It is the year 2044 and the leader of Slovakia is presenting his economic sucess. He has managed to banish foreign investors and he also nationalized businesses. How come? Something went wrong!
Populist parties preaching nationalism and protectionism received over 8 percent of the total vote in Slovakia’s 2016 parliamentary elections. The majority of these votes came from the younger generation, participating in elections for the first time.
We are permanently exposed to promises of politicians, which are either infeasible, or they are not even based on true claims. Young people often cannot access a comprehensible explanation of economic matters, since the majority of schools do not cover these topics sufficiently. Consequently, people are prone to believe whatever ' sounds good', despite the harmful impact of such political promises.
Populists are easy to trust, but hard to uncover. We are trying to confront this issue with our project 'Slovakia 2044.' We show the possible tragic impact of populist promises on particular examples in a series of animated videos. Moreover, we explain what consequences could fulfillment of such promises have on daily lives of ordinary citizens. What happens when ' the leader' banishes all foreign investors and begins to nationalize everything? Could we cover the expenses for higher pensions by saving at the expense of the Roma people?
At the end of the video, we ask students – ' where has the leader gone wrong?' – and refer to seven short videos, where our analylist explains why these political promises, in fact, are economically dangerous.
Except for these videos, we have prepared a webpage, www.Slovensko2044.sk, where all videos and PDF brochures with comprehensible explanations are available. More than 330 high schools in Slovakia have received 20 000 printed brochures to help promote better comprehension and to debunk myths of populist- promised Utopia in Slovakia.
