economy

Some respected economists identified the issue of consolidation in public budget already in 2022 as a third-order problem. From an analytical point of view, he is, of course, right. A one-year deficit of 10% of GDP is nothing compared to a permanent two to five per cent deficit in the pension system with a declining workforce.

Sci-fi? Such an idea has no unrealistic basis. This biological nature of members of different cultures related to the ability to prosper is the same. One of the practical examples is the USA, which cannot refer to the race or the religion as a factor of its prosperity.

It is the summer of the second year of the COVID-19 panemic, and the European Union has generously opened its coffers to spend on post-pandemic recovery. Various governments of the EU are scrambling to put forward their best ideas to be funded by the new support scheme.

More than five years after its adoption, Ukraine\'s wood export moratorium was found incompatible with the Association Agreement (AA) and not justified under the GATT 1994. Ukraine\'s arguments were weak to prove that conservation of forests was the moratorium\'s primary goal.

The tragedy of the commons describes the opposite situation - the property belongs to everyone, but at thesame time to nobody, although they all think that a) the property belongs to nobody, and b) they have full rights to the benefits from the property.

In recent months, many countries have introduced enormous stimulus packages to help their economies overcome the devastation caused by the COVID-19 crisis. In Germany, the government made available emergency funds, created sector-specific relief programmes, and implemented demand stimulus measures such as a temporary reduction in the sales tax rate.

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.

In non-emergency times, the role of economic freedom, defined as a lack of interference or coercion by others in an individual’s economic decisions, has been scientifically proven to yield economic growth and prosperity for the greatest number of people.

The socially liberal camp around the world, including much of the European liberals, have been celebrating this turning of the tides, even though it comes at a cost of further polarisation of the society in the US and elsewhere.

The next five years will be crucial. Public finances should come out of huge deficits, and the lesson from the previous crisis is clear. Tax increases will never be temporary. Pulling the tax brake can serve as an additional \"austerity\" argument in the discussion on lowering the deficit.