The solutions to combat inflation that Danuše Nerudová proposes are not good ones. A price cap on energy can lead to nothing but shortages. Financially incentivizing households and industry to reduce energy consumption is useless in a world of market prices.
Czechs have to hold out for one more month. After June 17, 2022, they will start earning for themselves. Until then, for 167 days, they work only for the state. That makes this year one of the least free since the Liberal Institute has been counting Tax Freedom Day since 2000.
The US Federal Reserve System (Fed) has announced that it will raise interest rates. They have been at zero since the start of the pandemic and since the last recession in 2009, they hit their highest level in 2019. But even in 2019, they were very low, with an effective rate of about 2.5%.
While for the second year now we have been tracking new numbers of coronavirus-related cases and deaths several times a day, and estimates for the cost of the economic lockdown range between two and four billion CZK a day (for the Czech Republic), another crucial figure has escaped our attention.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Herbert was to his genre what Tolkien was to fantasy, to whom Herbert himself defers in several places, just as it is not too presumptuous to describe Herbert personally as a liberal advocate for a freer society, not only in his literary works.
Unfortunately, we will not celebrate the fifth year of the Bureaucracy Index in the Czech Republic with a reduction in the administrative burden. The bureaucratic burden on small businesses increased by 49 hours year-on-year to 272 hours.
In March 2020, under the pressure of a growing pandemic, we voluntarily shut down the economy for the first time to protect the lives of fellow citizens. Over the next twelve months, when the economy and the people have already been locked in a lockdown, we have managed to completely devastate the services segment, we have managed to devastate children in online education and, worst of all, we have not prevented a high number of deaths from COVID.
This year’s Tax Freedom Day fell on June 25, and this year the state will redistribute 48 percent of what we produce. Last year we announced that we would have to revise for the first time ever, but in the end it was not necessary. The economic downturn was smaller than expected, and so, too, was the redistribution eventually.
It is not very often that the Liberální Institut can praise a politician for something. The happier I am that I can do so today, because an entourage of Czech senators – headed by the President of the Senate, Miloš Vystrči, – went in their official capacity to the Republic of China – the country generally known as Taiwan.
The Liberální Institut has been organizing the Mises Academy of the Liberal Institute (MALI) since 1996. It is an annual event where we debate with students such topics as economics, politics, history, philosophy, among others.
