Poverty — a crime, if we are talking about the state

There are two news: good and so-so. First — the budget of Russia is not conducive to the fight against poverty. The second — “the Nobel prize” for Economics this year was awarded for contributions to studies of poverty. That is, economic science knows what to do, so that poverty became less. It remains only to take knowledge for service…

Last night the chamber, headed by Alexei Kudrin, has published a draft budget for the next 3 years. Gokudera criticized the main financial document due to underfunding of education, health, unconvincing predictions of increasing real incomes and rates of poverty reduction.

In the document of the chamber of accounts says that government action is not enough to achieve sustainable growth of real incomes of citizens. But because of the slower growth of real income, the rate of poverty reduction will be lower. Now the forecast provides for reduction of the poverty rate from present 12.5% to 11.7% in 2020, and by 2022, and all the poor will only every tenth Russian. While the figure is only growing: in the first half of 2019, the poverty line was 13.5% of the population (19.8 million Russians).

More resources spent on defense and other “private” is not a humanitarian article. And when they say that the state Treasury should be communicated on a regular missiles, and the development of “human potential”, i.e. health, education, culture, the officials nod, but doing it my way. People de new gold and they should receive, not invest in them…

As it turned out, the fight against poverty will be successful in the case of investments in education and health. Yesterday the laureates of the state Bank of Sweden, awarded in the framework of the Nobel prize. Esther Duflot, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer received the prestigious award “for their experimental approach to the reduction of global poverty.” Scientists have shown the most effective methods to combat this global problem, revealed a correlation between the “quality of human potential” and poverty. However, they are not about tanks, but about investing in people.

Examining the impact of spending on education, it became clear: the traditional areas of grants (for teachers, free meals, uniforms, scholarships) increase coverage of education. But the effectiveness of every dollar is 15 times higher when the same money spent on an information campaign explaining the benefits and advantages of education. And 10 times more if you spend those same funds to… combat parasites, which “hamper physical and cognitive development of children, limiting progress in education and delayed economic development.”

Before that, nobody had to make the fight against parasites in the stomachs of children a priority in education spending. Here is a “National project Education”… Is to fight poverty, which hinders the economy of the whole country, necessary not just to benefit benefits low-income increase of 100 roubles to pension. The care of cultural level, education and health care is a necessity. In other words, poverty is a Vice. Vice of the state, which confronts a budget of wrong priorities. It’s hard not to agree with Alexei Kudrin.

Oleksiy Filatov, the President of the Union of Officers of the “alpha”

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