The issue of price

The appearance in the Duma of the bill "On Price Policy in the Russian Federation" is a logical, organic, natural continuation of the state -control of the economy. There are no hybrid models such as the "socialist market". Here, after all, how: either the market or socialism. If you begin to take into the state ownership of the enterprise working thanks to the private initiative of the enterprise, if all problems are solved by the method of stupid increasing government spending, if the state complicates the rules for regulating economic activity to such an extent that the costs of lawyers, tax lawyers and bandits incorporate private economic activity, sooner or later you are returning to socialism. You begin to regulate prices and fixed dilapidated housing selected by other people's money. This is the ideology of socialist redistribution: to select wealth and give it to the small part to the poor, to assign the rest for yourself, equipping the process of populist rhetoric. "To the basis, and then ..."

The economic policy of the current government is the policy of temporary workers. We will squeeze everything out of the oil and gas conjuncture, re -proportion of the rent from it - and there at least the grass is not to grow. In this context, no reform oriented to the future is impossible - for example, the transition to a funded pension system. What can be the future if we do not know how the policy in the country will turn around tomorrow? The economic policy of the current government is a plug of holes and an attempt to solve deep problems with primitive means. Prices are rising - let's adjust them administratively.

This is a return to the economic cave. It seemed that the stage had long been passed when even the Communists agreed with the alphabet truths. I remember that Anatoly Chubais admitted that his tears are welling over his eyes when he hears the members of the Communist Party sensibly discussing the budget deficit. It turns out that the point of no return was not passed. The place of the Communists was taken by representatives of the current government and its party. The degree of their economic populism is such that the ministers of the financial and economic bloc that do not require anything impossible, but only insisting on compliance with at least budget discipline and maintaining market principles for the construction of the economy, already seem to be almost dissidents.

When Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin became Prime Minister of Russia in December 1992, the first thing he did was signed a decree on freezing prices that the chairman of the then not annihilated state meter at the prices of Lira Ivanovna Rosenova then. Of course, the decision was canceled, and the CHC himself - after he, with the help of professional economists, figured out the problem and understood how catastrophic there may be the consequences of administrative price regulation almost immediately after their liberalization, which saved the country from hunger.

But Viktor Stepanovich had one positive property - he was always ready to understand the problems, did not hesitate to study, did not consider it shameful to recognize his own mistakes. The current authorities are completely devoid of all these qualities, not to mention the fact that it is ideologically imprisoned to return the state regulation of the economy in its most vulgar form.

Of course, no inflation cannot be stopped by freezing of prices. In order to stop inflation, you need to get off the oil and gas needle, you need to stop the suicidal race of government spending. But in today's Russia it is not only to carry out reforms - it is no longer possible to implement a sound economic policy.

It would seem that it is with liberal economists that all key levers: Alexey Kudrin - in the Ministry of Finance, Sergey Ignatiev - in the Central Bank, German Gref - in the Ministry of Economic Development, Arkady Dvorkovich - in the administration. But all these years they compromised, hoping that politics would not affect the economy. That it is possible to maintain elements of rationality in economic policy, "surrendering" democratic norms, giving everything that does not concern the economy, security forces.

It turned out that this does not happen. I'm afraid that it’s too late to drink Borjomi: the kidneys have fallen off. They, these unfinished Capitalist ministers, are doomed to the role of internal dissidents. And this is a position that does not imply high efficiency. The level of democracy and the quality of economic policy are directly related. And if you have state monopolism in politics, then state monopolism will certainly come in the economy, even if the ministers remain Kudrin with Gref.

This is the delivery of liberal economic policy, the surrender of reforms is the price of the same compromises. You can only congratulate our liberal ministers: they themselves are to blame for the fact that they allowed the emergence of a situation that seemed unthinkable a few years ago: a decade and a half after the collapse of the Union and the socialist economy in the country, the possibility of administrative price regulation is seriously discussed. Honestly, there is nowhere to go further.