Hungary and Taxing Taxes
The number thirteen is commonly recognized as an unlucky number. But for Hungarian businesspeople, the preceding number is worse, as the 12th is the deadline for paying taxes.
Economy
How Shakespeare’s Hamlet Teaches Us to Save Money
Just as the protagonist of Shakespeare’s drama gains the courage to take on justice in the course of the play, too must human agency and responsibility win in each of our inner struggles. This is the only way to ensure the sustainability of the pension system by reducing upward pressure on state benefits and allowing people themselves to recover a larger share of their incomes at a time when there will be no active sources of income at all.
New Draft State Budget for Poland: Larger Deficit Than in PiS Assumptions
The Donald Tusk’s government submitted a new draft state budget for 2024 to the Sejm on December 19, 2023. Following rejecting of the budget implementation act by the president, the government presented a new bill on special solutions for the implementation of the budgetary act for 2024.
Shortening Our Work Week, or Reddest Apples of Eden
The idea of a 4-day working week has already captured minds in many places around Europe. Like UBI, it is a devilishly sweet temptation that is almost impossible to resist.
Why World Needs More Markets in Healthcare
Recently, a Slovakian newspaper published a commentary about tighter regulation in the healthcare sector. The question remains what exactly does he mean by the word “tighter regulation”?
Four-Day Working Week Without Rose-Tinted Glasses
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said at Davos that Slovakia could become a country that will experiment with a four-day working week. It is a flattering topic and so several media immediately picked up on it.
Let’s Not Raise Minimum Wage. Let’s Abolish It!
It is telling that the public almost unquestioningly believes that the minimum wage helps low-income people in particular. But as the prominent Czech economist Robert Holman writes in his textbook on microeconomics, “If economists agree on anything, it is that legislating a minimum wage increases unemployment.”
Economic Defence of Advertising
Advertisements are generally regarded as a socially undesirable phenomenon. At best, they are seen as a poor source of information about a company’s products in an attempt to raise awareness of their existence and thereby win new customers, but more often as a despicable practice aimed at manipulating consumer preferences.
Peltzman Effect: Unintended Consequences of Government Intervention
Why are expectations about the impact of government regulation so often not met? Why do the actual consequences of government interventions diverge countless times from the intentions of the politicians who promote them? Economics has elegant answers to these stimulating questions. One of them will be illustrated and explained in this article.
What New Polish Government Can and Should Do for Entrepreneurs
Donald Tusk outlined priorities for the Polish government for the next months. In his expose, he paid a lot of attention to entrepreneurs, promising to limit inspections of micro-entrepreneurs, introduce a cash-based personal income tax for entrepreneurs settling this tax with the tax authorities, and a vacation for entrepreneurs, i.e. one month a year free of social security contributions and a benefit of half the minimum wage.
