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mrstickball on 30 January 2011
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mai said:

Yeah, I remember when those countries used to call themselves "Baltic tigers", and I remember about "Ireland economic miracle" as well. It was fun while it lasted =) Where did it go? Growth was based almost entirely on IMF funding, which has boosted population spendings quite a bit (here's your PPP increase, check external debt per capita). The process was coupled with complete deindustrialization (I could name you a dozen of Soviet-era industrial enterprises ranging from car to electronics industry that are gone now, which at best were replaced with one milk farm). Now they aren't capable of supporting even basic pensions for god's sake. Estonians even managed to worsen situation by recently with fanfare entering eurozone and loosing control over their national currency (they could have devalued it at least). Good work! And standard scenario.

BTW check their prosperity from 1940 and on. You will be surprised.

And you should really quite talking like politician. Don't use these propagandistic and ideologistic slogans. Not trying to sound arrogant, just an advice.

IMF debt-ridden growth was and is an issue for Ireland, not the Eastern European countries (other Western countries in bold).

Here's the list of external debt, by country to prove my point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

  • United Kingdom: 416%
  • Germany: 155%
  • Lativa: 146%
  • Estonia: 114%
  • Bulgaria: 105%
  • United States: 97%
  • Romania: 56%
  • Poland: 47%

So I'd say your argument about debt is quite invalid, given that other Western nations have as much or more than Eastern Europe, which should speak that their growth wasn't due to debt, but growth through free-market reforms.

Could you point to any sort of statistical data concerning Eastern European growth after 1940? There is very little info, as I don't think many Communist officials would like for that type of thing to get out. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear some actual data from you, as opposed to meaningless antecdotal arguments. So what if Eastern Europe has less manufacturing if they are replacing it with better paying service jobs?

Again, data shows your arguments as being mostly questionable, according to the UN's Human Development Index, which shows that Estonia and other Eastern European nations are ahead of the growth curve:

http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/EST.html

http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/LTU.html

And so on.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.