Wage arrears in Ukraine, as unemployment hits new highs | Ukraina.ru

Public sector workers in Ukraine have not seen their wages in months

Teachers and doctors say their wages are paid in installments, they have lost their bonuses, and it is unknown whether they will see their money before the end of the year.

Teachers in Ternopil gathered outside the regional administration building demanding the payment of back-wages and a 20-percent bonus. Local media reports say that public sector employees across the country either are not paid their wages at all, or are paid in installments with significant delays.

Meanwhile, in some parts of the country, unemployment is setting new records. Vasyl Barilyuk, the director of the Lviv regional employment center, told the newspaper Vesti that there are almost 23,000 unemployed individuals in the Lviv region with 13-16 applications for one job.

"In the past there used to be 1,500-2,000 vacancies, but now there are two or three times fewer," city employment center head Oleh Risnyi adds.

Economic decline is only one reason; refugees are another, he said. Officially, there are 9,000 refugees in the region, but in reality their number is three times as large.

Complete story at - Wage arrears in Ukraine, as unemployment hits new highs | Ukraina.ru

Ukraine - Here's Your "European Future." Enjoy it if you can.

NoBC4U Note: I don't usually post the complete text of long articles, preferring instead that readers go visit these original sites themselves. But I'm making an exception in this case. I started this blog because of the complete blackout of anything remotely resembling the truth regarding EuroMaidan and Ukraine's "European Future." Few wanted to listen to me, preferring instead to keep their head in the propaganda cloud. 

 How could the average Ukrainian have known? Check out my blog. I've been posting ever since March. I knew there was a train wreck approaching long before I first posted, so don't tell me that there was no way to know. I knew. Anybody could have, had they chosen to.  And you're one of those who chose to.  Thanks from NoBC4U.

Well, here's your freaking European future for you, Ukraine. Hope you enjoy it!

Ukrainian government prepares social collapse | Украина.ру

Journalist Olga Shelkova analyzes how the new Cabinet of Ministers’ program to reduce social spending will affect the daily lives of the Ukrainian citizens

Within 10 months of the Maidan protests, the Ukrainian people have experienced a lot of hardships from the civil war to a decline in living standards, the devaluation of hryvnia, wage cuts, rising unemployment, and skyrocketing retail prices and utilities bills. Apparently, this is just the beginning of difficulties and troubles for the Ukrainians because they will now have to live under open control of the Ukrainian government’s policies by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF mission will work in Kiev from December 9 to December 18. According to IMF Resident Representative in Ukraine Jerome Vacher, the mission "will begin policy discussions with the Ukrainian authorities in the context of the Fund-supported economic reform program."

The Cabinet took time to prepare for this meeting.

Having appointed foreign nationals to its government, Kiev outdid even Georgia and the [post-Soviet] Baltic countries that are known for their status of voluntary Western colonies. Whereas in these countries members of higher public authorities include only representatives of the titular, as they say there, nation, though with foreign citizenship, there’s only one Ukrainian – a widely publicized "successful businesswoman," Natalie Jaresko, the Finance Minister of Ukraine – in the Kiev government formed with foreign nationals. (NoBC4U Note: Possibly mis-translated? There are three foreigners with ministerial positions. Natalie Jaresko is one of those three. The rest are Ukrainians).

The official reason for inviting foreign ministers is the need to combat corruption and conduct reforms which will supposedly bring Ukraine closer to European standards. The nature of these reforms can be clearly seen from proposed budget cuts submitted to the Cabinet by Natalie Jaresko.

Falling exactly in line with the warnings issued by opponents to the Euromaidan, the European integration will be conducted at the expense of regular citizens of Ukraine. First of all, the Ukrainians are in for the abolition of the constitutional provisions on free education and healthcare, as well as the reduction of the period of compulsory school education from 11 to 9 years. The finance minister is citing the European experience, where compulsory education ends when students reach 15-16 years of age. Good thing they haven’t gone the Georgian way, where secondary education ends when children turn 12.

Regulations prohibiting the reduction of the number of medical and educational institutions are being cancelled, as are the provisions for mandatory budget financing of healthcare and education in the amount that is no less than 10 percent of national revenue. Food in hospitals and schools will become a paid service, as well as classes in children's and youth sports schools.

Students of higher educational institutions, just like schoolchildren and teaching staff, will lose their stipends and their entitlement to free use of transport services. To make things worse, teachers’ workload will increase. Stipends will no longer be adjusted for inflation and will from now on be paid only to people with disabilities and students from low-income families. Teachers will lose additional payments for their academic degrees and titles.

The Chernobyl residents are in for many surprises as well. The government plans to cancel the zone of increased radiation monitoring. The people who were affected by the Chernobyl disaster will lose their entitlement to special medical treatment, increased Category 4 stipends, compensations and benefits, monthly allowances to families with children, extra payments for work in contaminated areas and compensations for lost property.Payments to deportees for completing individual housing construction, increasing seniority for pension-payment purposes, entitlements to subsidized medicine supplies and compensations for housing and other property lost to deportation have been canceled. This concerns, primarily, Crimean Tatars, who left Crimea in order to stay in Ukraine. Proper reward for showing patriotism, to be sure.

Public organizations will no longer be supported, and cash rewards to athletes have been halved.

Retired people will be hit hard. The retirement age will be increased by 10 years for women and five years for men. The length of service that makes employees eligible for receiving retirement pensions will increase by seven years. With ongoing decline in output, sliding economy and ensuing rise in unemployment, getting such length of service may be a difficult task. To ensure "social justice," average wages for calculating pensions will be frozen at the 2014 level.

Further allowances to complement retirement pensions will now be determined by the Cabinet of Ministers, and the pensions will not be adjusted until "the economy of Ukraine is stabilized."

There’s more.

From now on, pensions will be recalculated using the percentage of the contributions made to the Pension Fund rather than actual wages, which will significantly reduce the amount of pensions, because due to inflation, there’s a huge difference in pension contributions in the 1990s and the 2010s.

The fact that the existing amounts of pensions will remain unchanged even for those who are already receiving pensions is not warranted.

In its quest for ways to minimize the length of service and reduce the amount of pensions, the Ukrainian government is studying the "advanced" experience of the Baltic states.

A delegation from the Ministry of Social Policy and the Pension Fund visited Lithuania, where the parties discussed the possibility of revising social security pensions to the recipients who receive pensions for their years of work in Lithuania and Ukraine.

The issue is about a new principle of counting the years of work in the Soviet Union, according to which each state should calculate the pension and pay it only for the actual work in that particular country. In Lithuania, when calculating pensions, they first consider the service after 1990, whereas the work during the Soviet period is covered at a much lower rate, because then the people were "working for the occupier country." Given the rhetoric coming from Kiev, a similar approach can be adopted by Kiev as well.The pensioners will lose their entitlements to free use of transportation, reduced utilities bills, reduced prices for solid fuel, gas and telecommunications services. The targeted financial assistance in these cases will be provided only to 6 million low-income pensioners. The state pilot project for controlling prices for the hypertension treatment medicines will be suspended. Of course, this will affect pensioners more than anyone else, depriving them of access to inexpensive essential medicines.

However, being sick and giving birth to children is not a good idea in the new "Europeanized" Ukraine, either. Payouts for sick leaves will be reduced from 60-100 percent of the average wage down to 45-80 percent. As she proceeds to cut payments for temporary disability, the minister with an American passport cites European experience whereby employees in France and Italy receive 50 percent of their respective salaries during the first 20 days of their sick leave, and 70 percent subsequently, whereas Slovakians receive only 25 percent and 55 percent, respectively.

Plans are in place to reduce the insurance fund covering accidents and occupational diseases. From now on, payments to employees with work-related injuries or members of their families will not exceed 100 minimum wages and compensation for moral damage is waived altogether.

IMF requirements deprive the majority of single mothers of their entitlements to child support. Payments for child birth will be provided only under means-tested programs. Parents will have to forget about state funding for children’s summer camps, free children's and youth schools and New Year gifts. Recreational institutions and health resorts will no longer be funded from the budget.

However, there’s even more to it. Every Ukrainian will pay taxes under a new taxation system, the introduction of which is part of the requirements included in the Association Agreement with the EU. Now, the customers will pay 30 percent of the purchase price of expensive goods, if they can’t prove the origin of their income. Under the new law, which takes effect on January 1, 2015, buying goods worth more than 10 minimum wages, i.e., 12,810 hryvnia, (about $800 at the current exchange rate) will be done only by bank transfers with a passport and an identification code. Tax authorities will be entitled to charge the amount of tax of their own accord, and will also have the right to seize the property of physical persons and to use tax police for the paper-based verification of income and spending of the Ukrainians.

Thus, the income tax rate for unconfirmed income will by far exceed the amount of tax paid on confirmed income. Currency transfers by people working abroad and remitting money to their families will be hit hard by the discriminatory tax rate. In addition to opening wide the door to abuse and corruption, the negative effect of such "European" measures will also apply to sales of cars, real estate, household appliances and other expensive items. In turn, it will lead to a fall in business revenue and result in shrinking tax base.The fact that consequences of the coup and signing an Association Agreement with the EU will be exactly like the ones we are seeing now was known long before Mustafa Nayyem called on the Ukrainian people to take to Maidan. However, deceived by sweet-voiced propaganda, the Ukrainians failed to heed the many warnings. The collapse of the economic and social spheres, as well as isolated protest rallies, are there for everyone to see.

So far, these rallies have been of isolated nature.

To cure a disease, one has to understand its causes. This one was caused by thoughtless destruction of the national economy in favor of the provisions of a colonial association agreement, with no prospect of ever joining the EU, as was repeatedly stated by EU representatives.

The future fight by the people whom anti-human reforms performed by foreign henchmen has made destitute, must finally focus not on consequences but causes.

Complete story at - Ukrainian government prepares social collapse | Украина.ру

America’s dark economic secret: How a giant gimmick has wages and jobs hanging by a thread - Salon.com

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s announcement of a series of new rules to reduce the financial incentives behind corporate inversions tells you a lot about where our economy sits right now. Productivity and growth scarcely matter as much as what I would call the “gimmick economy.” Companies now spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out not how to beat their competition, but how to prosper from tricks and loopholes their accountants find buried in the law. Every corporation has become, at the root, a financial company, adept at moving money around on paper and little else. And the government has to scramble in a never-ending race to keep up with the innovations.

To start with, understand what a corporate inversion is: an on-paper transaction involving a merger between a larger U.S. company and a smaller counterpart abroad. No worker moves overseas as a result of the merger. No production facilities or corporate offices transfer. Instead, the address on the corporate masthead changes from America to the low-tax alternative where the overseas company is headquartered. It’s a completely fictitious pretension, no different than if I used a handicapped placard to park in good spots everywhere I went, and then limped around after getting out of the car.

CEOs claim that America’s burdensome 35 percent corporate tax rate forces them to be creative, and in absence of fundamental tax reform, they must reluctantly renounce their corporate citizenship to stay competitive with their overseas counterparts. First of all, in actuality, corporate taxes are not much of a burden; thanks to all the loopholes and credits, corporations pay on average a 12.6 percent tax rate, according to a 2013 Government Accountability Office paper. Second, by that logic, if I think a bank vault unfairly denies me access to lots of money, I should be allowed to use creative strategies to bust it open.

In reality, corporations’ reasons to invert have nothing to do with staying competitive, as USC law professor Ed Kleinbard explained in a recent paper. It’s merely about preventing the unintended consequences of one gimmick, by loading up on another gimmick.

Complete story at - America’s dark economic secret: How a giant gimmick has wages and jobs hanging by a thread - Salon.com

U.S. Will Self-Destruct in Near Future: Dmitry Orlov

"The United States right now, from my point of view and the point of view from observers from around the world, is on suicide watch. It's a country that is going to self-destruct at some point in the near future."

“The trajectory is defined by this sort of incompetent militarism where more and more money results in bigger and bigger military fiascos around the world and less and less of actual foreign policy that can be pursued or articulated. There are massive levels of corruption. The amount of money that is being stolen by the U.S. Government and its various appropriations processes is now in the trillions of dollars a year. Runaway debt, the United States now has a level of debt that is un-repayable. All we’re waiting for is interest rates to go across the magic threshold of 3% and the entire budget of the country explodes. There are also all types of other tendencies that point in the direction of collapse and systemic failure at all levels.”

Dmitry Orlov is a Russian blogger who writes about the parallel between the U.S and the USSR. Orlov lived through the financial collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, and he thinks the U.S. is on the same trajectory



Complete story at - U.S. Will Self-Destruct in Near Future: Dmitry Orlov

Saving up gas for winter: Ukraine cuts consumption 30% — RT Business

As natural gas supplies are tightly squeezed, from Friday, manufacturing and municipalities in Ukraine are officially getting 30 percent less gas. This reduction is expected to help the country live through the winter without imported Russian gas.

The savings plan was announced by the deputy head of Naftogaz Alexander Todiichuk on Ukrainian TV in mid–July.

“The saving regime is being forced in Ukraine and it’ll officially come into operation as of August 1,” he said.

The 'regime of gas saving' includes cutting the use of gas by 30 percent in manufacturing and municipalities, while consumers that rely on government funding, such as schools and hospitals, would have to cut gas consumption by 10 percent.

The measure are expected to save about 150 million cubic meters of gas per month, which will be pumped into underground storage, said Todiichuk, adding that the volume should increase starting from August.

Coming into the winter, Ukraine has 16-17 billion cubic meters of natural gas saved up in underground storage.

The government in Kiev estimates Ukraine needs to import 7.23 billion cubic meters of gas in the next eight months through to March in order to keep economic activity stable, especially during the high-demand winter season.

Complete story at - Saving up gas for winter: Ukraine cuts consumption 30% — RT Business

Glazyev: free trade zone with the EU - economic suicide for Kiev | RIA Novosti

NoBC4U Note: This is a Google Translate translation, from the original Russian.

MOSCOW, June 24 - RIA Novosti. signing an association agreement with the European Union would be economic suicide for Ukraine, it would entail a depreciation of the hryvnia, galloping inflation and worsen the living standards of the population, according to presidential aide Sergei Glazyev.

Kiev plans June 27 to sign the economic part of the Association Agreement (already signed), stipulating including entry into the EU free trade zone. Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that in this case Russia will have to defend its domestic market from the duty-free flow through Ukraine European goods.

"For Ukraine, the signing of this agreement is economic suicide. There is no doubt that the result of the signing of this agreement will further sharp devaluation of the hryvnia, the surge of inflation, which goes, apparently, hyperinflation, and repeated drop in living standards, "- said Glazyev RIA Novosti.

According to him, a year ago, when Ukraine was a different political situation, the calculations showed that in the case of this agreement, Kiev lose due to unequal trade with the EU about 2% of GDP. Ukrainian trade balance, which already comes with a large negative balance, lose another $ 4 billion due to increased imports from the EU.

"Even when a politically stable conditions signing of this agreement will inevitably turned around a sharp deterioration in the balance of payments of Ukraine and its default on external obligations. That's why Yanukovych did not sign it. In the current situation, which is much worse, Ukraine's balance of payments deficit is reduced for about $ 50 billion this year, and the entire West promised aid is 35 billion. By signing this agreement, Ukraine will receive another 4 billion minus "- says presidential advisor.

Complete story at - Eyes: free trade zone with the EU - economic suicide for Kiev | RIA Novosti