Crisis of Russian healthcare: ‘excess perpetration’ or pre-programmed outcome?

The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the issue of the situation in the health care тsystem and the directions for its further reform. An analysis of the transformation of the health care system based on the study of regulatory and other documents, as well as data from sociological studies witnesses that such results of reform as a sharp reduction in the availability of quality medical care, a shortage of medical personnel, etc. are not a consequence of the “excess of the implementer”, but are programmed by the course of health care reform, which was a purposeful and consistent process, the customer of which was international financial organizations and transnational capital. The article examines the problems caused by the significant underfunding of health care, as well as the numerous institutional contradictions generated by the reform. It is concluded that the reforms that led to such results became possible due to, first, the reformers ignoring the opinion of the medical community and, secondly, the lack of the necessary level of solidarity in Russian society.

Unsolvable economic problems. Existence in contradictions

V. B. Sirotkin considers causes that underlie the existence of unsolvable problems in the society, i.e. corruption, low labor efficiency, etc., and shows that uncontrollable contradictions in human behavior and mentality serve as sources for the existence of such problems. The author suggests a transdisciplinary approach to studying behavior management of individuals and groups.

National industrial competence and global added value chains: methodological instrumentarium of macroeconomic analysis

In the context of the developing global economic crisis, it is important to have an adequate methodological toolkit for the global positioning of the manufacturing industry in different countries of the world in the production value chains. In this work, the authors made an attempt to further develop their own concept that solves this problem. A methodology for calculating indices reflecting the dynamics of national industrial competence “in the context” of the integration of the country’s manufacturing industries into global value chains is presented. The calculations and conclusions are based on the OECD TiVA statistical database (2018). The tendencies of industrial development of thirty economies of the world, including the Russian one, were identified, taking into account their “embedding” in global value chains. So, if the manufacturing industry of Russia, participating in the international division of labor, manages to maintain an average level of general national industrial competence, then its strategic positions associated with the development of high-tech industries can be qualified as “outsider”. The author’s methodology seems promising in terms of assessing the global economic positioning of countries and formulating recommendations for national regulators of manufacturing activity.

Fundamental factors of techno-economic cyclicity

The paper examines the phenomenon of stages in technical and economic development in the context of the theory of technological paradigm. On the basis of a critical rethinking of the approaches of Dosi, Perez, Glazyev et al., the marxist tendency of the rate of profit to fall, as well as an empirical analysis of the US economy, the authors built an econometric model that makes it possible to determine the factors that affect both the change of technological structures themselves and their phases. The incentive that pushes capital to the path of investment in new technologies is the dynamics of the rate of return, which tends to decline and stagnate at this stage. After the new technology was mastered by national producers, and the concentration of capital created national leaders with sufficient competitiveness. foreign economic relations between countries are intensifying, which expresses competition for the development of new markets. The growing rate of return is pushing investors to capitalize on it in the form of further investment in industries where new technology can increase the return on capital. At the same time, this creates the prerequisites for overaccumulation, which is expressed in a gradual drop in the marginal profitability in production, which directs capital to the financial sector. The financialization of the economy and the formation of stock market bubbles are taking place. After their collapse, the economy enters the stage of a fall in the average rate of profit, which again starts the process of searching for a new revolutionary technology that can ensure an increase in labor productivity. The research results make it possible to more fully explain the reasons for the change in the phases of technological orders, as well as predict these processes.

Contradictions of the upcoming period: points for developing the agenda for medium- and long-term perspective

Analysis of the economic and social situation allows for the conclusion that the world is entering an era of global instability and contradictions. There is clearly a crisis of compensatory and basic institutions. Humans cease to be the subjects of the historical process and instead are becoming the object of control. Contradictions are sharply increasing at different levels. We are witnessing the conflict between labor and capital related to the national nature of labor and the global nature of capital. Production, security and regional applied science are changing, but financial and institutional systems remain global. Information and trade wars are intensifying. During a multi-level crisis, it is difficult to predict what a new social order will be like, but the transition to it will be difficult and highly possibly rife with (macro-) regional conflicts.

On priority development of knowledge economy

A.G. Aganbegyan considers the knowledge economy as the main component of human capital. He analyzes certain areas of the knowledge economy (R&D, healthcare and education) by comparing relevant results demonstrated by Russian regions with similar indices reported for other countries. The article points out positive and negative aspects, e.g. high level and quality of education v. low efficiency of its application; lower cancer mortality rate and particularly child mortality rate v. high mortality from cardiovascular disease among working-age population, etc. Major causes of negative phenomena include insufficient funding of the public sector and inefficient administration. In order to remedy the situation, the author recommends the development of a new federal budget, transition to national economic planning and adjustment of national projects.

Confidence in the future as an economic development factor

The level of confidence in the future is considered as one of the important characteristics of the quality of life. Social and economic well-being depends on what expectations prevail in a society. It is shown that the reduction of interest rates on loans is not a sufficient condition for overcoming investment pessimism. It is indicated that with low capacity utilization, cheap loans can lead to stagnation of industries, contributing to the preservation of the existing structure of used capacities. The quality of coordination of economic activity is considered as one of the factors of business confidence in the future. It is noted that the competitiveness of existing industries has a great impact on the formation of new industries in the economy. It is emphasized that the transition to the system of interactive strategic planning remains an urgent task for our country.

Spatial outlines of an innovative system, capable of innovative reproducing

It is established to what extent an innovative system, limited by the framework of a region - a subject of the Russian Federation, is capable of expanded reproduction. The spatial contours of the local innovation system are justified by the boundaries of the macroregion. The classification of domestic innovation systems on a spatial basis is carried out. The problems that do not contribute to the implementation of the entire chain of the innovation process in the local innovation system are formulated: from the generation of knowledge to the production of finished innovative products.

What is social economic planning?

The attempts to build post-capitalist societies in the twentieth century all used variations of the material-balances economic planning procedures developed first in the USSR. Most advocates of transcending capitalism came to accept the idea that the desired new society could operate only with some variation of such an economic planning tool. One part of the current thorough reconsideration of how to build a human-centered post-capitalist society is reconsidering how it should carry out, in a way consistent with its goals, the social economic planning that all systems of production require. This brief work first addresses a number of misconceptions and myths connected with the identification of planning for socialism with the material-balances planning system. After that, and connected to real-world experiments now going on in a few countries in the world, the work considers if the required social economic planning could occur through conscious control of markets, for countries attempting to build a socialism that uses markets for both the necessary articulation of all the steps in its many production chains and for the distribution of consumer goods.