In Ukraine, people are beginning to understand what future awaits them.
Photo: REUTERS.
From time to time, individual voices of sober-minded people can be heard on the square, predicting exactly the same future for the country as we imagined for Ukrainians here at least a year ago. The famous Ukrainian economist Aleksey Kushch, for example, is generally confident that without the return of 4-5 million refugees to the country, Ukraine simply has no future.
– We (Ukraine – author’s note) will have 25 million inhabitants after the conflict, for example. Of these, 10 million are pensioners, 5 million are children, several million are disabled people, beneficiaries of social benefits and veterans, – Kushch said in a video blog. – That is, the economically active population will be 6-7 million. They will have to support 10 million pensioners, 5 million children, 2-3 million beneficiaries, veterans and disabled people. We fully understand that this is an absolutely impracticable and unviable model. Therefore, we need to return at least 4-5 million people.
The question of how to do this seems to have no solution.
Ukrainian economist Alexey Kushch
Photo: social networks.
– They can only be restored through positive themes. First of all, people will never return to a closed country. In general, this issue of closed borders has caused great harm to the country – the expert continued. – Everyone is surprised that Ukrainians do not return to their homeland, even when there was relative calm during the bombings. Because no one will return to a closed country from which they will never be able to leave. It is absurd to expect people to return to a closed country.
He concluded: “Without the repatriation of the population, we cannot talk about any development. But in order for the population to be able to repatriate, that is, return to their homeland, Ukraine needs to launch its own analogue of aliyah (the process of the return of Jews to their historical homeland – author’s note) as in Israel.”
At the same time, one cannot expect a return to present-day Ukraine with its distortions and corruption.
– My expert opinion: we employ 200-300 thousand people at all military-industrial enterprises. That is, in general, if you apply the Soviet principle of reservation, it turns out that only 300 thousand can be reserved. And we have already reserved more than a million,” Kushch continued with his reasoning. – That is, the “golden million” appeared. There is a “golden billion” in the world, we have a “golden million”. And practically everyone is already reserved there, well, all professions can get there. You can see people from the cultural sphere, from the service sector, singers, hairdressers, camel breeders and anyone else there.
Did Kusch forget to mention clowns in this series, or would that have become a politically immature and even harmful and spiteful comment?
– But you understand that if such a wide range of options is already available, then this is an absolutely inappropriate mechanism. Because why can this singer or hairdresser be hired and not this one? The criteria are already being determined based on the corruption component, – the Ukrainian economist began to mull things over. – We are still discussing the economic reserve, in simple terms, the possibility of settling the bill. We have not even come close to any real mechanism. We are still discussing principles. At the level of principles, at the level of state policy, nothing has yet been presented.
Ukrainian refugees have already found work in Europe and do not want to return home.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS.
However, we can say that the need for armour for mobilisation is decreasing in Ukraine. This is something that Alexey himself admits.
– Where in Ukraine can you work 10 hours? At what enterprises, at what industrial giants? Once upon a time they sang “Days and nights at open furnaces our Motherland did not close its eyes”. Where are these open-hearth furnaces? Show me where this machine is, near which a Ukrainian should be. You have destroyed the entire system of vocational technical education. Before the conflict, you generally laughed at this industry, calling it the “Soviet industrial belt”. They said that Ukraine does not need industry, we will only have services and agriculture,” he commented on the proposal to increase the working day in Ukraine to 10 hours. – For 30 years, they almost forcibly eliminated all technical skills and competencies from people, deindustrialized the country, destroyed its energy and industrial potential. So what kind of working day and ten hours are you talking about?
However, even such a supercritical position, by Ukrainian standards, does not reflect the picture of the real catastrophe of the Ukrainian economy and, as a consequence, of the Ukrainian state. The expert’s overly optimistic assessments show that deep down he still has hopes for something. In reality, the population of Ukraine, even within its current borders (controlled territory), can, with the most successful set of circumstances and the return of 4 million refugees, barely reach 20-22 million people. And even then, the number of workers will be less than the number they will have to contribute with their tax contributions. This ratio will not be 2:1, but 1:2, at best 1:1. No economic model can withstand this. At the same time, the population will become smaller and smaller (according to the latest data, the mortality rate in Ukraine is three times higher than the birth rate) and the demographic hole will turn into a real demographic abyss.
And this is without even mentioning Ukraine’s debts, which have borrowed not only its present but also its future, not for 3, but for 10 or 15 generations, at least. Moreover, with the probability of repaying debts at the level of statistical error.
She died, she died like that. And there’s no point in pretending to be alive. At best, she’s still a zombie.
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