When we talk about illiberal democracy or populism in our European context we use the word ‘the rise’ – the rise of illiberal democracy, the rise of populism – but it is an outdated narrative. Currently, we are dealing with normalization of illiberal democracy.
It makes a big difference whether the state directly funds the operation of restaurants or “merely” mandates the issuance of food stamps, or whether restaurants are funded by paying customers.
For Slovakia, in particular, as the extremely strong generation of “Husák’s children”* does not have a sufficient population replacement and will start to put a major strain on the health and pension systems in the coming decades.
The Lithuanian government has enlisted Lithuanian Free Market Institute’s (LFMI) proposal for adopting the Estonian corporate income tax model among Lithuania’s main tax reform alternatives.
Large oil field, steel production capacity, or number of tractors produced do not make the company rich. The company grows rich thanks to skilled people in the right place, their excellent skills and ability to adapt to change. As Julian Simon used to say, the ultimate source of wealth is man.
The northernmost Baltic state is in the overall comparison quite successful in fighting the COVID-19-pandemics. To this success contributed among other things the central electronic health system.
The necessity of a reformed Hungarian higher education system became clear in the 2000s: after the regime change in 1990, the number of higher education students was increasing heavily, which decreased the quality of higher education and the value of university diplomas.
When we talk about wages in Slovakia, we refer to gross wage. From an economic point of view, however, it is a fictitious value created by accountants. It represents an arbitrarily set point between the two key values: net wage and labor costs.
I keep hearing news about yet another ambulance with COVID-19 patients driving around between hospitals looking for beds, the lack of a basic coordination system for allocating patients to hospitals, and I really have the impression that Poles live in some surreal, tragic reality.
Many of the projects and ideas presented by the Georgian government are good examples of wishful thinking. However, when the ruling party is called Georgian Dream, a pursuit of wishes and dreams should not surprise anyone.
