Dispossession in Belarusian

During the 18 years of President Lukashenko's rule, much in Belarus has remained completely unchanged. Almost like in the USSR, the state here is still embarrassed to take money for medicine, transport and housing and communal services. For a long time this was justified: Old Man was loved because he “protected” the poor, pensioners and large families. This is why he is still loved to this day.

The only trouble is that the industries, deprived of any reforms, have not developed at all, and their infrastructure today is in a frankly decrepit state. Major renovations in houses, new equipment in clinics, new kindergartens and cheap education - all this requires money, and if the population pays for services below cost, then the difference places a burden on the budget. While Russia was actively subsidizing its neighbor with hydrocarbon windfalls, everything went as it should have, but now it is obvious that the burden of “social” expenses is already unbearable for the budget. Thus, the population pays only 15-20% of their cost for housing and communal services, and no more than 30% for urban public transport. Medicine in Belarus is still free, and at universities, half of the students study on a budget.

Lukashenko and his team cannot deprive the population of all these benefits: otherwise the electorate will not have a single reason to support the head of state. If pensioners, beneficiaries and state employees feel that they are no longer socially protected, in a couple of years they will express their dissatisfaction not at polling stations, but on the streets. And no Central Election Commission will help Lukashenko retain power. Old Man understands this, so he doesn’t want to deny benefits to the entire population. The solution is to shift the “social” burden onto a relatively small but stable number of wealthy citizens. Traditionally, the authorities in the country consider everyone who can boast of a thousand dollars of income per family member per month to be rich. And in the near future it may happen that this category of citizens will have to feel oppressed.

Recently, Lukashenko became incensed : “We will not be able to take 100% of the payment for utilities from the average person today and even next year. He simply will not pay. But what should we do? We are thinking about how to ask very rich people to help us with utilities.” . As examples, the Belarusian leader cited businessmen he personally knew who earned from two to twenty million dollars a year. The President rightly noted that they are now paying $200 in utility bills for their houses, and it will not be difficult for them to pay, for example, $400 or $600. At the same time, he meaningfully added: “Of course, if we give 150% doctor, it will be expensive for him.” The electorate has received a signal: a rich neighbor will pay part of your utility costs. Well, to hell with him, let him pay.

Another thing is that Old Man can count not only millionaires among such “neighbors”. Thus, Lukashenko said that 350-400 thousand entrepreneurs live in the country. Of course, he clearly hinted at those who will have to pay ten times more for utilities than others, public sector employees and civil servants. How many of them are millionaires? The maximum is a thousand, and their money is unlikely to make any difference to the budget, even if they pay a thousand dollars a month. It is clear that behind the populist stories about incomes of 20 million dollars lies the Old Man’s desire to dispossess everyone who spends at least one or two thousand dollars a month.

There are fundamental problems with Belarusian transport. According to the authorities, the population pays no more than 25% of its cost. A single trip on a bus or trolleybus in Belarus costs less than 20 cents. As a result, this causes several problems: the equipment is worn out, and the drivers’ salaries are low. They rarely exceed $300 a month, although the work is quite hard. The bus fleet is more or less regularly updated only in Minsk, but in the regions you can still often see 40-year-old Soviet LAZs. By the way, they are also found in Minsk. How the rich will “help” in this case is not very clear: wealthy people do not travel to work in trolleybuses. But it seems they can find a way out here: the budget will be replenished by the expanding number of paid parking lots. In the very near future , Minsk residents may start paying for parking under their buildings . Which is amazing nonsense for the Belarusian capital, where until recently free parking could be found even in the city center.

About 55% of Belarusian students today pay for their education from their parents’ pockets. There has been no universal free education in Belarus for a long time, and the number of budget-funded places is being reduced from year to year. In fact, only children from low-income, large or rural families can expect to be able to study on a “budget”. Village children in Belarus have been enrolling in a special “separate” competition for ten years now, that is, they are competing for places in universities with rural schoolchildren. City residents almost always, with the exception of thieves and winners of regional and republican Olympiads, study for money. The average cost of studying at a Belarusian university is , as a rule, 1-1.5 thousand dollars per year.

The authorities are planning to reduce the number of teachers in schools. The problem is especially pressing in rural areas, where schools have no more than one hundred students in all classes. Local teachers already almost all take on two hours: geographers teach history, physicists teach “additional” computer science, and physical education teachers are also burdened with caring for the school garden. They grow food in villages, which is then fed to children in canteens - so that it is cheaper for parents to pay for food.

With free healthcare in Belarus, not everything is so simple either. The state spends no more than 4-5% of GDP on medicine, although the standard for Europe is considered to be 7-9%. The authorities constantly communicate personal plans to clinics and hospitals to increase the volume of paid services to the population. For the money paid at the cash desk, in Belarus you can get to the dentist without waiting in line, pay for expensive painkillers, syringes, services of individual offices and individual in-demand doctors. In fact, today only extremely low-income citizens and pensioners use free healthcare in the country. The market for paid medical services in Belarus is now growing by 15-20% per year. Local authorities require hospital managers to break even.

And in Belarus, from January next year, the tax on unused property will increase five times. Lukashenko recommended that the government go even further and legalize the practice of selecting apartments from those citizens who built them using preferential state loans (like young families), and now rent them out as unnecessary. There was a time when Old Man proposed to levy and confiscate apartments from those who rent them out and do not have an individual entrepreneur ID. As recent government statements show, nothing has been forgotten.