If the author of these lines were some kind of director of some kind of “center” or “institute” of his own, one of the foremost areas of his work would be documenting and accounting for the government’s arduous activities, supposedly for our benefit. Well, for example, “filling the state coffers.” Everyone knows that without a budget we simply cannot manage, and that it must be filled with benefits for us, so that it can then be distributed to those who cannot extract this benefit from us by any other means.
The latest innovation in this matter is a bill that will allow the tax authorities to oversee appraisers. This is being done because various clever folks appraise, for example, apartments and cars when registering a purchase or sale, say, at 100 hryvnias, and then pay the state a negligible tax on this negligible sum, thereby not filling the coffers and greatly offending the state. Now the tax authority will receive the right to virtually independently appraise how much the property you intend to exchange for money is worth in reality. Personally, I do not understand why this entirely logical practice should not be immediately extended to all exchange transactions carried out by our citizens.
From the point of view of economics, buying-selling an apartment differs in no way from buying-selling cherries. Therefore, the tax authority is simply obligated to indicate to each seller the true price, taking into account, of course, his costs, scrupulously calculated by competent economists. This will make it possible to create an all-Ukrainian database of true prices, calculated and approved by the State Tax Administration. As a result, this will greatly facilitate the life of our business, since it will immediately be clear at what price it should sell so that the tax authority is satisfied. Moreover, it will finally become possible to immediately tie prices to the sum necessary for filling the budget. That is, smart people will think about how much money the state needs to satisfy the ever-growing needs of the Ukrainian people, name the required sum, and the tax authority will calculate what the prices should be and announce them to us at the beginning of the year. And we will know in advance what to sell things for in order to fill the budget with our benefit so that it can then be distributed. Very convenient.
Here you are laughing, but in reality Ukrainians fully agree with me and think exactly this way. If you listen to them, or read what they write in blogs and forums, the only problem is that the wrong people are engaged in filling the budget. If only the right people were in charge—everything would be different and would work as it should.
But here’s what’s interesting. Various other information, which I would also document in my institute, says, for example, that the same Ukrainians, concerned about filling the budget, for some reason withdraw their money from banks. They withdraw both hryvnias and, what is especially nasty, they withdraw dollars. Banks are already doing this and that, offering various enticing perks, beating drums and leading folk dances, but no—the Ukrainian doesn’t want them, he doesn’t trust them. And this despite the fact that the same Ukrainian will on a forum foam at the mouth arguing for the necessity of making “money work” (that is, letting it sit in a bank account) and that “population funds need to be attracted.” And it’s not only the ordinary Ukrainian withdrawing his pitiful hryvnias, but legal entities have also taken to withdrawing money, and this is already completely irrational behavior.
When a Ukrainian withdraws hryvnias, it means he wants to keep it for himself. It means that he prefers to somehow handle his problems on his own and not bother the state with his existence. And, of course, it means that such a Ukrainian has no intention of filling the budget. In economics, this is called “going into the shadow.”
At the same time, the same people will lament and grieve on forums about shadowization, dollarization, and corruption.
And you know what? I still think that what people do is “correct,” not what they say while doing it. The correct actions of Ukrainians have been saving them from their correct words for 20 years now. It’s frightening to think what would happen if Ukrainians did what they say.
P.S. In the same “Kontrakty” there is material citing research data that consumers in Europe are reducing consumption and beginning to save more. This is absolutely healthy and rational behavior. It is very characteristic that mainstream Keynesianism, with which most governmental and non-governmental experts and journalists are armed, considers such behavior incorrect, and all these people are busy looking for how to deceive citizens and force them to do what the citizens themselves do not want to do.