As we well know, declining birth rates across substantial parts of the globe, coupled in many countries with ever-increasing longevity (of a sickly fashion), is a massive strategic issue - economic, social, political, demographic, you name it. Russia has it as bad as any, and they are now losing their youthful menfolk to war at a striking rate. As elsewhere, they are increasingly reliant on immigrant labour, but as elsewhere this causes serious tensions. Wage inflation is rampant as the war economy grows.
But Putin is, after his fashion, a strategist - and plans are afoot to rectify the situation long-term. Some of what follows is in the "do we really believe this?" category, but I assure you it all comes from informed Russian sources. Measures under active consideration include:
- a "childlessness tax"
- reducing the age of consent (the earlier kids get at it, the more offspring they'll have - that's the theory)
- banning abortion
- banning divorce
- contraceptive purchase made significantly more difficult
- revival of all manner of patriotic "have lots of children!" campaigns from former years
- Orthodox priests to tell their flock childlessness is a sin
- tax breaks for large families
- some of Putin's childless mistresses to "mend their ways" rather publicly
- banning alcohol
Banning alcohol? In Russia?? Yes, you heard that right. When I first read this, I assumed it was some Russian satirist at work: just one piss-take too far - but no. Apparently there will be some experimental "dry regions" established in the near future.
Never, ever, consider getting into a drinking contest with Russians - they have what is termed "special training". If you've never been there, it can be like Saturday night in the Gorbals, seven days a week. For Russians, hitting the age of 60 is a really big deal, so many of them keel over of alcohol-related causes before then. In any office, at all levels of seniority you'll find puffy, red-faced people bimbling around doing not very much: that's the latitude given to dipsos. As for the streets ... Russian cops carry big black-and-white striped sticks, notionally for traffic control, with which they tenderly shepherd the drunks into side alleys.
Good luck with that aspect of policy, eh?
ND
18 comments:
The policies won't work. In the West the anti-child policies of youngish women are presumably based on status-hunting. In the Far East perhaps they're based on avoiding marriage as domestic hard labour. In Russia you'd have to have a decent grasp of "why" before you start fannying around with policies of the sort that a schoolchild would suggest.
Tell me, with so many young men dead or incapacitated what are all the young women going to do? Emigrate to Western Europe?
To be fair, in the UK I paid exactly the same amount of tax as a father of four as I did as a single person, and the fact that I was supporting them plus a stay at home wife made zero odds.
The UK tax and benefit system could have been (and for all I know has been, given the lunacy in our universities) deliberately designed to suppress fertility among intelligent Brits and inflate it among the underclass and immigrants from patriarchal societies that make the Victorians seem woke.
Beams and motes here methinks.
I think the latest figures were that 30%+ of England and Wales births had at least one parent born abroad - and that doesn't include the births to minority "Brits".
Putin has many issues to deal with, but at least he accepts there's a problem - whereas Boris's contribution (apart from his personal efforts) is the number of Francophone Africans with pushchairs I see in Lidl.
I see that if you persuade elderly maiden aunt that the NHS should kill her, you'll be in a lot of trouble if found out. But how will you be found out if the only witness is deceased?
Do not decry maiden aunts. In the 1970s one left me £25. God knows how I coped with that unexpected accession of great wealth.
A week's wages in the early 70s!
"you'll find puffy, red-faced people bimbling around doing not very much"
That was my boss in London on a Friday afternoon circa 86. Lunch, two hours in the pub, an hour in his office 3-4, then off home on the dot of 4pm.
Happy days. 30 years later I went for a lunchtime 'meet the team' and realised I was the only one with a pint, everyone else had halves or soft drinks.
> To be fair, in the UK I paid exactly the same amount of tax as a father of four as I did as a single person, and the fact that I was supporting them plus a stay at home wife made zero odds.
I moved to the US from the UK about a decade ago. I get a $2k tax credit from Uncle Sam each year for each of my offspring (and it doesn't phase out until I'm making silly money, like $400kpa or something). Plus, my homemaker wife and I are able to pool our personal allowances and our basic rates (to use UK language). I can more or less eliminate my first $100k of income from tax. Even after medical costs, I'm far, far better off here.
Rich people in the US pay about the same amount of tax as they would in the UK, but the US is far better for middle-class people, breadwinner/homemaker households, and parents.
Btw, it was Nigel Lawson who changed the British tax system away from family-based towards individual-based, thus punishing breadwinner/homemaker households. It's almost as if they've been trying to destroy the family for decades.
Very true
There is a very easy way to get Russians to have more children - say, "after a child is born a man is exempt for military service for 15 months."
`"Anonymous said...
To be fair, in the UK I paid exactly the same amount of tax as a father of four as I did as a single person, and the fact that I was supporting them plus a stay at home wife made zero odds."
And those four will be supporting you in your old age.
You forgot to mention that,
Go forth and multiply,
Yet, if the only factor in the fertility rate was money and how well off a household was or how much take home pay they were able to keep or any other measure of affluence, every western country would be experiencing a baby boom of post WWII proportions.
And the US (the riches country in the world, let’s not forget) has a fertility rate just a smidge above the UK’s (1.66 vs. 1.57). Not exactly stellar.
Many countries have tried to fix this problem with money. Hungary is a good example. Every one of these attempts has failed,
Sadly only one is at present in the UK. Again our current setup - 9% graduate tax just when you're looking at inflated house prices - could have been deliberately designed to suppress fertility and family formation. I think two are gone for good. If you can't make a life in the UK it's a sad lookout.
I have fond memories of visiting both Smolensk and Moscow in the 1990s. Peak Yeltsin. I very much enjoyed the trip, looking at factories but the beer for breakfast was a bit of a push mid week. Vodka on the table in all works hostels. In the evening. Very drunken mafia types in the Hotel Metropole, (one was not slumming it). Friendly people terrible admin.
OT, but how defensible are offshore wind turbines, and how easy to destroy? I'd have thought unbalancing the blades would mean instant shutdown at minimum, destruction at worst.
Britain (both parties) seem stuck on simultaneously
a) committing our energy supply to offshore wind - literally casting our fate to the wind
b) making a sworn enemy of a nation with lots of drones and much experience with them.
Is this a wise dual "strategy"? Especially if the link below turns out viable?
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/moltex-reactor-can-consume-used-fuel-research-confirms
The company said the peer-reviewed paper "highlights that the SSR-W - developed by teams in New Brunswick, Ontario, the UK, and the USA - can consume the vast majority of transuranic (TRU) elements present in used fuel bundles from Canada's Candu reactors". It added: "These transuranic elements, which are created during the fission process, are radioactive for thousands of years. Unlike traditional reactors that accumulate these elements over time, the SSR-W is designed to consume them as fuel, presenting an innovative approach to reducing nuclear waste."
fond memories of visiting moscow in the `10s before the curtain came down again.
Told everyone i was a weakling fop of a westerner and stuck to beer refusing all vodka. They seemed to think beer was some sort of vitamin laden health drink and was just about tolerated by them. just about made it out unscathed.
That one of the managers from the office unfortunately departed this realm from a horrible liver disease at the age of 40 was completely unrelated...
Sir Creep Starmer.
"Anonymous said...
fond memories of visiting moscow in the `10s before the curtain came down again."
Visited it in the Summer of '68, as the tanks, unbeknownst to us and the locals, rolled towards Prague. School trip - boat to Leningrad, Bedford Dormobile and convertible Moggie taking 14 on to Odessa and slowly back home via Turkey, Istanbul to Izmir.
Have never seen such drunkeness. Or poverty. Kvass tankers in the streets sold weak and rather revolting beer made from bread. Vodka bars everywhere - one shot a time, and a plate of local Salami.
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