The Land of Miracles

When a supermarket which sells 1,000 different kinds of chocolate introduces 10 new kinds, it raises its offer by 1%. If a shop that sells only one kind of chocolate introduces one more kind, the offer has increased by 100%. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is telling us that having one new chocolate is a hundred times greater achievement than having ten.

"I want to tell everyone here and our entire public: this year our country will have the highest growth rate in Europe, it will double its growth rate," he promised in the same suggestive and loud voice he used to tell us earlier that the per capita income will rise to 10,000 dollars and that the sanctions can’t affect us even if they stay in place for a thousand years.

He wasn’t quite clear about what he expects to rise but let’s assume that it’s the gross national product (GNP).

Does anyone believe that the rise of Yugoslavia’s national per capita income from 1,500 to 1,590 dollars is twice the success of the rise of the per capita income in European countries from 20,000 to 20,600 dollars? In the first case the growth rate stands at six percent and in the second at three percent.

Even assuming that this is something that should be welcomed wholeheartedly, this country won’t stand alone: the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) predicted that the GNP will be around 6% this year in Serbia, Armenia, Botswana, the Ivory Coast, Georgia and Uganda. If those predictions are right, Milosevic hasn’t told us the whole truth because the EIU also believes Albania will record a GNP rise of 8%. Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis will have the greatest reason to rejoice; the EIU predicts that Iraq’s GNP will rise by 30% because of the controlled lifting of the oil export embargo. Follow that line of reasoning and you’ll find yourself crying over the fates of Japan, the US and Germany, who will record a growth rate of just 2% (the lowest in the world). They’re obviously having a hard time thinking up new types of chocolate to supplement the existing 1,000 kinds.

Professor Dana Popovic’s students at Belgrade University's School of Economics know that "the highest growth rate in Europe" won’t bring Yugoslavia a recovery that would even come close to the recovery rates recorded by Great Britain, Germany, the US and France after the great depression of the 1930s. If we want to be compared to Europe, the annual growth rates since 1994 should be standing instead at between 10 and 20%, Popovic said.

If Slobodan Milosevic really believes there is room to rejoice for what he said, then the situation is completely alarming since that means we’re being led by a man who has lost all contact with reality. If this is just a legitimate, pre-election, effort to manipulate voters, the people should think about their own ability to see reality: if they believe this story, that means all of the people really can be fooled all of the time.