Toomas Hõbemägi. BBN
My first emotion when I was asked to describe what would life in Estonia be like in 2018 when Estonia celebrates its 100th anniversary was very positive. Extremely positive.
In ten years, we will be wealthier than we have ever been. There will be no lack of workforce since Estonia has become an attractive destination for thousands of guestworkers from Turkey, India and elsewhere. Of course, this is partly because the climate has been getting hotter.
Economic growth is fuelled by small companies that employ the best part of the Singing Revolution generation, so-called the Web 2.0 generation that know languages and have skills to make progress work for them. They will be the new sõõrumaas, kruudas, pants and milders who learn, acquire experience abroad and return to Estonia.
Even if they are not invited to the President’s Ball, they are still our leading force. Together with the businessmen who now invest in the energy sector and pure nature.
Estonia’s own best known corporate brands such as Tallink, Baltika, Tallinna Kaubamaja and Merko Ehitus are successful also in 2018. Tallink has become the largest ferry passenger transport company in Europe. Like Merko and Baltika, it is no longer majority owned by Estonians. And so what, since by that time there are 100,000 active small investors in Estonia who have holdings in the best Baltic and world companies.
In ten years a monthly wage buys you a square metre from an average apartment. But not because apartment prices have stopped growing, but also because the average price is above the European average because of growth in productivity.
We have become eurozone members and are completing large infrastructure projects such as modernization of national road network and the bridge connecting mainland Estonia with the island of Saaremaa.
By 2018 we have seen how a leftist government that wants bigger state interference in the business and people’s life makes deals with stronger trade unions and cannot come up with a working coalition. As a result, the public sector starts losing civil servants who go to work for the private sector. The government on power is pragmatic, but at least it supports thin state. No-one remembers when Andrus Ansip was on Prime Minister.
This is what separates Estonia from Russia that is also richer than ever before, but that is again run by President Vladimir Putin. In 2018, the President of Estonia is former vice president of the European Commisison, Siim Kallas.
Businessmen have turned their focus from South to North and West. Estonian businessmen have understood that the place to make money is by taking market shares away from West Europeans.
Beautiful, isn’t it ?
This can take place only if we stop sitting on our hands like today, doing nothing, only if we don’t let things take their own course because we are not active enough.
Because, if we don’t do it, we will live in Estonia where I, for one, would not like to live.
This is Estonia that lives in its quiet period, thanks to the efforts of Rein Lang and Märt Rask. Large Internet portals are controlled and supervised by the state, the rest of media is kept quiet by strict court rulings. There is no investigative journalism except than entertainment media.
This Estonia lives on European welfare and aid funds whose spending reports become compulsory literature for upper secondary schools. Estonia has become increasingly an old boy’s network where everybody is connected and the whole country is run by a narrow group of businessmen.
This Estonia is a fat country which taxes its people more than all other countries in the region. Children in rich Macedonia are learning about Estonia from a textbook from a chapter titled “How to bring a prospering country down by making wrong decisions ?”
This Estonia is a cold and dark country that does not attract tourists, migrant workers nor foreign capital. What’s more important, it is not attractive even to our children.
Do we want this ? And don’t start looking for an Internet address to express your opinion. Show your mentality in an election booth. Show your opinion on how to pass good values and right mentality to your children. Show that the biggest natural resource of Estonia is its citizen.
A vision of the future : The following column was written by investment banker Joakim Helenius.
Looking back at the last ten years leaves me with a warm feeling. Sitting here today it is hard to believe how back in 2008 nobody in Estonia really saw where the country was heading.
Today we live in one of the richest countries in Europe, sometimes referred to as the “Dubai of Europe”. It was the severe economic downturn of 2008, and the national “depression” that this led to, that finally made it politically possible to effect the changes to national policy which led to the prosperity we are enjoying today as we celebrate 100 years of independence.
Understanding that a country with a fast ageing and declining population would not be able to generate the economic dynamism necessary to maintain a high economic growth rate for long enough to catch up with the living standards of Western Europe, the Government that was formed in 2009 under the leadership of Mart Laar decided to take drastic action. Sharp cuts in government spending enabled the Government to cut the overall tax burden. Simultaneously Estonia became the first country in the world to abolish income tax altogether replacing it with an increase in tax on spending, especially environmentally harmful sorts of spending. The tax revolution went hand in hand with dramatic changes to Estonia’s immigration policy. Estonia’s diplomatic service was tasked with promoting immigration into Estonia, with preference given to people with entrepreneurial and scientific backgrounds. Estonia was sold as the country with 0% income tax, a clean environment and a state committed to helping businesses avoid bureaucracy and red tape.
Today Estonia resembles a giant building site as Tallinn, the fastest growing city in the European Union, struggles to accommodate the influx of new businesses and people. Especially the Chinese, and lots of entrepreneurs among them, have discovered Estonia as a destination for emigration offering a clean environment and excellent job prospects. Tallinn has become the base from which Chinese companies enter the European marketplace. Another unexpected result of the economic reforms undertaken has been the massive influx of young Finnish people to Estonia, looking to escape effects of the rising costs involved in maintaining the Finnish welfare state. Last week the Finnish weekly business magazine “Talouselama” ran a front page article on how all the most promising new “Finnish” companies were based in Estonia. One can only wonder about how this particular trend will be strengthened even further once the Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel is completed next year.
Back in the old days a lot of people in Estonia worried about how the Estonian identity could be maintained given the declining population and the threat of immigration from abroad. Today it is clear that the result of the enormous economic growth driven by the low taxes, open immigration policies and business friendly approach is a flowering of Estonian culture and language. Far from threatening the cultural and linguistic roots of Estonia the new inhabitants have shown a huge interest in supporting and promoting the culture and language of their new country. The price of Estonian art has skyrocketed as even galleries in Beijing have developed an interest, and the theatres, operas and music halls of Estonia have never had it so good on the back of the massive sponsorship they receive from the flourishing business community. Tourists from London regularly charter special flights to attend cultural events in Tallinn which has developed the reputation for having one of the most dynamic cultural scenes in Europe. Last year a private school using Estonian and English as the languages of instruction was established in Shanghai in order to teach pupils whose parents are considering emigrating to Estonia.
Regular Estonian’s have benefited tremendously from the dynamism of the economy and the resultant flowering of cultural and civil life. The living standards have risen beyond the wildest hopes of people only ten years ago as they went through the 2008 economic downturn. Today only a handful of economically illiterate socialists would question the fact that Estonia’s future continues to lie in maintaining radically free market and environmentally friendly policies.
When the 2009 German elections were won by the right of centre parties by a margin never before experienced all of Estonia cheered. The election slogan of the winning coalition parties had been : “Why cannot Germany learn from Estonia ?”
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