The Estonian miracle

[DrewDevil]

Mart Laar, the former prime minister of Estonia, turned his country around by instituting a flat tax and privatizing 90% of government entitlements.

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Inflation dropped from more than 1,000 per cent to just 2.5 per cent, in line with western Europe. Unemployment fell from 30 per cent to six per cent and growth has soared to six per cent, a rate that Gordon Brown would envy. Investment poured in and the initial 26 per cent tax rate has been cut to 23 per cent. Next year, it will be cut again to 20 per cent.

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In April, Laar received the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.

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"My main problem was I was not an economist but a historian," he said. "The only economics book I had read was Milton Friedman's Free to Choose."

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Pretty solid evidence that limiting taxes and government can have a very positive effect on a nation, almost immediately.