Why the Latvian state needs non-existent residents

One of the branches of the Latvian economy has become the management of almost 176 thousand dead souls.

This year, not in the usual way, but with the diligence of a census conducted every ten years, the statisticians of the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) have found out that on January 1 of this year, 1,893,223 people lived in Latvia. However, the results of the census do not affect the Population Register maintained by the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA) with 2,069,089 people on the same January 1. Thus, in Latvia, math in which 1,893,223=2,069,089 is valid. Further, this equation can be divided or multiplied, because both the CSB and the OCMA provide data on the number of inhabitants in municipalities. Each of them now has the choice to introduce themselves by naming the number of people they like best. No municipality could yet be found that likes CSB data better than OCMA data, if we are looking at how municipalities show themselves in their advertising materials. Behind the scenes, the picture is different. According to the CSB employees, the CSB data is used for the development municipality planning documents. Statisticians have barely managed to satisfy all the requests in which municipalities ask to show not only the total population, but also the distribution by gender and age groups and settlements.

The difference between the CSB and OCMA data was formed as a result of the 2011 census. With the extension of the census time and other manipulations, the CSB dragged the number of people over the two million line and stopped at 2,067,887 people, while the OCMA kept its 2,208,444 entries in the Population Register. There is no dispute that the population of the country is declining. The CSB has long reported less than two million inhabitants, but the OCMA with the current 2,069,089 entries in the Population Register is practically where the CSB was ten years ago. The difference between the CSB and OCMA data is that the CSB recognizes as residents only those people for whom information has come during the reporting year from various registers that the person has studied, received treatment, paid taxes, etc. in Latvia. If there is no such information, then there is no resident. Probably, most of these people continue living in other countries and might potentially return to Latvia, but some of them are dead souls in the literal sense of the word. If people have not informed the Latvian authorities about their departure from the country, then it is even less likely that their relatives will consider it necessary to inform the Latvian state about their death.

Nothing has changed in the management of the dead souls since 1842, when the dead souls were revealed as a business object for the whole world by the Russian writer of Ukrainian origin Nikolai Gogol. The Russian Empire described by him has moved to the European Union and manors have grown into countries, including Latvia.

The Prime Ministers of Latvia are clones of the main character of N. Gogol's novel, Chichikov. They all need dead souls to get loans.

Just as manors once could exist in Russia, Latvia can exist by covering the difference between income and expenditure with loans. The lender presented in N. Gogol's novel is called "попечительский совет" in the original language and translated as the "Council of Guardians". In the current situation, this council consists of the European Central Bank, which prints the euro out of thin air, and the European Commission, which restricts the ability of EU member states to borrow these euros by limiting national budget deficits. The reason for the increase in loans is now the increase in the gross domestic product, not the population. However, it was not possible to completely decouple the increase in debt from population growth in the EU either. The increase in total debt has so far been offset by an increase in the total EU population at the expense of immigration. The division of total debt between countries or "manors" then became a secondary issue.

For the second year in a row, the EU is continuing to dismantle the old order, as countries do not receive loans against GDP or population growth, but for complying with economic restrictions imposed by Covid-19. Officially, however, the old procedure is not considered abolished, but suspended until the end of next year. Then it will be relevant for Latvia to display more people again. The OCMA has carefully kept the number of such people, perhaps even since the 1990s. Currently, the OCMA has been exhibiting the publicly available static database since January 1, 2015 with 2,160,125 Latvian residents, the number of which has decreased by 91,036 people by January 1 of this year. In the same time interval, the CSB has reduced the indicated population of the country from 1,986,096 people to 1,893,223 people, where the decrease is 92,873 people. It seems that the current changes in the composition of the Latvian population are reflected in the CSB and OCMA data even very similarly, but approximately 170 thousand people have acquired immortality in the OCMA data.

The current Latvian market for dead souls included in the Population Register is a municipality competition to increase their real estate tax payments within the limits allowed by the state, so that large tax rebates can then be given to those taxpayers in whose property many people are declared. People abroad or who have died long ago are the best to declare in such cases because they do not take up space and do not argue.

However, the example of Russia also shows that such machinations cannot be sustained indefinitely, even if both the real population and GDP increase. Censuses conducted according to the methodologies of that time confirmed the increase of the population of the Russian Empire from 41 million in 1812 to 94 million in 1897 just in the European part of Russia without the current Poland and Finland. Unfortunately, even a generally successful development at the national level does not automatically solve the problems of failed companies, i.e. "manors", which were kept alive not by the landowners but by their creditors. In modern language, we are talking about pension funds that would have to be liquidated if at least one country important at the EU level declared insolvency.

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