Pipe dreams

Landlords are grudgingly happy about a court ruling that allows them to sue the state for losses from rent control. People who have been paying artificially high market rates for housing aren't so happy, because they'd have to foot the bill again for a deformed market (this time as taxpayers). Tomislav Šimeček of the OSMD landlords' association told Czech Radio that the situation could have been avoided if politicians had had the courage after the Velvet Revolution to end rent control. A similar argument can be made about pension and welfare reform. Politicians failed to recognize that a cut-off needed to be made, so that elderly people unable to adapt to the free market were protected but younger people were forced to stand on their own two feet. Instead, the system is broken for both the elderly and the able-bodied, and meaningful social reform remains wishful thinking. [Czech Republic deregulation controls]