Taxing the Oligarchs

Fikrov's "Population Birth Rate Increase Plan" was approved at the Duma conference.

But putting it into practice still faced a major problem.

The various subsidies and support measures involved a great deal of money. Where was that money supposed to come from?

Fikrov did not need to worry about money, but Wang Ye, Gryzlov, and the other speakers had to.

Any policy without sufficient funding behind it was just a piece of paper and would have no real effect at all.

To that end, Gryzlov gathered several deputy speakers for a small meeting to discuss where they could squeeze out enough money to implement this plan to promote population growth.

"I had someone run the numbers. If every policy in the plan is to be properly carried out, it will require an estimated one billion US dollars per year. If the results are good, that amount will increase later on. This is no small sum. It would be difficult to pull it from the national budget."

Gryzlov spread his hands and spoke helplessly.

As formulators of national policy, or at least participants in policymaking, there were many policies that clearly benefited both the country and its people, yet were difficult to introduce and even harder to implement.

Was it because they did not want to?

Of course not. They simply did not have the money!

Even the cleverest housewife could not cook without rice.

If they could, what country would not want to provide universal welfare, covering everything from birth to death?

Unfortunately, there were only a handful of countries in the world capable of implementing that kind of welfare policy.

Even America, as powerful as it was, and Japan, as wealthy as it was, simply could not manage it!

Only a few small countries in Northern Europe could implement