Romania is in a crisis of leadership and one of ideas, a situation that generates all other major problems, from fiscal and energy to geopolitical ones, believes Sebastian Burduja, advisor to the prime minister.
"I am concerned about two crises today - and maybe they are also of concern to you. I believe that they are at the root of the other crises we are experiencing: fiscal-budgetary, energy, geopolitical and so on. First of all, it is a crisis of leaders. I don't want to go off the rails, but I think we can talk straight. Today's world is exponentially more complicated, and the quality of public leadership in Romania is exponentially worse. I am a member of the Romanian Parliament for my second term. I can tell you that, compared to the first term, there is an obvious degradation of the debates in Parliament, of the quality of human resources, and the political parties, unfortunately, no longer have any kind of programs for training human resources, for training public elites. "That is why I appreciate that Piata Financiara (publication, ed.n), institutions such as the National Bank, even the other financial-banking institutions represented here today, could lend a helping hand to the unfortunate politruks and teach us something more because this is greatly needed, otherwise you will all suffer from incompetence, from the lack of substance, from this phenomenon that I am experiencing in the Romanian Parliament and in the Industry Committee", said Sebastian Burduja on Thursday, at the Awards Gala of the Financial Market Magazine, which is in its 30th edition.
According to him, ideas are no longer debated in the Romanian Parliament and in the parties, everything is superficial and has become a permanent scandal, a chase for likes on Facebook.
"I'm sorry that you're not there to see the level of the debates in the Romanian Parliament today. The second thing, a crisis of ideas - and that's why I think that Piata Financiara and the few other publications that are up to this standard must have a much more significant role. We no longer debate ideas, neither in the Romanian Parliament nor in the parties. It's all superficial, everything becomes a permanent scandal, a chase for likes on Facebook, where if you start talking about liberalism or about Paul Romer (economist, ed.) or about Schumpeter (Iosif Schumpeter, economist, ed.n), no one follows you. And I think that you have a role and a responsibility with us, of course, to raise the level of public discourse", added the prime minister's advisor.
At the same time, he expressed concern that Romania risks repeating the failed recipes of the past. Burduja recalled, in this context, an INSCOP survey conducted a few months ago which showed, among other things, that two out of three Romanians consider Nicolae Ceausescu a good leader.
"The same survey said that 61% of Romanians want more state. So they want much greater state intervention in the economy - and only 33% were supporters of the free market. I am also worried about the rise of extreme left-wing political currents, us, who say that the Government can solve all problems, the state solves all problems. So, we are trying to define the future by returning to the recipes of the past that have never worked, anywhere. This is a recipe for disaster. And this is done against the background of a lack of education, ideas, concepts, foundations and against the background of economic transformations that will accelerate in the coming years," Burduja also said.
In this context, the prime minister's advisor mentioned that the evolution of AI is fundamentally changing the labor market....
"It is estimated that in the next 10 years approximately 30% of jobs will be radically different and a lot of people, if we do not give them the tools to adapt, will become extremely unhappy and will look to a state that will promise them what it can never deliver.
The only recipe for development is the market, from my point of view. And after centuries of economic research - there are much better economists here than me, if we were to summarize the equation of economic growth, it is population growth X productivity growth. Anyway, in terms of demography, Romania is not doing well and will not do well for a good period from now on. We have only one lever, productivity growth. And to increase productivity, we need innovation, endogenous innovation, ideally, as Paul Romer said, and to have this, we need the market", added Sebastian Burduja.
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