INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STUDIES

When I first heard a Smer-SD party representative talking about the intention to set the minimum wage level in Slovakia at EUR 600, I did not pay much attention to it. It seemed like a bad joke.

It was late 2018, when the Slovak government approved the free lunch program for all children attending elementary schools. The supporting argument was that this measure is outreaching to poor kids who had not been targeted by previous lunch subsidies.

The Western world has come together to mourn over the newest Oxfam study. According to their calculations, 26 billionaires own as much as the rest of the people on Earth.

Not many things are as exciting to economists as a famous debate about lighthouses in England. These have long served as a fine example of a public good that needs to be provided by the state. The idea of a trader selling light from the lighthouse sounds ridiculously.

Democracy works best alongside civil society. However, civil society is built by solving local issues without relying on the remote hands of politicians and democracy. It may sound like a paradox, but in reality, the expansion of so-called civil society requires neither politicians or more elections, nor longer electoral programs.

A dozen countries out of the 28 European Union (EU) members had legal limits on cash transactions in place at the end of 2015.

In the recent years, cash has earned the label of obsolescence and high cost, and become a public enemy. Restrictions on cash payments are in place in many countries around the world and an EU-wide restriction is looming. However, cash plays a number of important roles in the economy.

Tom is the most expensive cat in the world. The Chinese bought him from a young Slovenian couple for a billion dollars. Even from our own local experience, we know that the Chinese buy any damn thing. So what?

The slowdown in raising the deductible item did exactly what the government needed. More taxes are paid to the budget and people have not even noticed it.

Robert Miskuf, CEO and founder of Pedal Consulting, a business development consultancy based in the Slovak Republic, started working in European public procurement eight years ago — and his job was mired in paperwork.