- Adopt best practices so your citizens stay and you attract young talent to boost your economy.
- Do not adopt best practices and do the opposite. Your best and brightest will leave, your budget will be harmed, you will not attract high-skilled foreigners, and you will become a pariah state.
- Leave the European Union. This will create tariffs and many other trade barriers with the largest economy in the world. You become less attractive for foreign skilled workers, who would rather go somewhere in the bloc. Importing and exporting become more complex, as we saw with Brexit.
Through the power of trade alone, the European Union ensures best practices.
It sounds good to liberal minded people like me that we should send aid down to states which are worse off, and the federal government should help states when they have budget problems. While I think there are very good reasons that everyone should have access to health care and education regardless of what state they live in, along with things like natural disaster insurance which we all pay into, there also is a part of me which wants to ensure every state in the United States and every member state in the European Union adopts best practices.
I am concerned that if a state has a budget deficit due to its own dumb decisions, you should let it see the consequences. Otherwise, you run the risk that states will engage in bad practices, draining money from states that observe best practices. This can create a cycle of dependency with no way out. Health care is necessary for life, and education is necessary for a modern economy; those must be available to everyone. But if your state runs out of money to keep roads paved, has to lay off public sector workers because of bad policies, then you should let them slide while preventing as much damage to children in school. Once they improve their policies, they will be more vibrant and contribute more to the national budget. I also don’t think low-income citizens should need to die from lack of health care because their state government is made up of idiots, though. I draw a line there. But if your roads are full of potholes because your governor is an idiot? So be it.
It has become clear to me that the American system of siphoning money from productive states to corrupt states is a way to enforce worst practices and can be counterproductive, outside of health care and education.
So I believe the best action is not to expel Hungary from the EU. Instead, they should end subsidies to Orban’s government. I have no problem with that. Let the market speak.
This is how you deal with leaders like Orban in the fairest way possible while minimizing damage to his dissidents.