Economy

Cuba needs a comprehensive structural reform of the constitution, legal system, economy and within its society. It needs to open up to dialogue, interchange and cooperation with today’s key international players: the United States, Europe, Latin America and the international institutions.

In the most recent ranking of the World Economic forum, which compares the competitiveness of 140 countries around the world, Slovakia ranked 67th. Since we ranked 8 places higher the year before, the media presented this as positive news.

A few weeks ago, the Fed expressed no intention to increase interest rates, but the will to maintain the current ones of 0 to 0.25%. The problem is that cheap money does not only indicate the prevailing economic problems, but imply long-term negative impact on both savers and economy.

The short natural gas supply cut to Ukraine during the 2006 gas crisis and the 2009 dispute, in which Gazprom again decided to halt all gas supplies via Ukraine, not only contributes to a growing perception of the politicisation of EU-Russian gas trade but the reliability of Russia as an energy provider in general.

Arrival of Uber, which provides a cheaper alternative compared to traditional taxi services, has stirred up a debate in Slovakia. The participants are two camps divided by two completely different points of view regarding the question what Uber represents.

The first task an economist has to master is to explain to people that there is such a thing as an economic problem. That is because people are more concerned with everyday emotionalism creeping into their lives by means of having to deal with another type of a problem that we could call an ‘engineering’ one.

Riding on the wave of historical fear, Slovak government quickly came up with a new protective law. In general, it forbids any agricultural landowner to sell land (2000 square meters and more) freely to just anyone. The willing seller has to actively search for an interested local farmer and offer him the land for “usual” price first.

The story of Singapore does not match the usual idea of combining democracy and the market economy. While in the developed countries of the West, democracy has been threatening the functioning of the market economy, Singapore and its authoritarian regime has maintained the status of the easiest country to do business in.

The process of unmasking social and national etatists is an extremely vital part of our mission to improve our political system. And it has to be a ceaseless offensive. One has to fight!

Human reason is probably the only resource worth caring for – it should not fall into the hands of bureaucracy and robbers. The first scenario would make it ineffective due to unreasonable rules and restrictions, while the latter would not allow the deserving to reap the fruits of their labour.