A stuffed mattress would be wise for those in the west too. After witnessing the freezing of accounts in Canada, I am making sure to have enough physical cash on hand to pay my mortgage, feed my family, and travel if need be.
History is full of examples where physical assets are essential. My wife's family had to flee China after their assets were frozen. Ukrainian and Russians today need to flee and have their assets frozen by their respective governments.
Regardless, the buying power of those $100 is still the same in Russia. Only the citizens who only have rubles have lost massive buying power due to hyper inflation.
Not necessarily, since things sold in Russia aren’t denominated in USD. The ruble losing X against USD doesn’t automatically mean that everything becomes higher priced by X immediately (except for imported goods).
>since things sold in Russia aren’t denominated in USD.
Most important assets are. Valuable assets like real estate and sometimes cars is mostly denominated in USD and sometimes EUR, as the Rubble is too weak and volatile for the general population to bother with it for valuable assets. It's the same in Romania, cars and real estate are denominated in EUR despite nearly everyone in the country being paid in the national currency RON, and, before the creation of the EUR, they were denominated in USD or Deutsch Marks as the national currency was fluctuating like BTC.
>The ruble losing X against USD doesn’t automatically mean that everything becomes higher priced by X immediately (except for imported goods)
It does, since Russia doesn't really manufacture any high value goods that are in demand on the free market, so it has to import nearly everything apart from basic food, fuels and raw materials.
I'm sure Russia can survive just fine without Dutch cheese, US bourbon, Italian designer clothes and French wine imports due to sanctions, but US CPUs, GPUs, iPhones and MacBooks, German car parts and industrial equipment, Swedish trucks, Liechtensteinian dental drills, French Airbuses and Japanese cameras, industrial robots, cutting edge sensors and chips still cost the same amount in USD, EUR and YEN to make but now 2x the price in RUB to import due to the devaluation and Russia needs to import all those things to not go back to the stone age, as they don't manufacture any equivalent domestic alternatives.
Why wouldn't they matter? Don't Russian citizens and businesses need stuff like computing, cars, planes, dental drills and imaging equipment to live and be productive?
As another argument, the RUB prices of MacBooks and iPhones shot up +50% the day after the sanctions were implemented. The second hand market and scalping of these goods also exploded in Russia.
And when you run out of dental drill bits, how will that not matter when you visit your dentist? Do you want him to work with a chisel and a hammer?
The average Russian will be hit hard from these sanctions as time goes on.
I think the comment meant that it doesn't matter to domestic inflation because sanctioned goods can't be purchased. The latter part of which is true. The former, not--supply shocks can cause inflation as easily as money printing.
> Valuable assets like real estate and sometimes cars is mostly denominated in USD and sometimes EUR
More made-up BS. Go to cian.ru, avito.ru or any other real estate or car dealership website, right now, and all you see is rubles. It's been like that for over a decade now. Why would you just make stuff up? Maybe because the last time you were in the country was 00's or never?
I probably have something to learn here when I ask, exchange rates are being used to infer Russian inflation a la https://www.economicsdiscussion.net/exchange-rate/nominal-an... because Russian cpi/wpi numbers are not available/trustworthy on the short timescales we're dealing with here?
Not really. For a civil servant, it was a fraction of a month's salary before and it's a fraction of a month's salary today.
That fraction is double-ish what it was, but it's still merely a chunk or two of an average person's monthly salary (i.e. it's trivially easy for anyone at all to get caught in this net).
$100 even in roubles now is very low amount for high level functionaries. This law could be used to get rid of undesirable people because you can selectively apply to practically anyone.
I was wondering if Putin wanted to make enemies out of his apparatchiks, but you're right, it's to keep them quiet and subservient. Similar to China's anti-corruption laws, where only the undesirables get investigated and even punished with death.
As a bonus maybe the uninformed Russians will now think Putin is cleaning up government, the corrupt middle layer that's ruining his mission to make Russia great again...
Even before covid, 50-80% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.
Median income and median rent don't leave a lot of wiggle room to hit that 20% target. With decently priced health insurance (unlikely), moderately priced beans and rice, and a low TCO used vehicle (since that's usually cheaper than rent close enough to your job and/or public transit) you'll be able to save 25% or so I'll. With any dependents, with average-cost health insurance, or with a host of other common scenarios those savings never actually materialize.
Is this a sign of internal conflict? I don't think Putin would right now bother with signing law that isn't absolutely necessary for putting out some kind of fire.
Probably a preemptive move to remind those in the government that they are vulnerable and, should they raise their voice about Putin’s activities, they can be swatted down with this law.
Also, to lower the cost of sanctions on them. If they start rumbling about losing money outside Russia, Putin can just take everything in Russia or not. And if sanctions get removed, that still can happen.
> Does Putin himself come under the purview of this law? He's alleged to have a palace worth 100 million rubles on the Black Sea coast.
Of course not. Anti-corruption measures in places like that are selectively enforced. Go after the little fish to score anti-corruption points, while the big fish are literally above the law.
I think Putin's watch collection is estimated to be worth around 700,000 dollars, which is quite a lot more than his annual wage of around 120,000 dollars (well, his salary is probably worth a lot less in dollars now).
[sum of family's last 3 years income] + 10,000 rubles > [sum of family's account balances].
> the bank accounts of civil servants, as well as members of their families, including minor children, will be checked by the prosecutor’s office. If it turns out that the proceeds from them exceed the total income of the official and his relatives for three years by more than 10,000 rubles, a lawsuit will be filed with the court for the forced withdrawal of these funds to the budget.
Assuming this is anything like the US, capital gains and interest both count as income. Your (probably) not in trouble here simply for being a savvy investor.
Obviously, INAL and definitely not a Russian Lawyer.
You missed the key point: it’s lifetime-to-date net worth (heuristic: current bank account balances) vs. recent income.
As in, if you make X per year; and you have >3X in savings from Y>3 years of spending (a lot) less than you make and stuffing the difference under a mattress, then all your savings in excess of 3X get confiscated.
In other words, similar to people on welfare in America, public servants in Russia are now not allowed to retain assets in excess of a certain limit proportional to their income—even when that income all came directly from their (government) job.
This is analogous to a progressive wealth tax, but not the same; as a wealth tax still allows disproportionate wealth growth for the highest-income earners; while the goal of this measure is to leave you with at most exactly three years of however-much you’re currently making, and nothing more, no matter what your assets looked like before that.
The key “feature” to observe about this approach, IMHO, is that under this system people who are close to the savings cap already, are incentivized to spend every ruble they make, as any extra “left over” come audit time will be taken away. (It’s a bit like the game-theoretic consequences of yearly-limit insurance coverage, actually!)
my first thought was "maybe they'll buy into gold or bitcoin" but then who's going to be accepting rubles for gold or bitcoin at this point. The Ruble is essentially worthless now.
> You missed the key point: it’s lifetime-to-date net worth (heuristic: current bank account balances) vs. recent income.
I've now reread the original article several times, and I can't figure out where your getting that from. The phrasing used in the article is "If it turns out that the proceeds from them exceed the total income of the official and his relatives for three years by more than 10,000 rubles", which I can't parse into that and the source for the article appears to both be down and Russian, so I guess I'll take your word for it.
“proceeds from them” = the amount in all of your accounts and the accounts of your relatives (no definition given here but presumably they mean your dependents).
“total income … for three years” = you and your relatives/dependents income for the last three years.
“X exceeds Y by more than ₽10,000” = X > Y + ₽10,000.
Let’s make up some numbers and see where they lead. Suppose that you are a middle–aged civil servant and your salary has been ₽100,000 for the last three years. Y = ₽300,000, obviously. You’ve been saving for your whole life, so the sum total of all of your accounts, X, is ₽500,000. Most of that is in whatever the Russian equivalent of pensions or 401ks are, so they have been earning money for you. Either collecting interest, or by gaining value on the stock market or whatever. Let’s say that your average growth over the last 3 years was 5%. That means you earned ₽68,000 in interest over those three years. Assuming that this adds into Y, your total income, then Y is ₽368,000. Well, ₽500,000 is certainly larger than ₽378,000, so your name comes to the attention of the prosecutor.
However, I disagree that this means that you automatically lose anything. The article says: “In order not to lose money, the official will have to prove the legality of their appearance on the account.” Presumably then you won’t lose anything if your records show that you obtained it all legally.
On the one hand, you do want to catch corrupt officials who have been taking bribes or kickbacks. On the other hand, choosing this means to do it seems counter–productive, since you have to expect that everyone who is saving up for retirement in some way will qualify for investigation. Since the criteria for investigation are not correlated with the crime that they are trying to detect, they are going to have all the false positives.
> Presumably then you won’t lose anything if your records show that you obtained it all legally.
That presumes you have perfect record-keeping. Perhaps, if you can't prove 100% of your income and expenses (i.e. if you can't present an immaculately-balanced ledger — and who can?), you'll have your assets confiscated anyway. They can hold you as having violated the letter of the law, even if you kept to the spirit.
One assumption further: the regime perhaps told the people it wanted to keep around, long in advance, to get (or fabricate) such a detailed personal accounting.
Try to evaluate the rule with some reasonableness. There's likely a mechanism to report interest as income, or the balance of investments would be based on deposits & not effective worth
Putin is the most corrupt individual on earth who has stolen billions from his country and runs a mafia state. this law is not to ‘deincentivize corruption’, but I guess it might help stave off state bankruptcy for another week.
Heavily penalizing accumulation of cash like that could be reasonable, but doing it without announcing it at least a year forward makes it hard to argue that it's anything but a cashgrap.
But the idea issue is viable if the explicit goal is to make high cash reserves impossible. People would instead have to invest and various accounts (I.e. pension plans etc) have to be exempt. So it's theoretically reasonable if the economy is suffering because the wealth is never being spen, but that sounds like a very unlikely situation to occur in today's consumption society.
> Heavily penalizing accumulation of cash like that could be reasonable, but doing it without announcing it at least a year forward makes it hard to argue that it's anything but a cashgrap.
Penalizing accumulation of cash (ie: negative rates) vs. Seizing cash are completely different things.
I advocate for a negative interest rate so that well developed econonies are no longer under an artificial pressure to grow at the expense of sustainability and other economies.
However, that doesn't mean the proposed mechanism i.e an explicit wealth limit is actually reasonable.
By the way an economy suffering because the wealth is never spent is the root cause of every single economic depression in history. Bill Gates is rich enough that he could never spend it all.
Today's consumption society is just an unsustainable method of avoiding a depression. All money saved must be invested because nobody tells the wealthy to stop playing the accumulation game. A negative interest rate would get rid of the need to increase debt.
And yet that is exactly what happened to people who held savings in bank accounts in Cyprus after the GFC when the government decided the banks needed a bailout more than the people needed a retirement.
First of all, it is about deposits to accounts
[sum of family's last 3 years income] + 10,000 rubles > [sum of family's deposits to all accounts for the year of control].
Then, the law states that prosecutor's office should requests the explanations about the source of deposits from an official. Only if the explanations are not provided, the funds could be seized.
Judging by a description, it is a law to imprison any official. Seems that they are going to a gulag now. Putin took all the power, he needs his followers no more. Stalin also did this.
Those who do not fear the darkness will be consumed by it.
One thing that I don't understand about military structures is that putin is not holding every gun on the ground. All these orders are carried by officers of various ranks, these should be the one to target in order to stop this crisis.
People on the inside perform an internal battle: between knowing that they are part of the evil deeds (war crimes, trials, executions after), being afraid of being murdered/purged by the regime in the meantime, and if it gets bad enough the balance tilts more toward being time to mutiny and get rid of the dictator before he kills us all. A lot of things have to line up to get enough of the apparatus together to remove someone like Putin.
Early into the Stalinification process, Putin's insiders will not turn on him, even when he starts to purge them. They'll hold out, hopeful that they're not next, scared, afraid to move; they'll tell themselves that they won't be next because they have been loyal, various rationalizations. You can target these insiders, it doesn't matter, they will not turn on him at this stage. A lot of people will have to die before we arrive at that juncture.
Putin's greatest single vulnerability is the FSB, they coup'd the Russian democracy (such that it was, being so embryonic) and installed him, they're among the best positioned to remove him. The question is, why should they. He's one of their own. The oligarchs could perhaps try purchasing his removal in conspiracy with the military or FSB, although it's very unlikely. The military can't be happy with its humiliation in Ukraine and the masses of dead soldiers, which will ultimately be for naught (Putin forced this outcome on them); and I would expect Putin to punish some prominent military leaders for the various failures, which never goes over well with the system broadly.
Thanks, that's a great analysis how politics works in almost every group. The take is that if one wants a clean system once cannot give any powers to the govt, including the ability to tax, it's a slippery slope.
I didn't mean to morally pin the war on the intermediate military officers. But to bribe them in any way possible to run away, sabotage, slow down, isolate their batallion whatever..
For those who would like to read more about staying in power as a dictator, or for that matter any kind of political leader, I found "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" [1] a good read on the topic.
Of note is the required number of supporters can be quite low when you have a government supported by resource extraction.
There was an offer of 1 million USD to anyone who kills him from some rich russian guy in UK.
I have a better idea - 1 billion USD + safe extraction from Russia to any place including closest ones + ie immediate US citizenship. This sum is nothing for the likes of Biden, Johnson (or Musk) and nothing compared to damage this war is doing every day .
There is no way that nobody he meets within next few months wouldn't turn for this, even a group of 10 guys would be OK for rest of their grandchildren's lives. The trick is to do it somehow unofficially, otherwise you are next on FSB hit list, probably with every member of family. It would make him extremely isolated, paranoid, and actually make mistakes and enemies deep inside his pyramid. Play his game by his rules, not this posh western endless talks and diplomacy which he ignores.
Quite sure that would be seen as an act of war from the US. And whoever replace Putin is likely to be as bad as him (or at least share the same fascist ideology) and would have control over the nukes.
Historically regimes that provide lavish rewards and extreme punishments are frighteningly stable until acted upon by an outside force. See Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Bathist Iraq etc.
One thing I said to friends while talking about Ukraine, is that Russia has always experienced revolutions while engaged in external conflict. In some cases it literally started from the troops.
Putin has thrown a dice, but he might get to rue the results.
I was assuming it was just populist nonsense to buy some cheap support. He also passed a law about stronger pedophile sentencing.
This seems a much stronger signal that the war is going poorly for them than that supposed FSB leak.
But combining the two, he may need to take out some rivals who perceive him as weak and that it's time for them to make their move, and those people seem likely to have big bank accounts.
Civil asset forfeiture. Reason.com (a libertarian magazine in the USA) has been reporting on this massive challenge to private property rights in the US for over 40 years: https://reason.com/tag/civil-asset-forfeiture/
As Russian joke these days goes "Russia is going to be the Northern-most of all the Northern Koreas of the world". It took Putin 22 years yet we're here. Last time a KGB guy ran the country - Andropov - it also was tremendous tightening of the screws to the point of total breaking of things and thus resulted in "perestroyka" and all what followed it.
Russian officials store huge amount of cash out of banks, so that new law is really just to be used selectively to punish, not to really fight corruption (naturally no surprise here). It is like in USSR - one just couldn't have any large bank account back then, and so all those Party bosses, municipal leaders, police officers, factory directors, etc. had piles of cash and jewelry at homes.
Except this time it doesn't have even the pretense of working for the common good. Putin has funded the worst sort of racists across Europe for decades.
I recall a case few years ago in Moscow, where they found cca 100 millions $ in flat of some low bureaucrat. Everybody was surprised how on his low position he could amass so much.
So yeah, what seems to be happening rapidly now is Russia abandoning last bits of democracy and going full dictatorship quickly. To block any dissent in its beginning by possibility of state terror. Not sure if it will work in 2022, for sure hoping it won't.
Accounts were not seized. People who donated over 50 were not targeted. There was no bank run. There was little blowback. Protest rights were not suspended. The emergencies act invocation was passed by parliament and always has a built in expiry.
Having an opinion - which you can justify vaguely logically - about subjective matters and sharing it isn't 'spreading misinformation.'
There's a very toxic current of censorship spreading which involves redefining opinions (inherently a subjective matter) as information (inherently an objective matter) in order to justify them being censored on the grounds of 'combating misinformation.' People are free to be wrong and to spread the word of their wrongness.
If you take the random words - on a subjective topic! - of a weirdo on the internet to be 'information' then you're a bloody idiot.
It's only 'misinformation' if you take the words of random people on the internet as being 'information' instead of 'opinion.'
As that's a very foolish thing to do I think it's better to call their content 'ignorance' rather than 'misinformation' as that accords it a type of status it doesn't deserve.
With that in mind, do you propose that the ignorant should be silenced?
3. The bank accounts of the main organizers are still seized. Tamara Lich and Pat King are frozen as well as others.
> Protest rights were not suspended.
Yes they were! The government gave themselves the right to decide where people could protest. They also charged protestors on horses and assaulted others. And blocked off the area near parliament. Going to so far even now, as to tell people they can't fly the FCK Trudeau flag.
> The emergencies act invocation was passed by parliament
It needed to pass by the Senate as well, which it never did. Since it was likely to fail. He cancelled it. I personally took out a large amount of money from the bank and I know others as well.
Seizure means you don't get your money back. Freezing means you don't get to touch it right now. There are no credible reports of Canadians' bank balances being seized.
If a government indefinitely "freezes" your bank account, the only practical difference from "seizing" is semantics. Just like you can protest freely, as long as you don't mind getting trampled by a horse or your ribs broken. If you can't win with facts, argue semantics and the definitions of words. I've heard it many times on Sam Harris podcast. So who's trying to misinform?
All such actions under the emergencies act are subject to court review and due process. There's no such thing as infinitely freezing accounts at the whim of the PM.
You can protest freely. You can't break any law you choose to, call it "protest" and expect not to suffer any consequences.
Nobody was trampled by a horse.
If you're Canadian, spend less time listening to Sam Harris and more time learning about your own country. If you're not, please go back to ignoring us and everything that happens in our country, as you most likely did before.
Trudeau was going to lose in the Senate so he withdrew the Emergency Act. The legality of him even calling it is getting challenged in court.
Dictates and Edicts are for Kings. The Truckers were protesting two years of emergency measures, and the government double downed and passed more emergency measures, and ultimately used violence to quash their protest. If you think this is how democracy should function in Canada, than I think you should take your own advice and learn more about your "Country".
This elderly woman was knocked down by a horse and was taken to the hospital due to her injuries. Now again. I'm not sure what constitutes a "trampling" in your definition of "trampling", but I think most people would be okay with calling it a trampling.
So much of what you said was false and "not even wrong" that now, when you're saying some things that are true, people are downvoting you as a crazy crank.
Wrong on nearly everything you said, based on what I know.
Can largely attest to everything dukeofdoom said. You are most likely relying on mainstream news only.
Ironically, canadian banks are absolutely fine, while russian banks are already suffering from a run. The max withdrawal, last I checked, in russia, was $20 from an ATM.
dude, Putin doesn't need to get inspiration from some insignificant country (for russians) that has some little squabble with few truckers, they have tons of experience on how to run state terror back home
[A] You may not save more money in your bank account(s) than 3 * current yearly salary+10k rubles. If your bank account balance is higher, the burden of proof is reversed and you need to prove that you earned it properly.
[B] The amount of incoming cash over some unknown period of time, if higher than 3 * salary+10k rubles, means that every cent above that boundary gets confiscated unless you can prove you earned it.
For [B], that unknown period of time is rather incredibly important. If it's 'one year' that means this law effectively says: "If you corrupt and crime your way into more money, allright, but, cap yourself at a 2:1 illegal-legal rate; any more than that and the burden of proof reverses and we'll just take the remainder. If it's 3 years though, then this says: Any money you make outside of your salary is capped at ~€50 a year (not 50 thousand, fifty). Any more and we just take it.
For [A], hoo boy, that seems like a crazy or desperate move: Steal from those who saved. That really creates a YOLO culture where you just spend every cent you earn immediately, never building anything up because it'll just be taken. That, and everybody will be buying a spacious mattress IMMEDIATELY and will continue to use that as their personal bank for a very very long time.
Separately, the 10k rubles rider seems crazy. 10k rubles is, even before the ruble's collapse, something like €/$ 150,-. Even in Russia where yearly salaries are considerably lower than e.g. western europe or the US, €150,- is a rounding error compared to even a low yearly salary, right?
Anyone have more details? It sounds like perhaps it's B, over a year, so this just caps corruption at 2:1. Whilst I'm sure that'll have quite an effect on russian society, it's not going to significantly affect anybody other than apparatchicks.
This whole situation is kind of scary and depressing, big country with nukes and an increasingly unhinged dictator with a strong hold on power. The only possible way out is Putin dying, but he can easily have 10 to 20 more years, which is a long time for him to do more harm.
Accidental slip with regional powers splitting instead of fighting to lead the corpse of Russia. Like Chechnya which is there only until Putin sends huge money there, and there is no more money. Or Far East falling in gravitational pull of China without money and power from Moscow.
"big country with nukes and an increasingly unhinged dictator with a strong hold on power" So basically Stalin? The history of Russia is bleak it is not as if the Putin situation is a new phenomenon. If this was happening in my country people would be setting themselves on fire and jumping off buildings in Russia it's just another Monday.
You're quite optimistic, thinking Putin dying is good enough. The Russians have been swamped in nationalistic rhetoric for ages. Who's to say that Putin going away won't just help reform Russia into a state that's more efficient at implementing an imperialistic agenda ?
I'd wager this is a law that means Putin's regime is 'legally' able to remove officials he doesn't like due to 'corruption'. People who toe the party line and pander to their bosses won't be looked at. Everyone else goes to prison. It's cementing his power in a time when a lot of officials are likely considering whether he's really the best leader to have in power right now.
It's usual BS that they do to keep their polling numbers. In addition, it's a tool to keep those officials loyal to Putin's regime. It's fragile, it barely holds. The coup is near.
It is absolutely clear what is going on. The economic situation is going to be extremely dire very-very soon. I.e. the USD/RUB exchange rate fell by 50% and likely will fall much more. They already introduced limits how much you can buy in grocery stores (sugar etc.), so they'll need additional enemies to blame other than the West, Ukraine, nazis etc. The selected corrupt officials are a good target, since there are plenty of them. Obviously only those identified to be not loyal enough will be selected.
The exact text of the law and numbers does not really matter here, as there is no real independent court/justice or any kind of rule of law.
Will they see a french revolution type event with mass beheadings in Moscow though? Any other time I would have laughed at the thought, not so sure now…
The original source was probably a front. This new source is better, but their source is Russian State TV. I would be interested in whether the law actually exists, and if so whether it is really applied consistently without exceptions for 'special' people.
I was trying to figure out why the passed this law now. That makes sense-- as a tool to ensure loyalty. Otherwise, with all the already existing pressure coming from the falling value of the ruble, I don't know what use Putin would have of scaring his officials. Putin himself certainly already has enough money to weather any storm himself.
> I was trying to figure out why the passed this law now.
Because now he won't be facing any resistance (anyone opposing the law would be deemed unpatriotic and dealt with accordingly). And also because he doesn't want to bribe them anymore, he wants to force them into obedience.
> I don't know what use Putin would have of scaring his officials.
At same time this is also populist message to Putin supporters among regular working class citizens "see? our grand leader gonna finally shake them pesky rich thieves!"
Putin is among the richest people in the world with an estimated worth of ~200 billion USD. His salary is half than that of the Swedish PM so if this law takes power they'll have to arrest him.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadHistory is full of examples where physical assets are essential. My wife's family had to flee China after their assets were frozen. Ukrainian and Russians today need to flee and have their assets frozen by their respective governments.
Most important assets are. Valuable assets like real estate and sometimes cars is mostly denominated in USD and sometimes EUR, as the Rubble is too weak and volatile for the general population to bother with it for valuable assets. It's the same in Romania, cars and real estate are denominated in EUR despite nearly everyone in the country being paid in the national currency RON, and, before the creation of the EUR, they were denominated in USD or Deutsch Marks as the national currency was fluctuating like BTC.
>The ruble losing X against USD doesn’t automatically mean that everything becomes higher priced by X immediately (except for imported goods)
It does, since Russia doesn't really manufacture any high value goods that are in demand on the free market, so it has to import nearly everything apart from basic food, fuels and raw materials.
I'm sure Russia can survive just fine without Dutch cheese, US bourbon, Italian designer clothes and French wine imports due to sanctions, but US CPUs, GPUs, iPhones and MacBooks, German car parts and industrial equipment, Swedish trucks, Liechtensteinian dental drills, French Airbuses and Japanese cameras, industrial robots, cutting edge sensors and chips still cost the same amount in USD, EUR and YEN to make but now 2x the price in RUB to import due to the devaluation and Russia needs to import all those things to not go back to the stone age, as they don't manufacture any equivalent domestic alternatives.
Not that most of those matter because they aren't being sold to Russians now anyway.
its a gigantic country ya know
As another argument, the RUB prices of MacBooks and iPhones shot up +50% the day after the sanctions were implemented. The second hand market and scalping of these goods also exploded in Russia.
And when you run out of dental drill bits, how will that not matter when you visit your dentist? Do you want him to work with a chisel and a hammer?
The average Russian will be hit hard from these sanctions as time goes on.
I think the comment meant that it doesn't matter to domestic inflation because sanctioned goods can't be purchased. The latter part of which is true. The former, not--supply shocks can cause inflation as easily as money printing.
More made-up BS. Go to cian.ru, avito.ru or any other real estate or car dealership website, right now, and all you see is rubles. It's been like that for over a decade now. Why would you just make stuff up? Maybe because the last time you were in the country was 00's or never?
That fraction is double-ish what it was, but it's still merely a chunk or two of an average person's monthly salary (i.e. it's trivially easy for anyone at all to get caught in this net).
As a bonus maybe the uninformed Russians will now think Putin is cleaning up government, the corrupt middle layer that's ruining his mission to make Russia great again...
Even before covid, 50-80% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.
Median income and median rent don't leave a lot of wiggle room to hit that 20% target. With decently priced health insurance (unlikely), moderately priced beans and rice, and a low TCO used vehicle (since that's usually cheaper than rent close enough to your job and/or public transit) you'll be able to save 25% or so I'll. With any dependents, with average-cost health insurance, or with a host of other common scenarios those savings never actually materialize.
1. create a law that would probably be popular with most average people because it is anti-corruption on its face, and
2. allow the government to legally go after virtually any public servant in a selective manner to crack down on dissension
Of course not. Anti-corruption measures in places like that are selectively enforced. Go after the little fish to score anti-corruption points, while the big fish are literally above the law.
Which law?
That wouldn't be in a bank account, so he's safe. It's only following cash into/out of the banking system
[sum of family's last 3 years income] + 10,000 rubles > [sum of family's account balances].
> the bank accounts of civil servants, as well as members of their families, including minor children, will be checked by the prosecutor’s office. If it turns out that the proceeds from them exceed the total income of the official and his relatives for three years by more than 10,000 rubles, a lawsuit will be filed with the court for the forced withdrawal of these funds to the budget.
It seems something relatively easy to check and relatively easy to bypass for those intending to do so.
Wowow that is crazy. Anyone who was disciplined about saving/investing and has been doing so for > 5 years will easily meet that criteria!
Obviously, INAL and definitely not a Russian Lawyer.
As in, if you make X per year; and you have >3X in savings from Y>3 years of spending (a lot) less than you make and stuffing the difference under a mattress, then all your savings in excess of 3X get confiscated.
In other words, similar to people on welfare in America, public servants in Russia are now not allowed to retain assets in excess of a certain limit proportional to their income—even when that income all came directly from their (government) job.
This is analogous to a progressive wealth tax, but not the same; as a wealth tax still allows disproportionate wealth growth for the highest-income earners; while the goal of this measure is to leave you with at most exactly three years of however-much you’re currently making, and nothing more, no matter what your assets looked like before that.
The key “feature” to observe about this approach, IMHO, is that under this system people who are close to the savings cap already, are incentivized to spend every ruble they make, as any extra “left over” come audit time will be taken away. (It’s a bit like the game-theoretic consequences of yearly-limit insurance coverage, actually!)
I've now reread the original article several times, and I can't figure out where your getting that from. The phrasing used in the article is "If it turns out that the proceeds from them exceed the total income of the official and his relatives for three years by more than 10,000 rubles", which I can't parse into that and the source for the article appears to both be down and Russian, so I guess I'll take your word for it.
“total income … for three years” = you and your relatives/dependents income for the last three years.
“X exceeds Y by more than ₽10,000” = X > Y + ₽10,000.
Let’s make up some numbers and see where they lead. Suppose that you are a middle–aged civil servant and your salary has been ₽100,000 for the last three years. Y = ₽300,000, obviously. You’ve been saving for your whole life, so the sum total of all of your accounts, X, is ₽500,000. Most of that is in whatever the Russian equivalent of pensions or 401ks are, so they have been earning money for you. Either collecting interest, or by gaining value on the stock market or whatever. Let’s say that your average growth over the last 3 years was 5%. That means you earned ₽68,000 in interest over those three years. Assuming that this adds into Y, your total income, then Y is ₽368,000. Well, ₽500,000 is certainly larger than ₽378,000, so your name comes to the attention of the prosecutor.
However, I disagree that this means that you automatically lose anything. The article says: “In order not to lose money, the official will have to prove the legality of their appearance on the account.” Presumably then you won’t lose anything if your records show that you obtained it all legally.
On the one hand, you do want to catch corrupt officials who have been taking bribes or kickbacks. On the other hand, choosing this means to do it seems counter–productive, since you have to expect that everyone who is saving up for retirement in some way will qualify for investigation. Since the criteria for investigation are not correlated with the crime that they are trying to detect, they are going to have all the false positives.
That presumes you have perfect record-keeping. Perhaps, if you can't prove 100% of your income and expenses (i.e. if you can't present an immaculately-balanced ledger — and who can?), you'll have your assets confiscated anyway. They can hold you as having violated the letter of the law, even if you kept to the spirit.
One assumption further: the regime perhaps told the people it wanted to keep around, long in advance, to get (or fabricate) such a detailed personal accounting.
Heavily penalizing accumulation of cash like that could be reasonable, but doing it without announcing it at least a year forward makes it hard to argue that it's anything but a cashgrap.
But the idea issue is viable if the explicit goal is to make high cash reserves impossible. People would instead have to invest and various accounts (I.e. pension plans etc) have to be exempt. So it's theoretically reasonable if the economy is suffering because the wealth is never being spen, but that sounds like a very unlikely situation to occur in today's consumption society.
Penalizing accumulation of cash (ie: negative rates) vs. Seizing cash are completely different things.
However, that doesn't mean the proposed mechanism i.e an explicit wealth limit is actually reasonable.
By the way an economy suffering because the wealth is never spent is the root cause of every single economic depression in history. Bill Gates is rich enough that he could never spend it all.
Today's consumption society is just an unsustainable method of avoiding a depression. All money saved must be invested because nobody tells the wealthy to stop playing the accumulation game. A negative interest rate would get rid of the need to increase debt.
Tough ask in the current climate, in a Russia-related thread.
Then, the law states that prosecutor's office should requests the explanations about the source of deposits from an official. Only if the explanations are not provided, the funds could be seized.
http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/00012022030600... Article 8.2.1
Those who do not fear the darkness will be consumed by it.
Early into the Stalinification process, Putin's insiders will not turn on him, even when he starts to purge them. They'll hold out, hopeful that they're not next, scared, afraid to move; they'll tell themselves that they won't be next because they have been loyal, various rationalizations. You can target these insiders, it doesn't matter, they will not turn on him at this stage. A lot of people will have to die before we arrive at that juncture.
Putin's greatest single vulnerability is the FSB, they coup'd the Russian democracy (such that it was, being so embryonic) and installed him, they're among the best positioned to remove him. The question is, why should they. He's one of their own. The oligarchs could perhaps try purchasing his removal in conspiracy with the military or FSB, although it's very unlikely. The military can't be happy with its humiliation in Ukraine and the masses of dead soldiers, which will ultimately be for naught (Putin forced this outcome on them); and I would expect Putin to punish some prominent military leaders for the various failures, which never goes over well with the system broadly.
Of note is the required number of supporters can be quite low when you have a government supported by resource extraction.
[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Pol...
I have a better idea - 1 billion USD + safe extraction from Russia to any place including closest ones + ie immediate US citizenship. This sum is nothing for the likes of Biden, Johnson (or Musk) and nothing compared to damage this war is doing every day .
There is no way that nobody he meets within next few months wouldn't turn for this, even a group of 10 guys would be OK for rest of their grandchildren's lives. The trick is to do it somehow unofficially, otherwise you are next on FSB hit list, probably with every member of family. It would make him extremely isolated, paranoid, and actually make mistakes and enemies deep inside his pyramid. Play his game by his rules, not this posh western endless talks and diplomacy which he ignores.
Putin has thrown a dice, but he might get to rue the results.
This seems a much stronger signal that the war is going poorly for them than that supposed FSB leak.
But combining the two, he may need to take out some rivals who perceive him as weak and that it's time for them to make their move, and those people seem likely to have big bank accounts.
"Isn't sufficiently loyal" may be more accurate.
Russian officials store huge amount of cash out of banks, so that new law is really just to be used selectively to punish, not to really fight corruption (naturally no surprise here). It is like in USSR - one just couldn't have any large bank account back then, and so all those Party bosses, municipal leaders, police officers, factory directors, etc. had piles of cash and jewelry at homes.
Is there actually such a joke? Seems like there isn't.
Except this time it doesn't have even the pretense of working for the common good. Putin has funded the worst sort of racists across Europe for decades.
Another back to USSR thing -with Western condom brands pulling out of Russia it is going to be only low quality domestic rubber like back then.
So yeah, what seems to be happening rapidly now is Russia abandoning last bits of democracy and going full dictatorship quickly. To block any dissent in its beginning by possibility of state terror. Not sure if it will work in 2022, for sure hoping it won't.
Accounts were not seized. People who donated over 50 were not targeted. There was no bank run. There was little blowback. Protest rights were not suspended. The emergencies act invocation was passed by parliament and always has a built in expiry.
There's a very toxic current of censorship spreading which involves redefining opinions (inherently a subjective matter) as information (inherently an objective matter) in order to justify them being censored on the grounds of 'combating misinformation.' People are free to be wrong and to spread the word of their wrongness.
If you take the random words - on a subjective topic! - of a weirdo on the internet to be 'information' then you're a bloody idiot.
It's only 'misinformation' if you take the words of random people on the internet as being 'information' instead of 'opinion.'
As that's a very foolish thing to do I think it's better to call their content 'ignorance' rather than 'misinformation' as that accords it a type of status it doesn't deserve.
With that in mind, do you propose that the ignorant should be silenced?
> Accounts were not seized.
1. "Banks have started to freeze accounts linked to Ottawa protests, federal government says" CBC - Governments own funded mouth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me-erNZ31z8
2. Whose bank accounts can be frozen through the Emergencies Act?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c84oLt8n-GM
3. The bank accounts of the main organizers are still seized. Tamara Lich and Pat King are frozen as well as others.
> Protest rights were not suspended.
Yes they were! The government gave themselves the right to decide where people could protest. They also charged protestors on horses and assaulted others. And blocked off the area near parliament. Going to so far even now, as to tell people they can't fly the FCK Trudeau flag.
Trampling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50mAT12ZpJM
Police kicking a protestor and breaking his ribs
https://rumble.com/vvmpxi-ottawa-police-arrest-and-violently...
> The emergencies act invocation was passed by parliament
It needed to pass by the Senate as well, which it never did. Since it was likely to fail. He cancelled it. I personally took out a large amount of money from the bank and I know others as well.
You can protest freely. You can't break any law you choose to, call it "protest" and expect not to suffer any consequences.
Nobody was trampled by a horse.
If you're Canadian, spend less time listening to Sam Harris and more time learning about your own country. If you're not, please go back to ignoring us and everything that happens in our country, as you most likely did before.
Dictates and Edicts are for Kings. The Truckers were protesting two years of emergency measures, and the government double downed and passed more emergency measures, and ultimately used violence to quash their protest. If you think this is how democracy should function in Canada, than I think you should take your own advice and learn more about your "Country".
> You can protest freely.
I have no idea what definition of "freely" is in your head. Does not being allowed to fly a FCK Trudeau flag still constitute "freely" ? https://twitter.com/i/status/1500153323495866372
>Nobody was trampled by a horse.
This elderly woman was knocked down by a horse and was taken to the hospital due to her injuries. Now again. I'm not sure what constitutes a "trampling" in your definition of "trampling", but I think most people would be okay with calling it a trampling.
Video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50mAT12ZpJM
Then lead with "Accounts were not siezed", as it's a matter of fact.
Yours is certainly a worse type of misinformation.
And appalling to see the comments below, begging for censorship.
No, why would it? Why are you even comparing truckers and ordinary working folk to government officials?
The law is about confiscating undeclared income of corrupt officials who take bribes. Why would ordinary people care about that?
[A] You may not save more money in your bank account(s) than 3 * current yearly salary+10k rubles. If your bank account balance is higher, the burden of proof is reversed and you need to prove that you earned it properly.
[B] The amount of incoming cash over some unknown period of time, if higher than 3 * salary+10k rubles, means that every cent above that boundary gets confiscated unless you can prove you earned it.
For [B], that unknown period of time is rather incredibly important. If it's 'one year' that means this law effectively says: "If you corrupt and crime your way into more money, allright, but, cap yourself at a 2:1 illegal-legal rate; any more than that and the burden of proof reverses and we'll just take the remainder. If it's 3 years though, then this says: Any money you make outside of your salary is capped at ~€50 a year (not 50 thousand, fifty). Any more and we just take it.
For [A], hoo boy, that seems like a crazy or desperate move: Steal from those who saved. That really creates a YOLO culture where you just spend every cent you earn immediately, never building anything up because it'll just be taken. That, and everybody will be buying a spacious mattress IMMEDIATELY and will continue to use that as their personal bank for a very very long time.
Separately, the 10k rubles rider seems crazy. 10k rubles is, even before the ruble's collapse, something like €/$ 150,-. Even in Russia where yearly salaries are considerably lower than e.g. western europe or the US, €150,- is a rounding error compared to even a low yearly salary, right?
Anyone have more details? It sounds like perhaps it's B, over a year, so this just caps corruption at 2:1. Whilst I'm sure that'll have quite an effect on russian society, it's not going to significantly affect anybody other than apparatchicks.
This has been true since 2003 [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky#Criminal_...
The exact text of the law and numbers does not really matter here, as there is no real independent court/justice or any kind of rule of law.
- I haven't found a credible source corroborating the claim made in this article.
- Their FB page has surprisingly little traffic for a news site and their twitter account was suspended recently.
https://www.facebook.com/then24dotcom/ https://twitter.com/then24dotcom
- Their contact email is...not one you would expect for a legitimate news site (celebsbabe @ $major_mail_provider).
Edit: formatting
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-signs-law-seize-illegal...