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"I hope they will soon forget about me." Economist who proposed charging 40 thousand for childlessness reported receiving threats
'I hope they forget me quickly': Economist who proposed charging $40,000 to those without children warns of looming threat
Zubets, the author of the initiative to tax childless people, issued threats against him.
The looming threat was lamented by the director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Alexey Zubets, who had previously proposed introducing a tax on childlessness in the amount of 40 thousand rubles.
The economist said he checks his work email every morning. He has to clear his inbox of threats and curses sent to him. He has to do the same in Telegram. The situation is stressful for him, Zubets said.
According to the author of the initiative, he tried to explain to the public that demography is primarily about money, but opponents are convinced that moral values are more important.
In a conversation with Podem, Zubets said that he currently does not plan to contact law enforcement agencies, since threats do not lead to "open combat." He also added that the wave of hatred is gradually subsiding. The economist emphasized: "It is already much calmer than last week." The author of the childlessness tax proposal expressed hope that he will soon be able to forget about himself and return to normal life.
The expert admitted that he was not affected by the disgust due to his life experience and age. But for his children it was new and shocking. He said that "strange people" tried to contact them, interfering in their personal lives.
Zubets divided the haters into three categories and emphasized that this is not professional bullying. The first group of malicious critics are "rude" and "shameful", the second group are bots, and the third are Bolshevik-communists. "It turns out that there are Bolsheviks in our country. But neither one, nor the other, nor the third are serious," he concluded.
Zubets proposed charging Russians 40 thousand rubles if they do not have children.
Last week, an economist proposed introducing a new tax in Russia that would compensate women over 35 and men over 40 for not having children. According to his initiative, each family would have to pay 40,000 rubles a month in taxes.
According to economists, such an amount is affordable for a Russian person. Because, according to his data, the average salary in Russia is 85,000 rubles. Therefore, he came to the conclusion that a family of two with an income of 170,000 rubles and taxes of 40,000 rubles is “not a problem” for them. If the citizen was not married, Zubets admitted that the payment amount can be halved.
Russian authorities have commented on the plan. Olga Yaroslavskaya, head of the Moscow Department of Children's Rights, said that introducing a tax on childlessness cannot be a way to solve Russia's demographic problems, comparing the idea to "a slap in the face with a whip." Alexander Fadeyev, chairman of the Human Rights Committee, also doubted that such initiatives would help increase the birth rate.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said it did not know the details of the proposed tax on the childless, but noted that similar measures were implemented in Soviet times and would not have "any impact on the demographic situation." At the same time, they added, this Soviet experience should be analyzed by experts.
Alexander Senyavsky, a senior researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, speaking about the experience of the USSR, said that the childlessness tax does not affect the birth rate. According to him, this payment was 6% of the salary and was collected automatically. It was introduced in 1941 for single citizens and childless spouses. However, because of the taxes, young people in the Soviet Union did not strive to "get married as soon as possible and start producing offspring" due to the change of generations and confidence in the future.