How to prevent a queue at the cash register on holidays? Small business against online cash registers: briefly about the demands of the protesters and the reaction of the authorities Try to choose a line that faces several cashiers.
Now, as you know, all domestic business in forced are transferred to online cash registers, which transmit sales data to tax authorities almost in real time. This is a very important step for Russia. In short, for the first time in history, the state will be able to clearly see what is happening in our economy, and see it immediately, and not a year later, when all the rough reports finally reach the ministries. More details about this here:
The problem, however, is that data from the cash registers of entrepreneurs does not come to the tax office directly, but through the OFD, fiscal data operators. One of these operators is the Element group (e-OFD brand, e-ofd.ru), wrote me a letter with a very alarming assessment of the current situation.
While some operators, the same “e-OFD”, for example, build their business on collecting subscription fees from entrepreneurs, others initially enter the market in hopes of gaining access to the information being collected. The danger here is obvious: few of us will willingly entrust letters to the postman, who will carry them for free, but at the same time read what we write to our relatives and friends.
I repeat, some operators state quite openly: they are interested in data that can be extracted from the endless stream of checks punched at other people's cash registers. They are ready to either sell this data or immediately use it for their own benefit.
The main rival of small businesses, if the soft word “rival” is appropriate here, is large retail chains. In fact, in some cities, networkers have already brought small businesses to the brink of extinction - it is very difficult to compete with the giants. If networkers receive accurate data on sales on specific streets, small businesses will have a hard time: they will actually find themselves in the position of partisans fighting at night against special forces with night vision devices. By night vision, I mean, as you can imagine, the information that experienced analysts can extract from sales data.
Imagine: you are individual Entrepreneur, run a small coffee shop with a bakery on a less accessible street. You love your job, roast your own coffee beans, knead the dough for fresh baked goods, and in the mornings a line of local residents and employees of nearby organizations line up to see you. Business allows you to support yourself and your family in the abundance that suits you.
From July 1, 2017, you began to transfer all data on checks to the tax office through the operator (OFD), who kindly provided you with this service for free or almost free of charge: in exchange for permission to delve into information about your sales.
Soon, OFD receives a request from a chain of coffee shops: on which streets coffee and related products sell especially well. The street on which your establishment is located is highlighted in green in the report, and the manager makes the obvious decision - to open a chain coffee shop in the house next to you.
No matter how hard you try, a significant part of your customers will leave you, since networkers have a well-known name, beautiful branded cups, an assortment, and a lot of things that small businesses usually don’t have. And if a networker pays close attention to you, he may well decide to finish you off by setting prices 100 rubles lower, and keeping them at this level for six months or a year - as long as it takes for your profit to no longer be enough to pay rent and salaries. For large retail chains, there is nothing special about reaching a breakeven point over a long period of time: they have orders of magnitude more money than an individual entrepreneur.
What is typical is that the network operators themselves do not leak their data to anyone. They either created their own FDOs, or scattered the data across several independent FDOs, choosing those who do not trade data.
At this point, an experienced reader may have a natural question: where are the regulatory authorities looking? I'll upset you. Selling other people’s data is absolutely legal; the law on the use of cash register equipment directly states that OFDs can use fiscal data to transfer them to third parties in an impersonal form (paragraph 2, clause 9, article 4.1 of the CCT Law):
The fiscal data operator can process fiscal data in statistical or other research purposes, subject to the mandatory anonymization of such fiscal data.
Moreover, some market participants are asking to remove the anonymization condition so that they can trade with even more accurate data: not “20 hecalitres of coffee were sold on Švejka Street,” but “the Sidorov and Sons coffee shop, st. Shveyka, 13, sold 17 hecalitres of coffee.” Since large retail chains have very powerful lobbying tools, while small entrepreneurs have almost no such tools, I would not be surprised if such an amendment is successfully adopted in six months or a year.
By the way, they are already entering the fiscal data market internet monsters, owners social networks and search engines. These tough guys understand perfectly what Big Data is and how it can be analyzed to good advantage.
If nothing changes in the market, chains will continue to squeeze small businesses, with all the ensuing negative consequences in the form of deterioration in the quality of goods, higher prices and the destruction of jobs. OFDs, accordingly, will try to make a profit from the sale of information, since trading information is more profitable than taking a modest subscription fee for technical services.
Let's return to the coffee shop from the example. Let's say retail chains found your street unpromising, and you, working 14 hours a day, were able to significantly increase your profits. What do you think will happen next month?
Next month, the owner of the premises in which your coffee shop is located will come to visit you and say that since your profit has increased, then you now have to pay him more rent. Twenty percent from additional The landlord will leave the income to you and take 80% for himself - because he knows exactly the volume of your sales and can accurately calculate the amount that you are able to pay him. The e-OFD tells me that real examples Such “enterprising spirit” of landlords has already appeared.
Let me sum it up
If you are an entrepreneur, Please remember that any information about your business can be used against you. In these days, hiding from the state is stupid; you will have to connect cash registers to the Internet in any case. Therefore, make sure to connect to an operator that does not sell data. For example, to the same “e-OFD”, on the basis of information from which I am writing this article.
If you are a legislator, consider whether it is right to allow anyone other than the government to have access to information as sensitive as sales data, even in anonymized form. Modern techniques Working with BigData allows good analysts to easily compare information about sales volumes on a certain street with the stores located on this street. This puts small businesses at a huge disadvantage.
At this point, some will probably say that they don’t need a small business; they are quite happy with networkers. I will briefly answer this with two well-known arguments:
1. Good quality in the industries in question, it can only be obtained in small and medium-sized businesses, since large retail is designed to make a profit, and maximum profit is incompatible with either quality or, in general, the interests of society.
2. Small businesses generate quite a few taxes, but create a huge number of good jobs. This is important: jobs are expected to become a very scarce commodity in the next 10–20 years.
From July 2018, the transition must be completed by SMEs from the trade and catering sectors that have hired employees and work under a patent tax system or use a single tax on imputed income (UTII). The last wave of cash reform will take place in 2019 - individual entrepreneurs without hired employees will join it.
For selling goods or providing services without a cash register, the entrepreneur first faces a fine. Depending on the legal organization enterprise, it will range from 25 to 100% of the revenue received without the use of equipment. In case of repeated violation, companies face a ban on conducting business for 90 days.
How ready are companies for new requirements?
According to Rosstat at the end of 2017, there were 5.308 million SMEs in Russia, including individual entrepreneurs. Thus, by July 2018, approximately 18% of such companies should switch to working with new cash registers, NAFI estimates. The survey showed that 42% of participants in this stage of the reform complied with the requirements: 36% use online cash registers, another 6% use both old and new-style cash registers.
Online cash register Evotor 10 (Photo: evotor.ru)
Every fifth company participating in the second stage of the reform (23%) planned to buy and install an online cash register during May, another third will do this no later than July 1. At the same time, among companies obliged to switch to online cash registers before July 1, a third (32%) stated that they do not plan to purchase an online cash register.
Why are companies in no hurry to install new cash registers?
Entrepreneurs are not ready to install new equipment, partly because they do not know about such a law. Of those who do not yet use online cash registers, 15% have not even heard that this is necessary, NAFI found out. “Now the main task is to reach out to every entrepreneur and explain the progress of the reform, what exactly needs to be done,” Andrey Shubin, executive director of Opora Russia, explained to RBC.
51% of companies required to install new cash registers from July 1, 2018 have a negative attitude towards the reform. Individual entrepreneurs are most dissatisfied with the reform - about 60% of them have a negative attitude towards it.
Businesses do not understand why there is a need to spend on new equipment and massive digitalization of all processes, explained Vladlen Maksimov, president of the Association of Small-Format Trade. It is more difficult for small entrepreneurs to cover these expenses than large networks: cash registers for them cost approximately the same, but the number of receipts and the amount of purchases from small businesses is much less, Maksimov noted. Market participants surveyed by RBC estimated the cost of one cash register at 20-30 thousand rubles.
The expenses of entrepreneurs at the second stage of the reform are covered by a tax deduction in the amount of up to 18 thousand rubles. for each cash register. However, only 51% of entrepreneurs knew about the deduction at the time of the survey. In addition, more than half of the reform participants consider this measure insufficient. A businessman's expenses include not only the purchase of the cash register itself, but also its maintenance: this equipment never works perfectly.
All manufacturers offer cash registers below the tax deduction, said RBC founder"Evotora" Andrey Romanenko. The cheapest cash desks can only transfer data to the Federal Tax Service, he explained. At the same time, “smart terminals” also provide access to various applications, wallets, and payment instruments, that is, they make business more advanced, Romanenko noted.
What problems have cash reform already had?
The transition to new devices back in 2017 was accompanied by problems. Six months before the start of implementation, several large retailers included in the National Association network trade(Chitai-gorod, Ekonika, Henderson and others networks) asked the government to defer the mandatory registration of cash registers due to a shortage of fiscal drives. The Ministry of Industry and Trade refused to grant them a deferment. Now there is no shortage, but it must be taken into account that most entrepreneurs are planning to switch to new equipment in last days, Shubin noted.
During the first wave of reform, there were companies that imposed on sellers Additional services for installation and maintenance of cash registers, Shubin said. It is important that now such companies cannot take advantage of the legal illiteracy of entrepreneurs, added RBC’s interlocutor.
Those who installed cash registers also encountered problems at the first stage. At the end of December 2017, the largest retailers and gas station networks throughout Russia were unable to operate due to a failure in online cash registers. The problem was related to a software error in cash register equipment from JSC Shtrikh-M - one of largest suppliers On the market. For example, retail network Magnit, which operates Russia's largest chain of stores, lost 1 billion rubles due to this failure. revenue, according to the company itself.
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“Too many people “know” how to decideurgent problems of society" (P. Heine).
"The most harmful thing is not ignorance at all, but knowledge of a damn lot of
things that are actually wrong" (F. Knight, economist).
INTRODUCTION
I wrote this article because the concept of “queue” has become a weapon in the ideological struggle of the enemies of the “USSR” project.
In recent years, in Russia, and not only, heated debates have increasingly flared up over whether “the Russian people did the right thing by abandoning socialism.” Leaving for now the question of whether the people actually “refused” or whether this decision was made for them, let us consider this, without a doubt, bright bogey of “queues”, which market liberals are triumphantly waving, presenting the queue as a blatant example of the “ineffectiveness of the Soviet system.” Under pressure from very obvious facts, they often admit that, yes, they lived well, but the queues spoiled everything and therefore “such a country is not needed.” At the same time, dishonest people are trying to slip the average person a line of reasoning as primitive as a felt boot: queues are a consequence of a centralized economy, to eliminate them a market is needed, and the market, in turn, is incompatible with socialism and the USSR. What follows is the conclusion about the correctness of the destruction of socialism and the destruction of a great power.
From this article, the reader will be convinced that the above “female logic” of marketers is nothing more than a blatant and dishonest manipulation that has nothing to do with economic science or simply common sense.
In reality, the queue, as a social, economic and organizational phenomenon, is much more complex than they try to imagine.
WHAT IS A QUEUE?
It is interesting that not everyone is clearly aware that the queue has always existed in all societies, and not only in the USSR, as they are trying to convince us. For example, it is functioning perfectly now in the West. There it is called the “peak-load problem” and has long been solved by theoretical economics (see, for example,), and by human practice.
The idea that the market is destroying queues in general is simply a blatant fraud, not so much by smart people as by cunning and dishonest people pursuing their own very selfish goals. In fact, always and everywhere - a queue is evidence of limited resources, nothing more and nothing less. Carts at a crossing, cars at a traffic light, people in a dentist's waiting room or a canteen - all this is evidence of a limited resource.
A queue is a condition that occurs when servicing one client takes longer than the time it takes for the next client to approach the service center - cash desk, outlet, hairdresser, baggage control... In other words, a queue is a situation when the next order arrives for service before the service of the previous visitor is completed.
Everyone agrees with this. But there are two types of queues: the first - when, simply put, what they are queuing for does not end and “this” is enough for everyone, even if not right away; and the second - when “this” quickly ends and there is not enough for everyone. That is, the second is a case of the so-called “deficit”. Let us emphasize this point - “shortage” is a fundamentally different type of queue. Although from the outside they look the same - there is a line of people behind each other.
Now, as they say, watch your hands. The fact is that “scarcity” as a noticeable social phenomenon began to appear in the USSR from the late 70s, if we do not take into account the period of wars. The queue of the first type has always existed - both in the USSR and in all other countries.
Ideological opponents, as a rule, argue that there were always queues in the USSR, this was an inevitable part of it, therefore... in the USSR there was always a shortage and an inefficient economy. But this is far from true. I repeat once again - if we do not take into account the periods of wars, economic recovery and the initial period of Industrialization, then the situation with queues, in general, was quite good somewhere until the 80s. That is, for decades, the Soviet economy functioned successfully and supplies worked, on the whole, quite well, especially considering that all this happened after a series of destructive wars and in an extremely hostile environment.
We will not consider the phenomenon of “scarcity” in this article - because in its essence it is completely different from the queue. “Scarcity” (lack of something) can be without a queue at all. In addition, the very existence of a “deficit” does not mean the weakness of the economy, but only an incorrect distribution or other organizational and social phenomena. The second type of queue is a social barometer, nothing more and nothing less. It is an indicator of a very serious imbalance, when one person has a lot, and the other has nothing. Not necessarily economic, but quite possibly a social or criminal imbalance, an indicator that law enforcement agencies can no longer contain the pressure of crime, which has merged with the authorities.
As for the economy, in some cases the economy is efficient, but in others it is not. In general, deficit is a very great evil for the public consciousness; it is not for nothing that it was used to manipulate society and destroy the country.
Let's also not take Stalin's times - this is a completely different conversation, when the Stalinist economy worked as planned - without wars and forced development, then queues and shortages necessary goods there was practically none. We will also not take the period recent years USSR - the queues and deficits of this period should not go through the department of economics, but through the department of law enforcement agencies, since they had not an economic, but a clearly planned nature of sabotage before the planned destruction of the country.
If you try to consider the phenomenon of queues in the USSR over all periods of its existence, you will end up not with an article, but with a monograph of hundreds of pages, of little interest to the average reader. In this article we will look at the period of the “mature” USSR until the beginning of the transition period of the mid-to-late 70s, when the managerial elite of the Brezhnev period began to leave for another world and the country increasingly began to find itself in the hands of semi-mafia party clans, which ultimately led to to Perestroika. This was done because the Soviet System, in the form in which it was planned and built, began to be gradually destroyed from the late 70s to early 80s. And we are interested in what it was like as planned and what advantages and disadvantages it had.
There were queues during the period under review, but as a rule, they were of the first type - due to insufficient capacity of service points. From the point of view of the average person, it would seem that everything could not be simpler - if servicing a client takes so much time, then you just need to increase the number of service nodes or service points. But the simplicity of this solution is deceptive and the treatment can easily turn out to be much worse than the “disease” itself. The fact is that queues often make great economic sense - they provide significant benefits, providing greater profits and more optimal resource management than if you got rid of queues.
In an ideal world and under ideal conditions there should be no queue, but even then, only if the flow of customers is strictly stable over time. IN real life everything is different - the flow of clients is inconsistent, then twenty will come at the same time (for example, a bus arrived), then for half a day there will be no one at all. At the moment when the number of service orders exceeds the capacity of the serving node, a queue appears. Then, when fewer customers arrive, the queue disappears without a trace, as if it never existed. This process is repeated cyclically. For example, on a working day, as was usually the case in the USSR, there is no one in the store, and immediately after work there is a line almost to the door.
The same thing happens in any country in the world, even in the West, so beloved by “reformers” - half-hour and even hour-long queues at the supermarket on Friday and Saturday evenings are a completely ordinary thing and, despite the constant caricatures in the newspapers, nothing changes there either. And it won't change. A queue is a signal that the system's full load has been exceeded, or that there is a lack of reservation, but it is far from a fact that it makes sense to increase this throughput.
Let's carry out a simple reasoning - even if in the most super-market economy the owner of a service point increases the number of staff, then there will be no queue during peak hours, but the hours when there are few customers and the staff are idle en masse will “eat up” all the profit.
In reality, the cost of employee salaries is not everything. Here we must add an additional number of service units, for example, cash registers, the cost of square meters, which will be used not for placing goods, but for the cash register, as well as the cost of managers who will manage additional personnel... Naturally, with an increase in the number of personnel, the price of the service also will increase, because the buyer pays for everything. Even without mathematical calculations, it is clear that there is a certain optimum between the queue and downtime of personnel and equipment. It is the requirement to maximize profits that forces the diner owner to keep his customers in line, at least sometimes, during the hot lunch hour.
Practice has shown that in reality it is technically impossible to organize work without queues in such a way that the required number of personnel appear at their work precisely at rush hour, although there have been attempts to solve this problem.
Now let's look at the situation through the client's eyes. After all, he constantly chooses where to go - where there is a queue, but the price of a service or product is lower, or where there is no queue, but the price is higher. The client knows that in one place he can get a service (for example, a haircut) for 10 coins, but without a queue, and in another for 5 coins, but after standing in line, or in a third the price will be 3 coins, but with a crush. Where will it go client, will depend on how and how much the client values his free time.
It may be objected to me that this can only be if all clients have the same income, then it will really be a matter of free time. That’s right, the main reason, other things being equal, determining the client’s behavior will be his income. Therefore, for example, the director of a corporation or an expensive lawyer will not stand in line at a cheap hairdresser, but will overpay triple the price even for the same quality of haircut. However, this requires serious social stratification with all the disadvantages that accompany it, such as crime. For example, in the mature USSR, everyone’s income was relatively equal - the official decile coefficient (without taking into account subsidies) did not exceed 4.4, and when recalculated taking into account subsidies for the poor - 2.2. Now - 15. By the way, the decile coefficient under Stalin was approximately 6 and there were significantly fewer queues, unless, of course, we take the war years into account.
Queues in the USSR were generated by equalizing principles - i.e. care for low-paying citizens and a much smaller number of shops and retail outlets than in the West. The second aspect of “for some reason” is not paid attention to at all. Only the physical redundancy of goods and places of their distribution can objectively contribute to the predominance of queues of the first type. But this is not our Russian case. The USSR is not the rich West, which is located in a much more optimal climate, plus it robs the whole world, as a result of which it has many hands free from production and can afford such waste. This obviously has nothing to do with optimal economic management.
Look, now trade in Russia, by objective Russian standards, is so hypertrophied that it absorbs most of the profits real production, undoubtedly increasing the further degradation of the manufacturing sector. The only way out here is to return to the situation with queues, but at the same time transfer two-thirds of the people currently employed in trade, intermediation and finance to the real sector of the economy. When production starts working and is optimized, the queues will begin to disappear, as was the case, for example, after the War and at the end of Industrialization. Are queues evil? Yes, naturally, evil. But, alas, in this case the alternative is even worse.
Many patriotically minded citizens even declare that any government that does not fight excess trade will not be a government of national salvation. That is, the queue within reasonable limits is not a suppressive, but a stimulating factor for production.
From what has been discussed, the obvious conclusion is that, in general, queues increase the welfare of society because they provide more efficient loading of resources, which compensates for the loss of time caused by standing in queues. Of course, if the situation is not brought to the point of absurdity, as was purposefully done during the destruction of the USSR. But then massive queues arose for a completely different reason - as a result of economic sabotage, “cashed” rubles from the manufacturing sector poured into trade, which is why the money supply increased sharply, but prices remained the same, so people with “hot” money swept away everything.
It is strange to blame the Soviet System for this - it was already practically paralyzed by a series of blows.
Market experts argue that standing in queues is a waste of precious time. According to them, a limited resource - and this is a “scarcity” - should be given not to those who got in line earlier, but to those “who work more” (this is how the word is cleverly manipulated for those who have more money - these concepts are far from identical ) and needs more support. Well, of course, who else should the “free market” ideologists support, not the poor?
In the USSR, the idea was diametrically opposite - the system was configured not only to optimize the load of labor and distribution resources, but also, above all, to ensure equal availability of basic goods, with little dependence on personal income. For the “marketeer,” the task is simply not posed in this way; the main thing for them is to ensure the decisive advantage of individuals with money over everyone else. And what price it will cost the whole society, how much it correlates with human concepts of morality and justice - they care least of all.
To illustrate the essence of the USSR approach and the usefulness of a certain number of queues for the entire society under socialism, I will give an example of an economic experiment, which P. Heine gives in his classic work. For ease of presentation, I do not present his economic calculations.
So, in experiments to optimize ticket prices in a 700-seat movie theater at a student college, revenues cover expenses with a ticket price of $3.15. At a price of $2.50, there is a line and the room is naturally 100% full. This is exactly the situation that existed in the USSR, when prices for many products and tickets to cultural institutions (theatres, cinemas, museums...) were subsidized.
However, everything changes if the goal is to get as much net revenue from the film as possible, so what will the price be? Answer: $5 If the price is set to $5, 500 tickets will be sold. The total proceeds will be $2,500 and the net proceeds will be $300. It can’t get any better.”
Please note a key point: at maximum revenue, 200 (almost a third!) seats in the cinema are empty. These are people who will be cut off from culture in order to maximize profits, but more on that a little later. But the most important thing in terms of efficiency is completely different: the market model is fundamentally incapable of ensuring the optimal allocation of resources. From 1/10 to 1/3 of the resource simply disappears.
Another very important point– in the experiment under consideration, the cinema maximized its profit by significantly limiting access to the resource due to high price. Yes, he won, but this means that in the entire social organism, where resources do not come from anywhere, someone else lost significantly.
The point here is that in any large system there are several levels of optimization, and “marketers”, hushing up the rest, artificially isolate only one level - optimization at the enterprise level, which dominates in a market economy, usually to the detriment of optimization at a higher level. Local systems at the same time, they conflict with each other, spending enormous resources on taking a piece from someone else, as was shown in the above experiment, rather than agreeing on the level of the entire society.
This is precisely what the USSR “traveled” on, this is what explains its high efficiency- it was built as a single integrated system, where optimization was carried out to the maximum high level. Moreover, the sacrifice of profit at the local level was deliberate, because there was a larger gain from optimizing the distribution of resources at the level of the entire society.
In the USSR, the ticket distribution model (and trade is precisely distribution and nothing else) would be solved as follows. The price of some tickets will be slightly lower than demand and will ensure that tickets are available to everyone. Then the vast majority will rush into line for cheap tickets. The other part of the tickets will be more expensive, but they will be on free sale. Finally, the third part of the tickets will be expensive, but always available and will be sold at a high price until the last minute, and then the price may decrease. We will end up with a typical socialist model of trade. In this case, the second part will symbolize the Soviet cooptorg, and the third part will symbolize the market. Those who don’t want to stand behind cheap tickets will go and buy them a little more expensive. If we make the cooperative system more convenient, we will get closer outlets, best watch work, etc., then a significant part of the goods will go through the cooperative trade system. Such a system was extremely developed in the USSR during Stalin's time and was introduced at his insistence. Not surprisingly, there were few queues. By the way, the idea of cooperative trade at the state level and with state support belongs not to Stalin, but to Lenin. Stalin simply implemented it very successfully, despite the fierce resistance of the “Leninist revolutionaries.”
The costs of pacifying society in the event of ideological incidents would be many times greater than the losses incurred by the state by selling tickets at their cost. The current history of Russia has proven this perfectly.
And who loses as a result of incorrect optimization? The whole society loses, and quite heavily. The inevitable social stratification and isolation of a considerable number of people from benefits fundamentally inaccessible to them will have to be paid for by strong social tension, which results in epidemics of suicide, drug addiction, an epidemic of unmotivated cruelty and the reluctance of the population to give birth to children.
The cinema here is just an example, and by the way it’s quite good. The fact is that the choice in this case was made by students, not the most affluent part of the population - if a ticket costs 3 dollars, then a student can have something to eat for 2 and watch a movie, then for 5 he will have a choice - go to the cinema or have dinner . Generally speaking, 200 out of 700 people cannot have both dinner and entertainment under the market system. And there will always be such a fairly significant layer of those who, in principle, will not have access to social benefits above the minimum in a market economy. Naturally, the ratio will vary from 30% in the USA to 90% in Paraguay, but again, it will always be there. Do you think this is normal and natural? Well, then you get wild street gangs, a lot of suicides, unthinkable for the “damned scoop”, a sadistic boss, a close relative who became a drug addict and other delights of the “free market”.
Liberals point out that students and teachers paid with money, but in the USSR people “paid” with their time, which was even more wasted. Yes, time is money when it comes to production. But the vast majority of the population queues outside of working hours.
Another thing is that if people live correctly and everything is in order with public morality and health, then queues generally worsen the situation in society, since in general a person will have less time for his family, taking care of his health, for example, sports, and so on . The person in line experiences unnecessary stress.
You just need to remember that in a “market economy” a person spends even more time chasing money, and it’s better not to mention the stress experienced during this - stress in a moderate queue will seem like child’s play. You just need to be clearly aware of what society pays if it chooses social model– what is it “linked” to, what is its reverse side, payment for benefits?
What will happen if you increase the price, but do not add the amount of money, as the liberals propose? An increase in price itself means that, with the same salary, the consumption of a good will decrease, since a person will be able to buy less of this good. But with a stable money supply, prices for other goods should decrease. If new money is not printed, then, given equal consumption and production, an increase in price will immediately cause a decrease in consumption, that is, there will be at least a slight overproduction, as happened in the case of the cinema. In other words, the efficiency of the economy will decrease, since part of the resources in the form of other overproduced goods will then be thrown into a landfill or service capacities will not be used.
Well, what about the liberals’ argument that the additional profit received from selling milk at an increased price will be used to expand its production? Not everything is so simple - the profit received from the sale of milk can be used to expand production if there is a guarantee that this will lead to a further increase in profits. Why on earth should they be? If the price of milk does not rise, then no one will invest in its additional production. You can, of course, invest, but the profit was very small. In reality, this money cannot significantly increase milk production, since it was too small compared to the losses from overproduction. And to really increase milk production, huge investments were required at the state level. This is what the experience of today’s Russia and all former socialist countries have shown, where they began to produce much less meat and milk.
By the way, the main increase in labor productivity in the USSR was associated not with investments by the commodity producer, but with state investments in science and technology.
Queues of the first type in the USSR were economically beneficial because they allowed them to save resources in conditions of uncertainty of future demand. By the way, they are also profitable in the West.
We have an excellent historical-economic experiment to test the null hypothesis with a huge statistical array of data. In place of the former socialist countries, more than 24 states arose, which ALL liquidated socialism and the Soviet regime. They acted in a variety of ways. Some, such as Poland, used shock therapy, others, such as the Czech Republic and Ukraine, acted very gradually. Therefore, there is no reason to say that these are mistakes of managers, “distortions” the right idea market”, etc.
An analysis of the state of affairs in all (!) post-socialist countries showed that when the queues were eliminated, less meat and milk began to be produced. Everywhere . Amazing, right? For that fought for it and ran. This is about the efficiency of the economic system.
Wait, but the original hypothesis of market economists stated that after the elimination of queues, meat production and consumption should have increased? It turns out that everything is completely wrong. It would seem that one could conclude that the queue stimulated production.
But in reality, everything is noticeably more complicated - it was not the queue that stimulated, it would have been ideal if it had not existed at all. It was stimulated by the Soviet Economy, with a slight imbalance of which queues arose. This is a payment for her positive traits. Under socialism there are crises, no matter what Marxists claim, and the indicator of socialist crises is a queue. With a slight distortion, this is a queue of the first type; in serious crises, queues of the second type arise - this is weak side Soviet System, although production is not disrupted unless it is artificially disrupted. This strong point planned Soviet System.
Just like social tension, crime, decline in morality, mass ruin with a corresponding wave of social collisions - this is the price to pay for the pleasure of having a “free” market.
I may be accused of idealizing the queue. This is wrong. I experienced first-hand all the delights of standing in queues. Did you ever stand in line during Soviet times, you asked me more than once? Yes, I personally stood there many times - I had to transport sausage and other products from Moscow to Ivanovo. The impressions are unforgettable, but not at all terrible, as they now want to imagine. The queue is a whole layer of culture.
But why it was impossible to organize a Swedish system with numbers - it was elementary to do this - remained unclear to me. At one time it seemed strange to me why it was so difficult to come up with a system of paper numbers. Although, by and large, why is this system with number plates and digital displays fundamentally better than the Soviet one? A little more expensive, that's all. And its “advantages” are visible only in short queues. If there are a lot of people, where will they sit and walk? - there will still be a crowd. In the Soviet line, it was also not necessary to stand with your head buried in the back of the person in front. If there were benches, you could sit. You could get in line and go for a walk.
All this most likely could have been organized in the USSR, but they never got around to it. The culture of queuing had to be developed. Trading by orders could greatly help with this and it developed rapidly. The industry of packaging goods also developed... But then the urgent need arose for the ruling elite not to solve problems, but to make money from the “drain” of their own country.
Now to the question that it was allegedly impossible to “get” the necessary products in the USSR. This is an absolute lie - there was an alternative: meat was in the store for 2 rubles, in the smoke shop for 3.5 rubles, and in the market, for example, in Ivanovo, 4 rubles. There were shops made to order. There you could buy to order, but pay 30% on top. Buy without queues - no problem! Finally, meat, like milk, could be eaten without waiting in line in any Soviet canteen. Although it was more expensive there than in the store - from 25 to 50%. Made for children special funds to schools for meat and milk, and they received it in quite large quantities. For infants, milk was distributed through dairy kitchens. Milk and meat have always been allocated to nursing mothers... Naturally, there was always the opportunity to buy it in a co-op trade or on the market. I emphasize: always.
So the "hungry, unnourished children" argument is just a dirty lie. 100% This looks especially disgusting against the background of the fact that in today’s “Russia,” according to official data from the Ministry of Defense, every third of the conscripts (yesterday’s schoolchildren) “suffers from serious underweight,” that is, simply put, dystrophy. I affirm, as a doctor who worked in the USSR, that there were no dystrophies there. At all.
It may seem that the author considers the Soviet distribution system ideal. No, that's not true. I think Soviet economic system much more effective and fair than all others, including the Western model. We just need to take the best from the Soviet system, take into account its shortcomings and mistakes and move forward. It is quite possible that in the future the distribution system may work differently altogether. If New Russia manages to break through into a new post-industrial era, then large megacities will apparently be disbanded and resettled, and a significant part of primary production will be produced locally and there will be no great need for our usual method of distribution. Moreover, no one will incite consumer desires with advertising and similar effects on the brain.
A planned economy also eliminates queues and often more effectively than a market economy. At Soviet power the queue was an operational regulatory mechanism. U market economy there is an advantage in the speed of response, but it is incomparably more expensive than the planned one.
There were many options for neutralizing the negative impact of queues, but the worst way out was deliberately chosen - a transition to a much less economically efficient and immoral capitalist market, which was implemented in today's Russia and the former socialist countries.
S. Mironin
REFERENCES
1. (see the first version) http://vif2ne.ru/nvz/forum/0/co/217465.htm
2. Heine P. Economic way of thinking. www.libertarium.ru/libertarium/lib_thinking
3. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978STIN...8016549A
4. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1872/
5. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/2337/
6. McConnell, K. P. and Brew, S. L. 2007. Economics. M. Infra-M.
7. http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle_base.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/russianmiracle.html
http://www.rusproject.org/pages/history/history_9/integratedsystemstalin.html
8. Glazyev S.Yu., Kara-Murza S.G. and Batchikov S.A. 2003. White paper. Economic reforms in Russia 1991-2001. M. Algorithm. pp. 62-63.
9. Mironin S. 2005. The naked market king. Internet site versus TV screen. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1461/
10. Glazyev S.Yu. et al., 2003. pp. 62-63.
11. Mironin S. 2005. http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1461/
From July 1, 2017, all cash desks must send electronic versions of checks to tax office. Banki.ru decided to confirm or refute numerous predictions about the imminent death of small trade in Russia from the mandatory transition to online cash registers.
Drive instead of tape
On February 1, 2017, an amendment to Law 54-FZ “On the use of cash register equipment” came into force. Now small and medium business must get used to working with online cash registers or receive fines in the amount of 8-5% of total profits. Time to get used to and purchase new technology given - for different categories trading enterprises- from six months to one and a half years.The trade and service industry is on the verge of dramatic changes. From February 1, 2017, the traditional cash receipt officially becomes a form of mandatory electronic data. They will be stored by the fiscal data operator and the tax service. What difference does this make for buyers and sellers?
As of July 1, 2017, all cash desks are required to connect to the Internet and send electronic versions of checks to the tax office. To do this, instead of the electronic secure control tape (ECT), which is well-known even to people far from technology, the cash register must have a fiscal drive - a device for encrypting and protecting fiscal data. An intermediary, the fiscal data operator (FDO), will transfer information from the fiscal storage device to the tax office. Additionally, in addition to a paper check, the owner of the cash register equipment (CCT), at the buyer’s request, is obliged to send electronic version check to the address Email or subscriber number.
The new legislation on CCP recognizes cash register equipment only those devices that not only print out a receipt, but also transmit information about each operation to tax authority(via OFD). These devices are called online cash registers.
All legal entities and individual entrepreneurs who are re-registering cash register systems are required to submit only new devices for registration. This rule is effective from February 1, 2017 . Those who had old-style devices are required to change them to new ones just before July 1 . It is from this date that the transfer of data to financial operators begins.
To whom the law is not written
Leading lawyer of the company "European legal service» Evgeniy Luchin notes that the forms strict reporting, in fact, are equated to cash receipts. In its turn, automated system for the generation of strict reporting forms is integral part cash register equipment: that is, the obligation to transfer information to fiscal data operators also exists for those using BSO.54-FZ gives the right to some entities entrepreneurial activity do not use CCP before July 1, 2018. This opportunity is available to organizations involved, for example, in the sale of valuable papers, peddling trade. The full list is described in paragraph 2 of Article 2 of the Law “On the Use of Cash Register Equipment”. Individual entrepreneurs Those engaged in activities and issuing strict reporting forms to customers can also rely on this date.
Today there are a number of categories of individual entrepreneurs and legal entities, who will not have to use CCP at all. Who are these lucky ones?
These are entrepreneurs and organizations engaged in the following activities:
- sale of newspapers and magazines, provided that the share of the sale of newspapers and magazines in their turnover is at least 50%;
- trade for retail markets, fairs, exhibition complexes, as well as in other areas designated for trade;
- peddling trade in food and non-food products;
- selling ice cream in kiosks, soft drinks on tap;
- trade from tank trucks in kvass, milk, vegetable oil, live fish, kerosene, seasonal trade in vegetables, including potatoes, fruits and melons;
- acceptance of glassware and waste materials from the population, with the exception of scrap metal;
- sale of folk arts and crafts products.
How much?
In accordance with the innovations, even those entrepreneurs who do not yet use cash register equipment, are required to purchase online cash registers before July 1, 2018 and send information to tax service in a manner established by law. There is a transition period until July 1, 2017: you can use old equipment, but only improved CCPs are allowed before registration. From July 1, 2017, they will completely switch to new order There are two categories of entrepreneurs working with cash register systems - those working under the general and simplified taxation systems.“Now to carry out the registration procedure cash register just go to a special Internet resource, create Personal Area and complete the registration procedure online. The innovation significantly reduces time costs and also significantly simplifies the registration procedure itself - there is no need to personally contact the tax service. For this operation, you only need to create an electronic digital signature digital signature“says Konstantin Khanin, lawyer at the legal department of HEADS Consulting.
Accordingly, in connection with law 54-FZ, each point of sale must be equipped with the Internet. The advantage is that if the Internet stops working, the drive saves the receipts and sends them to the Federal Tax Service immediately after the connection is restored. The expert believes that changes regarding checks and strict reporting forms will cause difficulties for trading enterprises. It lies in the fact that now the amount of data that must be present in the fiscal document will increase.
Comparative analysis of costs for electronic control tape (ECT) and fiscal storage (FN), according to UniCredit Bank
* For entrepreneurs on UTII, Article 4.1 of 54-FZ provides for a period of 36 months, however, such fiscal accumulators are not produced as of 04/21/2017 (according to experts, they will not be able to produce such in 2017).** The average market cost of the service “KKT Maintenance per year” is indicated.
The price of switching to online cash registers will vary from 30 thousand to 60 thousand rubles per cash register. Due to innovations, there is no need to use the services of centers Maintenance, and the price of the necessary agreement with the fiscal data operator will not exceed 3-4 thousand rubles.
Konstantin Khanin believes that for small businesses the new trade rules are more harmful than positive. Since the changes involve refurbishment of old equipment or the purchase of an online cash register, such entrepreneurs will incur significant expenses, and their profit volumes will hardly be able to cover such costs.
Nevertheless, Khanin is sure that it still makes sense to keep a small trading business according to the new rules. “The main thing is to do everything in good faith, observing legal regulations, since fines for failure to comply with the law can become significant expenses for a business,” the lawyer reminds.
Average cost of purchasing and servicing cash registers, according to UniCredit Bank
(Items 2, 3, 6 and 7 are optional expenses, the rest are mandatory expenses.)The matter will not be limited to cash register costs. One of the main goals of the law is to improve tax collection, which will accordingly increase business costs. This will especially affect small businesses, which will first have to incur expenses for reforming the entire payment system, and then pay more taxes.
