Alla Graduates, Finally!

[Captain Hammer 113]

You can make money doing things like teaching English to business students. That is not what Gary is talking about. Teachers in public schools in RUB are the ones who make basically no money. And yeah, if you want a place with a strict labor code and stuff like that, you can stay in America. If you decide to live/work in RUB, there are pluses and minuses and if you make the decision to go there, then you have to accept them.

Sure. I was just relating what I could of my personal experience, or actually the personal experience of an acquaintance. I don't know any primary teachers, so couldn't comment on that problem, but yes, my understanding also is that public school teachers are woefully underpaid in Ukraine. As are nurses, police, firefighters, basically all of the infrastructure services that a society needs to function. It's one of the big reasons corruption is so rampant.

[eekee 182]

Corruption on a small level, sure--i.e., students paying to get a good grade, police taking bribes. But on a larger scale, like the fact that it costs so much more to build, say, a kilometer of highway--it doesn't really have so much to do with low salaries of regular working people.

[ONA 133]

I just dropped by to say congrats to both Alla and Gary!

Hope Alla is enjoying her free time

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

You can make money doing things like teaching English to business students. That is not what Gary is talking about. Teachers in public schools in RUB are the ones who make basically no money. And yeah, if you want a place with a strict labor code and stuff like that, you can stay in America. If you decide to live/work in RUB, there are pluses and minuses and if you make the decision to go there, then you have to accept them.

Two of our good friends are teachers in Ukraine. They live in the same building Alla lived in as a girl and her friend, Natalia, has lived in the same two room flat all her life. She is now married and has a small boy. They make about $200 per month each. Alla and Natalia grew up together, went to school together, became teachers together. After Perestroika, Alla got jobs in private business which paid a lot more money. Yes, you can make pretty good money in private schools teaching English. The English school Alla and Sergey went to "London School of English" in Donetsk (taught by a guy from Arizona )charged relatively expensive tuition for their lessons.

There are virtually no "labor codes" (whatever that is) in Ukraine. And none that are adhered to. Any of them can be overlooked for a bribe. Guys in construction, with their extra money after hours jobs, work 12-16 hours a day 6 days a week for a base pay of $300 per month. Extra money jobs after hours (moving piles of stone with a hand shovel for intsance) make them an extra $100-150. They work on ladders nailed together from scrap wood and drinking on the job, especially at lunchtime is tolerated,if not specifically "legal"

I found a whole new code of life in Ukraine which appears to be left over from the FSU...you have the bad things, the legal things and the "tolerable" things. It is illegal to sell alcohol to anyone under 18 (now 21 ) It is tolerated to sell it to anyone. The labor code is basically "You work, I pay you cash" Safety code is "don't get hurt"

Edited August 1, 2011 by Gary and Alla

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Sure. I was just relating what I could of my personal experience, or actually the personal experience of an acquaintance. I don't know any primary teachers, so couldn't comment on that problem, but yes, my understanding also is that public school teachers are woefully underpaid in Ukraine. As are nurses, police, firefighters, basically all of the infrastructure services that a society needs to function. It's one of the big reasons corruption is so rampant.

Strange. You lived in Kiev?

Corruption is rampant, I think, not so much because of low salaries (our two friends that make $400 per month together get by OK on that because they own their flat free and clear) but because it has been the way things were always done and it is how people coped with the Soviet system. They always had something to supplement their income, trade with other people, either goods amd services. I think if you tripled or quadrupled or raised by a factor of 10 all the salaries, you would still have the corruption. At least for a few more generations. The cost of the bribes would probably go up! I doubt my MIL would still be paying only 7 UAH for the postman to give her the pension check.

Private business also pays very low salaries (and sometimes does not pay for weeks or months at a time...try doing that here!) It is only if they have business with international companies that the salaries increase. Alla made a relatively high (for Ukraine) salary because she worked for foreign, EU businesses as their "representative". This means she was an independent interpreter, basically, and accompanied personnel from foreign manufacturers hawking their wares in Ukraine and Russia, she would also go to international trade exhibitions in other countries (this is why she was in Prague when I met her)

[Captain Hammer 113]

I think if you tripled or quadrupled or raised by a factor of 10 all the salaries, you would still have the corruption. At least for a few more generations.

This. The police, for example, are corrupt for several reasons: lack of pay, lack of training, and lack of screening. In reality, the worst that's going to happen to your typical Ukrainian beat cop for taking a bribe is that he'll be fired from a crappy job that hardly pays anyway. (he'd almost never go to jail because he'll pay the necessary bribes) There's little incentive not to be corrupt. You start paying him a living wage, give him good training (which imparts a higher level of morale in the job), and you start screening out the people who have zero business being a cop, and all of a sudden it's a game changer. Not overnight of course. As you point out, it would take several generations, maybe more. But that's where corruption starts: at the bottom. If you want to stop corruption at the highest levels, you start at the lowest levels.

[eekee 182]

When formal institutions are completely broken, a living wage only goes so far. And frankly I don't know if I'd even want to get rid of the bribery system, because it actually allows for protection from the system in a lot of ways. I have friends who have been given a choice (since none of my friends ever have money to even pay a bribe): "I can take you down the station, book you/arrest you/etc., or we can go down the street to a secluded area and I can beat the ###### out of you. What's your choice?" Guess what they choose? Hint: none of my friends have been to jail except for the drunk tank.

Maybe in America, where formal institutions DO work, getting rid of corruption at the lowest levels works. In Russia? No, you'd have to start at the top so people stop getting ###### over and therefore eliminate the need for this sort of counterintuitive protection from the system.

Edited August 1, 2011 by eekee

[Captain Hammer 113]

Maybe in America, where formal institutions DO work, getting rid of corruption at the lowest levels works. In Russia? No, you'd have to start at the top so people stop getting ###### over and therefore eliminate the need for this sort of counterintuitive protection from the system.

The problem with starting at the top is that if everyone below the top is corrupt, you'll never get there. If a corrupt minister commits a crime, the corrupt judge isn't going to sentence him, the corrupt prosecutor isn't going to try him, the corrupt police aren't going to investigate him, the corrupt press isn't going to report on him, and on it goes. You're right, formal institutions don't work in Ukraine. That's the problem. And even if reforms started today, they still wouldn't work in our lifetime. But it doesn't really work trying to reform from the top down, unless it's somebody at the top pushing reform from the bottom up. But really, the discussion is moot. There are no serious efforts that I know of to stop corruption, and I expect life to continue in Ukraine as it is now for the next ten generations and more.

[eekee 182]

Oh, I think that's being quite pessimistic. Things change pretty quick over here. 10 generations is what, 200 years? Maybe more?

People aren't going to follow the law if the people at the top don't have to. Your argument works backwards and forwards, if that makes sense. There's no incentive for ANYONE to follow the law. But when you read things like Navalny, it's like what's the point of being a good citizen, seriously, if so much money is going to corruption and graft at the top of the system. You don't get anywhere over here by being a good citizen. Everyone who got rich during Perestroika and right at the fall of the Soviet Union etc. did it by cheating and working around the system and being sly as hell during privatization.

[Captain Hammer 113]

Oh, I think that's being quite pessimistic. Things change pretty quick over here. 10 generations is what, 200 years? Maybe more?

I think "generation" varies between 20 and 25 years depending on who you talk to, so yeah, you're in the ballpark. I might be pessimistic, but whereas 200 years is ancient history to Americans, it's a drop in the bucket for that part of the world. Change takes glacial time over there. But I don't know, maybe 20 years from now that whole part of the world erupts into revolution again, and they get it right this time. Seems to me the only likely scenario for change to happen with anything we could describe as "soon."

People aren't going to follow the law if the people at the top don't have to. Your argument works backwards and forwards, if that makes sense. There's no incentive for ANYONE to follow the law. But when you read things like Navalny, it's like what's the point of being a good citizen, seriously, if so much money is going to corruption and graft at the top of the system. You don't get anywhere over here by being a good citizen. Everyone who got rich during Perestroika and right at the fall of the Soviet Union etc. did it by cheating and working around the system and being sly as hell during privatization.

You're exactly right on all counts. Especially "there's no incentive for ANYONE to follow the law." In our hypothetical case where you want to give people incentive, higher wages for infrastructure services seems to be a good start to me. If a cop feels like he has a good job that will pay off with a pension he can retire comfortably on, the likelihood that he'll accept a bribe goes down because he doesn't want to risk a good job and pension. But as you implied, the catch-22 is that it can't just be cops in isolation, or (as Gary said) bribes just get more expensive. If the cop can have a good job, good pension, and an expectation that he can still take bribes without repercussion, then you've fixed nothing. It's a chicken and egg problem, but I don't think it's impossible. Poverty and insecurity drives corruption more than anything else. You work that problem out, and slowly but surely your public institutions start working again.

I recently read an article at Transparency International (don't have the link anymore, sorry) discussing the countries that are in the process of tackling corruption, and succeeding. The Eastern countries that stuck out in my mind were Poland, Czech Republic, Moldova, and Romania. One of the things they all have in common is that they pay their civil servants a decent wage, so that most can get by without bribes to supplement their income.

If countries like Moldova and Romania can reduce their corruption, maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic after all.

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Oh, I think that's being quite pessimistic. Things change pretty quick over here. 10 generations is what, 200 years? Maybe more?

People aren't going to follow the law if the people at the top don't have to. Your argument works backwards and forwards, if that makes sense. There's no incentive for ANYONE to follow the law. But when you read things like Navalny, it's like what's the point of being a good citizen, seriously, if so much money is going to corruption and graft at the top of the system. You don't get anywhere over here by being a good citizen. Everyone who got rich during Perestroika and right at the fall of the Soviet Union etc. did it by cheating and working around the system and being sly as hell during privatization.

Cap'n Hammer speaks strangely. Nice dream, next lifetime I would say. The other countries the Cap'n mentions were not Soviet except Moldova and it was never really Soviet, it was a province of Romania given up in a deal.

At any rate, Eekee is dead on. There are simply far too many people for whom the existing system works very well and there is no incentive to change it. During the Soviet Union a person that worked in a bakery got paid little money but also walked out with bread which they sold or traded for other goods. Teachers traded tutoring for a loaf of bread or a couple meters of fabric. Doctors traded medical care for a piece of meat. This was strictly illegal but it kept people quiet so it was tolerated, as long as one did not get stupid about it. It was this way for 80 years and probably before that and it was one of the things people LIKED, along with free education, medical care, etc. and they were not going to give it up just because they became "independent"

One thing that always made me a bit uneasy about FSU citizens,and women are generally no exception, is that they have a very loose system of "situational morality" for lack of better term. They will do whatever they need to do to get by, feed their family, care for their needs, etc. If it isn't exactly legal and above board...that's OK also. I got over it and discovered that people really are good. We have legal title to a flat in Donetsk, though I am not sure how it came to be that way, it is not something you ask about too much. But if "Borders Books" were in the Soviet Union, the manager would be selling all the books, cheap, and keeping the money himself, maybe giving a share to the other workers. If you get the drift. Who is going to change that system? The manager? The customers getting cheap books?

[Captain Hammer 113]

There are simply far too many people for whom the existing system works very well and there is no incentive to change it. During the Soviet Union a person that worked in a bakery got paid little money but also walked out with bread which they sold or traded for other goods. Teachers traded tutoring for a loaf of bread or a couple meters of fabric. Doctors traded medical care for a piece of meat. This was strictly illegal but it kept people quiet so it was tolerated, as long as one did not get stupid about it. It was this way for 80 years and probably before that and it was one of the things people LIKED, along with free education, medical care, etc. and they were not going to give it up just because they became "independent"

I don't dispute that things like this happened then and now, but this is also a pretty rose-colored view of the system.

[eekee 182]

How is it "rose-colored"?

[Captain Hammer 113]

How is it "rose-colored"?

It's just a very simplistic way of looking at it. "Corruption" isn't just about the baker trading bread to the doctor for services. Corruption is a dark, nasty thing, where people are exploited and worse.

[eekee 182]

It's just a very simplistic way of looking at it. "Corruption" isn't just about the baker trading bread to the doctor for services. Corruption is a dark, nasty thing, where people are exploited and worse.

Yes and no. Like I said, on the lower level, it allows some protection from a broken system.