Final Word from Friday, October 9, 2009
As unemployment passes the double-digit mark in the coming months, Czech politicians will start throwing billions of more crowns at the problem. Not much effort will be made to control the effectiveness of the money spent, though, and we shouldn't expect many politicians to recognize the correlation between government waste and unemployment. Spending money on bad ideas might temporarily create or keep a few jobs, but in the long term it kills even more by diverting money away from productive activity. Want to approve a Kč 2.5bn scrap subsidy to benefit the car lobby? Count on killing a few hundred jobs in the long term. Want to let the corporate mafia steal Kč 40bn in a rigged environmental cleanup tender as an "anti-crisis" measure? Scratch off a few thousand jobs there too. Really want to save jobs, Mr. Politician? Try doing .... Oh, never mind. It's clear that you're not very interested.[Czech Republic joblessness]
Glossary of difficult words
double digit - more than 10%;
correlation - a mutual relation or connection between two or more things;
rigged - managed or conducted fraudulently so as to produce a result that it advantageous to a particular person;
scratch off/out - to cancel or strike out;
never mind - used to suggest that what one was about to say is not important.