Apparently we do - Edit 1
Before modification by Isaac at 13/05/2010 05:36:48 PM
Running the numbers on a GDP of 24 billion and 7.2% debt, that's like 2 billion dollars with a deficit 400 million a year or about 300 bucks a person per year on a $1500 current debt, not too likely to be a Greek-level crisis even though their GDP per capita's only about $18,000 a year. Sounds like a good deal for everyone involved.
And by "neo-liberal", I mean they've started over entirely with a radical break from their communist past, creating a highly competitive economy without burdensome entitlement issues or overly expensive social security. They even have that flat tax that iirc you were advocating in another post.
Of course, Estonia is so small that its inclusion really doesn't matter much either way. Rather like Slovenia that way. The only latecomer to the euro that really has some weight (if you leave out Greece, which wasn't much of a latecomer, evidently it should've been more so
) is Slovakia, and even that is only a country of what, five million? The real question is whether Poland or Romania will ever be in a position to join - or even the Czech Republic. Then again, all these smaller countries do add up - Latvia and Lithuania will likely follow within a number of years. I actually looked them up on Heritage Foundation's site [right wing site], because the wiki and state dept comment son them are vague and cheerfully diplomatic. Heritage ranks them very high on economic freedom, though down a bit from their last survey, and speaks fairly glowingly - though also rather briefly - of Estonia's post cold war progress. Unfortunately while we are one of their larger distant importers, we don't really sell them much, make up only a small percent of their foreign investments (roughly tied with UK, apparently they are tight with Sweden in that regard) and really have little to do with them, but they've been fairly supportive of US foreign policy and committed troops to both our current wars. So, happy to see they are pushing upward and keeping tight relations with the West. They're very similiar in size, population and climate to Maine I gather, rather smaller geographically.
Glad to hear about their Flat Tax efforts though I am not actually a supporter of Flat Tax, I just am open to it, I consider myself a fence sitter on tax policy (method not amount) by lack of deep economic knowledge. Loosely speaking, I tend to favor a smaller Flat Tax with deductions for the federal, sales tax for the states and counties, and property tax for municipal, and that tariffs should really be small and limited to offsetting costs associated with port and customs security.