Transcription
It needs to be filled. >> You are working poorly. Don't agree? Well then, look here. This is the growth of real wages in Russia since 2011. Real, meaning, the value has already been cleared of inflation. Here we take 2011 as 100%. And, according to this data, in 2024, the average Russian could afford almost 60% more than 13 years ago. We live better, we live richer, we live more comfortably. I don't know if you have felt this yourself or not, but this is what Rosstat says. And who am I to argue with it? But here is another graph from the same Rosstat. To the growth of real wages, we add labor productivity. If wages have grown by 60% in 13 years, then labor productivity has grown by only 20%. Russians' incomes are growing three times faster than their work efficiency. And, as you might guess, this ride of unprecedented generosity cannot continue for long. Either productivity must catch up with wages, or wages will have to stop and wait. And this is already starting to happen. For 9 months of 2025, they grew by only 4.5%. For comparison, in twenty-third, for the same period, growth was 7.4%, and in twenty-fourth, it was nine. I think it's intuitively clear that wage increases should be a consequence of labor productivity growth. You work better, you produce more, the enterprise's income grows, wages increase, but for some reason, our wages are growing, as if on their own, just like that. That is, some blogger named Name, who has never done anything in his life, is telling me in cahoots with Rosstat that I am working poorly and my wages should not be increased. Well, not just me. Here is another savior of the economy of all Rus' who says that if wages grow faster than productivity, then as a result, we get an overall price increase. And German Gref calls wage growth unprecedented and says that this growth cannot continue for long. Well, of course, they up there are all in it together, and you've sold out. Okay. Let's go to foreign sources then. Let's open a map of labor productivity here and there. Let's look. In Russia, it is on average 36.6 dollars per hour, just like body temperature. But if for temperature this is a normal indicator, then for productivity, it is quite low. On average, we are somewhere here. For comparison with others, in the USA it is 83.5 dollars, in Australia 76.8, in France 77.7, in Spain 64, in Canada 62, and even in Turkey 56.5. one and a half times higher than ours. The main pain of any manager is to increase the productivity of themselves and their team without additional costs. Therefore, neural networks now seem like a panacea. Top managers think they will press a magic button and make everyone efficient at once. Yeah. I can just imagine how a manager in the chaos of operations will take and master all these AI things of yours. No, first you need to build processes, manage through clear metrics, and eliminate manual control. You will learn this in comprehensive training. 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Follow the link in the description to build processes and accelerate them using AI. And with my promo code MyGAP, you will get a maximum discount of 65%. And we return to the topic of labor productivity. Let me remind you, in Russia it is 36.6 dollars per hour, and even Turkey is ahead of us. What about Turkey? Our Kazakh brothers are also ahead of us by one dollar. On the other hand, for the seemingly giants of production, China and India, everything is quite bad. Well, they still rely on scale, not efficiency. And this is good for the rest, because if we imagine that countries with a population of under a billion and a half had the productivity per worker like in the USA, I fear that all other countries would become vassals of the Indochinese superpower. So, you mean to say that a hypothetical Chinese worker is a lazy person who sleeps at the machine while his American colleague, a Stakhanovite, carves out three norms a day. I smell a catch here. You probably guess that it's not about diligence at all. Labor productivity, despite its name, has a very distant relation to labor and laziness itself. It is a much more cunning and multifaceted indicator that can tell us how the Russian economy is structured and why we cannot bring the standard of living to the American and European level. In this video, we will try to understand what is hidden behind this number 36.6 and what prevents it from becoming 98. Distract yourself from your tasks, close your work chats, and put your phone on silent, because all of this is unimportant. In half an hour, you will learn why the efficiency of your work actually depends not on you at all. >> [music] >> Meet Ilya Muromets, the ambassador of Russian heroes. Remember how he started his career? Before embarking on his epic feats and achieving success with the guys, Ilya Muromets lay on the stove for 30 years and 3 years and planned no achievements. And Emelya from the fairy tale, by the pike's command. He even turned his stove into a means of transport and solved problems without getting off his favorite spot. In Michurinsk, there is even a monument to him. Perhaps, if you ask any of the local residents why labor productivity in Russia is twice as low as in the West, they will simply point to this monument. Yes, that's why. Let's see how many paid vacations we have. 42. In Germany, 30, in Canada, 25, in China, 23. And in the USA, there is generally no federal minimum. There, as a rule, private companies themselves decide how many vacations to grant. And the number of vacations depends on years of service. Well, like, if you worked for a year, then days, but if for five, then you might get as many as 14 days. In general, see for yourself. Russians are leaders in the number of vacations, so myths don't come from nowhere. We all just need to reduce vacations and work more. I'll hit you with this crowbar. Okay, okay, wait. Let's dig a little deeper. Maybe we really have a lot of days off, but in terms of working hours, we work like horses. On the screen, you see how many hours each resident of the country worked on average. In Russia, this figure is slightly over 2,000. That is, approximately 40 hours a week, as required by the Labor Code. But in America, they work only 1,800 hours or 34.5 hours a week. In France, less than one and a half thousand, which corresponds to 28 hours. We can say that the average Frenchman works a four-day week of 7 hours a day. And who is lazy after this? At the same time, if you remember, the USA and France are countries where productivity is two or three times higher, although they work less for some reason. It turns out that the really lazy countries are more efficient than the hardworking ones. But if you think about it, there is no paradox here. What is labor productivity in general? At the level of a specific factory, it's simple. For example, one worker toils with all his might and produces 100 high-quality shiny parts per hour. And here is his irresponsible colleague at the next machine, who takes a break every 15 minutes, works carelessly, and also came in drunk. Therefore, he produces not a hundred parts per hour, but only 50. His productivity is twice as low. But when we move from the workshop level to the level of entire countries, the comparison of America with the first worker and Russia with the second becomes absolutely incorrect. At the macroeconomic level, labor productivity is the country's GDP divided by the total number of hours worked by all citizens. And now let's recall arithmetic. If people work less in a country, the denominator is lower, and therefore the result, i.e., labor productivity, is higher. To increase this indicator, we need to figure out how to demonstrate a higher GDP level with a shorter working week. Simply put, work less and produce more. Your face looks Russian, but your clothes are all foreign. >> Ah, you ignorant, village bumpkin. >> In addition to the myth of the lazy Russian, another myth has taken root in people's minds about the best Soviet education in the world. But if laziness is a myth that is quite easily refuted, then with education, things are quite close to the truth. I cannot say whether Soviet education was the best in the world. There are no objective metrics for this, but I can definitely say that our nation is indeed educated. Look at this graph. Here we see how the number of people with higher education correlates with GDP per capita at purchasing power parity. In other words, is there any connection between education and quality of life? In the bottom left corner, we see stereotypical African countries like Chad, Rwanda, and others. Moving upwards, we notice CIS countries, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan. By the way, a fun fact about our Chinese brother. There, bachelors are around 5%. Again, the excessively large population has an effect. Well, and on the graph in the top right corner, we find the expected countries like Norway, Belgium, USA, and Singapore. So, where is Russia? Yes, we also didn't find Russia here. And do you know why? Because we have an extremely high proportion of people with higher education, but this education, for some reason, does not translate into quality of life. In theory, given the situation worldwide with such a number of bachelors, we should be not here, but somewhere here. That is, on paper, we should have such an intellectual boom that we are head and shoulders above both the USA, Singapore, and the Netherlands. How can one not ask the question? If we are so smart, why are we so poor? To answer this, we need to understand how knowledge turns into economic results. The simplest example. Compare the efficiency of a team of workers and a department of engineers. While the workers are digging with shovels, the engineers are designing an excavator. And when it's ready, the country with the excavator and engineers increases productivity by an order of magnitude and moves from here to somewhere here. And the uneducated laborers with shovels remain digging here, in third-world countries. It turns out that Russia, in this analogy, has trained a huge number of engineers, but for some reason, instead of designing an excavator, they continue to swing shovels. Innovations are responsible for turning shovels into excavators in a broad sense. How are we doing with them? To answer this question, let's turn to the Global Innovation Index, which is published annually by the World Intellectual Property Organization, abbreviated as WIPO. WIPO operates under the auspices of the UN. And this index is calculated based on several dozen different indicators: from electricity and logistics to feature films and GitHub commits. Well, it's clear. Now these international agencies will put us somewhere near Africa again. But let's look for ourselves. [music] No, let's [clears throat] still figure it out. Firstly, South Africa is still a fairly advanced country, not Angola. Secondly, 60th place out of 139 countries is a pretty solid middle ground. We are roughly in the same place in terms of productivity. At the same time, in the human capital and research category, we are in a very decent 28th place. And here are our neighbors, Greece and Luxembourg. Within the category, we rank 21st in higher education, 25th in scientific article citations, and the best Russian universities are in the top thirty. And there we are already neighbors with Norway and Austria. In general, if the index were compiled only on these criteria, then Russia would be among the First World countries. But then, on the way from university аудиторий to successful innovations, there is an invisible barrier. So many smart people, but so few innovations. It's a paradox. There is even a study on this topic called the Russian Paradox. Its author says: "Today, long-term economic progress critically depends on increasing productivity through knowledge, but Russia, it seems, is strangely not ready for this." The author presents several main theses in his work that influence the growth of labor productivity: mortality rate, conversion of education into productivity, and innovation. This is a summary provided by Google's LLM Gemini. If you switch to ChatGPT, there will be similar theses, but with a different presentation and table. Everyone chooses which model meets their requirements. You can easily switch to Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and whatever your heart desires. I am currently using Synx AI. It is one of the largest aggregators and tools. It is even available in Telegram, you can write directly there, but I personally find it more convenient to use their web interface. The main advantage. You pay for only one subscription and get all the top tools for your productivity, for any creative or work purpose. Working with text, generating images, creating audio or video. All this is available in Synx AI. Here we tested video cover concepts, and here we made a red viewer and a blue mug fight. A special delight. No VPN or additional registrations are needed. One subscription works for both Telegram and the web version. Lots of different tariffs, and the most economical one starts at 756 rubles. Follow the link in the description, use the promo code MyGap to get a 15% discount for new users, and get all the top neural networks in your pocket. And I'll go on to talk about labor productivity. [applause] So, we stopped at the author of the study "Russian Paradox," who pointed out that in Russia, for some reason, the accumulation of knowledge does not lead to an increase in productivity. Then he goes to the US Patent Office and looks at which countries registered their know-how. Over 20 years, the organization has registered about 2.5 million patents. So, from which countries were the applicants? Japan is in first place, then Germany, South Korea, then more, more, more countries. And here we come to Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Russia. I think the difference in the size of Ireland and Russia needs no explanation. Well, maybe the US jurisdiction is simply not needed for us. China isn't there either, and they definitely know how to assemble excavators. A worthy remark, so we need to look at the situation with patenting under international law. This, by the way, is managed by WIPO, whose indices we looked at recently. There, we immediately see China and the USA in first place, then more, more, more countries, and after small Austria and Belgium, we come. Another metric the author considers is the export of services. He calls it "trade of skills." This is a quick test of converting education into marketable skills. That is, if a country has many educated adults, then they should, in theory, be in demand on the world market, which means the skills of these adults are sold. This can be IT, engineering, finance, consulting, transport, or logistics services. Next, let's look at the top service exporters. In the top five leaders, we have the USA, Britain, Germany, France, and China. And then more, more, more, more countries, and after Turkey, we are. Do you understand the situation? Wherever you look, given our incredibly high number of diplomas, we somehow cannot commercialize these diplomas. We somehow cannot turn a shovel into an excavator, although on paper we should be able to do it easily and effortlessly. The fact is that for ideas and research to turn into a final product, one more magical thing starting with the letter "I" is needed. Investments. Let's return to the WIPO index. And in this section, we are only in eighty-first place, and in terms of venture capital share, we are in the second hundred. Here we are placed next to Iran and Azerbaijan. Well, and nearby is our brotherly Belarus. That is, we have a smart, educated, and moderately hardworking population, but for some reason, there are too few who would want to invest money in it and direct these talents and abilities in a practical direction. The reason for the low enthusiasm of venture investors lies in another section of the innovation index. Let's go back to the overall rating. Look, there are three countries among the blue and green squares that have one gray one. These three countries are Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and Brazil. The number inside is the position in the rating for the "Institutions" category. And no, I'm not talking about those institutions where lectures are given to students. In the 15th century, an Italian startup founder living in Portugal named Christopher was looking for investors for his project: to discover new lands and a trade route. First, he approached the King of Portugal, then the King of England, then the King of France, but all investors sent him packing. And only the Spanish Ferdinand decided to get involved in this venture and said: "Okay, listen, I am ready to finance your adventure. If you find gold, silver, and other valuables there, I will take 90%. You will get various titles, honors, and respect, and the remaining 10%." If you agree, then sign here. You know what happened next. Columbus set off to the West, discovered new lands. Spain, as the investor and discoverer, took them for itself, and then built its great Spanish empire on the resources of the new colonies. It was a rather risky undertaking to sail into the unknown. One could die oneself and bury the investment. By a strange coincidence, the English word "adventure" is very similar to "venture," an undertaking or a risky endeavor. If modern terminology had been used in the 15th century, the Spanish king's investment would have been called venture capital. Several hundred years have passed since Christopher Columbus's startup. And now venture investments are commonplace in the USA and China. Let's see how things are with us. On the screen, you see the volume of venture deals in Russia. Excluding the COVID year, until 2021, we had a steady upward trend with a peak of 2.4 billion dollars. Well, and then everything is clear, you don't need to explain. Indeed, everyone understands everything, but there was one super loud case in the history of Russian venture capital associated with this guy. Here he is posing for Forbes, saying that Russia is doing quite well compared to other petrostates, that Russian entrepreneurs are quite capable. And if foreign investors were shown our businessmen, they would want to invest in the latter for a decade. This is an article from 2016, and 3 years later, another photo appears. Here he is in a defendant's cage. Our hero's name is Michael Calvey. The case is complicated, delving into all the details would take a separate video, but in the shortest possible terms, it was like this. Calvey's fund owned 52% of Bank Vostochny. And at some point, the bank issued a loan of 2.5 billion to one of CV's companies, which then repaid it with shares of another of its companies. In essence, it transferred money between its own structures, but then it turned out that the value of the shares was assessed incorrectly. In reality, they were worth not 2.5 billion, but only 600,000 rubles. Different asset valuations are normal practice. Even if they differ so drastically, then, in theory, disagreeing business partners go to arbitration court. There, each presents their audit report, and the court decides whose valuation is more convincing. But then a fraud complaint was filed against Calvey, and on February 15, 2019, on the day the investment forum opened in Sochi, Michael Calvey and several partners ended up in a pre-trial detention center. The business dispute rapidly turned into a criminal case. And why should I listen about some businessmen who couldn't divide their billions? Because Michael Calvey is not just any businessman. The Baring Vostok fund, founded by him in 1994, was the largest investor in Russian projects. His money helped develop companies like STS, the provider Dom.ru, the online cinema IVI, the offline cinema Karo, the European Medical Center, the main resale platform Avito, the super-innovative bank Tinkoff, the pride of Russian accounting 1C. Yes, they even invested in VkusVill. Literally in all the projects for which Russia now has a reputation, the best banking, the best marketplaces, the best digital services, Baring Vostok money participated. Oh, and I almost forgot. In 2000, they invested 3 million and 5 million dollars in such little-known, small, but possibly promising companies as Ozon and Yandex. Of course, none of this was charity. The fund made billions from these deals. But who knows, perhaps without the money from Baring Vostok, there would be neither the Yandex we know, nor many other cool resources that we use every day. Just as it is unknown whether the Spanish empire would have existed at all without investments in Columbus. And now let's return to this picture. Surely somewhere here, among these 60%, new Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich are creating a startup with the potential of Yandex, capable of moving Russia from here to here. Only they won't have a new Michael Calvey. [music] His criminal case ended with a guilty verdict and a suspended sentence of 5.5 years. By today's standards, one can say he got off lightly. The investigation did not last long. Within a few days, Russian special services found the evidence they needed. >> After this, Calvey left Russia and did not invest a single cent more in our economy. But more importantly, other funds with tens of billions of dollars looked at this and silently decided that it was probably not worth investing in Russian startups, you never know. And although we don't see this impact in the statistics, the decline in 2020 is more explained by COVID restrictions than by a specific case. But we can use official sources that are in the know. Alexei Kudrin, who participated in the creation of the National Wealth Fund, which has greatly supported us in crisis years, and now has joined Yandex from the state side, said: "Undoubtedly, Calvey's arrest was a shock to the economy. Since the beginning of this year, capital outflow has doubled and has now reached a level of more than 40 billion dollars. It has significantly increased the risks for investments in the Russian economy. And this will not change quickly, even if entrepreneurs are released from arrest." And the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, who is now a super-important person in those very negotiations, Kirill Dmitriev, said that the attack on Baring Vostok inflicts a powerful blow to the entire investment community of Russia. Nobel laureate Douglas North introduced the concept of institutions in 1993. He calls them the rules of the game in a state. In this analogy, companies and businesses become players. A lot of time has passed since then, and people have become very good at evaluating the rules of the game for different countries. Remember how the World Intellectual Property Organization ranked Russia 131st in the "Institutions" category? Well, there you can clarify why this happened. The "Institutions" category is divided into three blocks. In general, all components are about how likely political and legal risks are for business if a dispute arises. Are courts subject to political pressure? How unambiguously is the legislation written? Does the rule of law protect property rights? Can you be suddenly banned or blocked? As you can see, in two blocks, the country is ranked 13th and 132nd. Let me remind you that there are 139 countries in total. Well, it's clear. Another Western rating has placed us at the bottom of the list. Nothing new. Yes, I also have the opinion that, most likely, the results are to some extent fabricated and exaggerated. But here's what doesn't add up. The West has a much larger and more dangerous enemy - China. [music] And if we take the same rating, we will see that institutions are in forty-fourth place there. For some reason, the UN assesses doing business in communist China more favorably than in Russia. At the beginning of 2024, the President of Russia set the task of bringing the capitalization of the stock market to 66% of GDP. GDP then was 171 trillion, and the Russian stock market was valued at 58 trillion. This is 34% of GDP. Two years pass. Our GDP is growing robustly, and in 2025, it equals 213 trillion. And what is happening to the stock market? Its capitalization has fallen to 50. Now the share of the fund is 23%. If two years ago, to fulfill the task, capitalization needed to be doubled, then now it needs to be tripled. >> [music] >> This year, at the very first meeting on economic issues, the president said: >> "The task is obvious: to increase investment activity with an emphasis on increasing labor productivity. >> He says several times: >> "Increasing labor productivity with high labor productivity." >> And calls the task a priority. >> This is a priority task in the context of a shortage of personnel in certain sectors and industries. The task is good and noble, but how to accomplish it? Our scientists are already repeating the repeatedly voiced thesis: the quality of institutions. They say there is a correlation between the rule of law and labor productivity. Specifically, on this graph, by the way, we are not placed at the very end, but even China is placed higher here. Currently, our initial data are as follows: labor productivity has stopped growing on a budgetary impulse. The stock market is 23% of GDP, and it needs to be tripled. The venture market is 159 million dollars, [music] whereas Russian-speaking founders have attracted 3 billion abroad. How to make these funds attract businesses in Russia? If we believe the research, then institutions are responsible for this. There will be no innovation without investment. [music] There will be no investment without institutions. And institutions are clear, transparent, and equal rules of the game for everyone, in which no one risks losing property or freedom for no reason. And the next 5 years will show whether these studies are right or if there is some special path that other countries do not know. You know who to send this video to. And we thank the investors in the MyGap project through Boosty and Patreon. Lyova, Asa, GLF Global, as well as all the supreme masters, wise consuls, heroes, and gapniks. See you at the next meeting. Yeah. Ah Ah