Economy

Many people, both in the West and in the former socialist countries, display an attitude which I call—somewhat pointedly—“a mentality of Soviet official”. It is a generalized belief: “whatever problem there exists, only the state can solve it.” The state is perceived as a deity, i.e. an omniscient and benevolent being with unlimited resources.

Since the transition, a number of national and international contrastive studies have noted a growing anti-capitalist sentiment in the Hungarian society.

FDP leader Christian Lindner expressed a strong need for more responsibility in fiscal policy and a legally anchored ban on the bank bailout. He criticized the state bank bailout as a perversion of the market economy.

European Commission wants to tackle down on in-app purchases of add-ons for free tablet and mobile games. Commissioner Neven Mimica said, that “consumers, and in particular children, need better protection against unexpected costs”. He’s absolutely right.

The goal of the project is to explain that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch provided by state and to inform general public on the costs of the public services by using this specific visual form. It uses per citizen calculation (including children and retirees), that enables better understanding of each taxpayer´s share on financing the public services.

The key question is: why should the German regional states own a bank? It has cost and still costs the German taxpayer a great deal of money to invest in boats, planes and property, yet brings the taxpayer few advantages for the risks incurred. Given the strength of our economy, this poor performance still looks very strange.

Some view social justice as the comprehensive equality of normative rights as well as social and material goods, others doubt whether social justice can even be defined, never mind actually achieved. But what does justice mean for liberals? And when is a society or a state just in the liberal sense?

At European level, the NEETs are considered as one of the most problematic in the context of youth unemployment groups. For few years already, some analysts have started to talk about a “lost generation” sometimes referring as the NEET as a population of young people literally doing nothing.

Perceiving deflation through the prism of an unmitigated disaster is today as unassailable as motherhood. Over the course of the past week, three different media outlets asked three INESS analysts to give their take on the “perils” of falling prices for the European economy.

Are all markets rigged by HFT? The SEC and FBI are going to try to find an answer to this question.