Estonia's Booming Economy

[mlmpetert]

Originally Posted by saden1

It is easier for a man with nothing to lose everything. Curious, what is their defense budget and how much of it did they slash?

I'm all for emulating their austerity measures across the board at every level. Who is with me?

I am!

I did a quick search and their defense budget is about 2% of GDP while ours is about 4%. Extremely quick search and i have no idea how accurate those numbers are or what they are/arnt inclusive of.

A reason why i could never consider myself a Republican is because of their foreign policy. It always upsets me when Republicans shun big government at home while championing it overseas. Creating massive agencies to police the world and spending massively to fund those operations is flat out dreadful to me.

As un-American, problem causing and unfair i find our entitlement and welfare programs, i feel exactly the same about our foreign policy programs. Both ideologies are just as flawed.

And demk25 is right, the comparision is a joke considering the scale. Another thing is Estonia hasnt been time tested at all. As their ship rightens (pun?) lets see if they dont fall in the trap of expanding social programs that are just mere reflections of prosperous times while lacking long term forethought.

If we want to aim for pleasing both sides of political thought we should model ourselves after Switzerland. Theyve had perhaps the most stable economy and politcal climate over the last 100 years despite the turmoil thats surrounded them over that same time period.