:25
The Russian economy does not have the resources for development, it is eating itself – this is evidenced by tax increases, the taking of profits from business, and the lack of investment. Russian economist, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor Igor Lipsits stated this on the FREEDOM TV channel.
“We recently examined how the Russian economy has grown. President Putin told wonderful stories about how the Russian economy grew by 3.6% – the fastest in the world. In general, progress and happiness. When you look into it, it turns out that the growth there was largely due to the fact that enterprises are afraid of being left without suppliers, urgently accumulating inventories, putting them in warehouses, and freezing capital. If we take away all this panic, then the net growth there so far is also 1.2% – 1.4%. For more than 10 years, the Russian economy has hardly grown. The growth is tiny: 1.2% is a minuscule amount, it doesn’t give anything. Well, apparently, it will continue to be about the same, because, in general, resources for development are quickly drying up, and the Russian economy is now beginning to eat itself, taking money away from those who should be developing,” he said.
The economist noted that work on reforming the tax system has already begun in the Russian Federation. All the details are still unknown, but there is information that the income tax rate will be increased to 25%.
“On the one hand, more profits are taken away from the business, and on the other hand, they say, come on, business, grow faster. And at the expense of what resources? Loans are expensive. There is less own profit left because the state takes it away to finance military expenses. External investors do not come to Russia. As you can see, no one is giving external loans to Russia yet. Well, what kind of miracles? This means there is only one answer – they will put empty money into circulation. But then Russia will pay for this economic growth with inflation and, accordingly, impoverishment of the population. And the impoverishment of the population means a reduction in domestic demand,” Lipsitz stated.
As for Putin’s bet on the war economy, the Doctor of Economic Sciences recalled that the Soviet Union lived according to this model.
“There was a huge defense industry, huge factories that are now riveting all military equipment, they have now been launched again at full capacity. But the economy turned out to be poor, miserable, unprofitable, and eventually collapsed. And the Soviet Union collapsed, because the population was not at all interested in saving the Soviet Union, in saving their previous model of life. The shops were empty, there was nowhere to put money, life was so hard in this everyday sense, uninteresting. And the people thought with pleasure, God be with him, with the Soviet Union, maybe now we’ll at least live. And the Soviet Union collapsed in three days, and no one stood up to defend it, because the economy tired the Soviet people so much that everyone was happy to consign it to the past. This is roughly what Russia is now heading towards due to the military spending race,” Lipsitz noted.
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Let us recall, as stated by Ivan Us, Candidate of Economic Sciences, chief consultant at the Center for Foreign Policy Research at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, Russia is not receiving enough revenue from the oil refining industry, and therefore the deficit plan for 2024 included in the federal budget was almost completed by the end of February.
