Ildiko Lendvai has an opinion, he has never dared to present it to the public, his publicisms are regularly read in the columns of Népszava, Mandiner also reviews them, why wouldn't he? the purpose of the former is to harass opposition readers, and the latter to harass the pro-government camp. If nothing else, Ms. Lendvai's notes, devoid of any moral basis, but marked by demagoguery, are really good for that.
Last week, in his article entitled "The country is lying down", he scrutinized the social law amendment - a law charmingly called "Lex Megdöglesz" in opposition circles, in an article that flashed the clinical symptoms of amnesia, with such outrageous claims as "in state and municipal nursing homes the waiting list only moves forward on the basis of cruel extinction”. As far as I know, places are also released in private institutions on a "cruel extinction" basis, after which it is difficult to imagine operation in any other institution with a fixed capacity. But why bother with such trifles, when you can put such grandiose explanations on paper as
"if the poorer patient cannot accept the fee, he can go home. The question is whether his life comes first or his family's. Modern Taygetos, but not for babies, but for old people. But since the whole country is in a kind of National Dormant. This is the real chronic department: we have been referred to the NER for many years. He cannot improve our condition, and he clearly has no such ambition."
Well, that's enough, because reading Ildiko Lendvai, one almost calls for euthanasia - we'll come back to this later - feeling that the unprecedented social sensitivity in Hungary during the MSZP governments has now become a fog, eradicated by the evil Fidesz. Also.
"Ensuring the conditions of social care - in addition to the responsibility of individuals for themselves and their families, as well as for the members of local communities - is the responsibility of the central bodies of the state and local governments"
– is now recorded in the second paragraph of the Act on Social Administration and Social Benefits. The government would change this with a joint bill by Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén and Minister of the Interior Sándor Pintér, stipulating that
- You are primarily responsible for the social security of the individual.
- If the individual is unable to create his social security through no fault of his own, it is the duty of the next of kin to help him, in proportion to his financial means and personal ability.
- If the individual's livelihood cannot be ensured by himself and his relatives, the municipality of his place of residence has a duty of care.
- Charitable organizations that receive state support are tasked with finding people who are not covered by social security and helping them to the best of their ability.
- If the individual's social security cannot be created despite the provisions of paragraph (4), it is the state's obligation to ensure it.
The justification emphasizes that the list also indicates a sequence of care, pointing out that the state's care of needy persons is of a subsidiary nature.
In Hungarian, the law would make "official" the view that has been with us since ancient times and is as old as humanity, that a person's closest and surest resource and source of help is himself and other people. Among them are those who are closest to him: family, friends, small communities. And reciprocity always appears in the long run, as does universality: every known society and human community on the globe has functioned this way.
According to Roma expert István Forgács , who examines social care in the light of Gypsies, the new tone is both a constraint and an opportunity.
"The compulsion stems from the fact that - beyond worldview and ideological debates - the state must really calculate what and how much to spend. Under the current conditions, it is safe to stand by the approach that if you don't want to reduce family allowances next year, you will spend less in the social sector, which is considered classic, while trying to ensure that resources and new actors appear there, which in a different kind of structure and they try to help in a responsible manner."
We are also in the right place, since the cornerstones of the matter are the cost and the attitude, which are highly correlated: the attitude determines who spends or does not spend on what, be it at the individual, family, community, state, or even EU level. I quote again, this time from professor András Gerő , who is known to hold classic liberal views:
"We see that Fidesz conducts an eclectic government: its cultural policy is distinctly right-wing, its social policy is distinctly left-wing. Fidesz has amazing left-wing actions, from interest rate caps to official prices and utility reductions to tax refunds. In many respects, the current government is the most left-wing government of the period after the regime change."
In the social policy of the bourgeois government, actions are also associated with the left-wing approach, and the results are tangible, even if Ms. Lendvai prefers to ignore these results, and she tends to forget about the destruction of her own party with the same preference. The memento that can be read below, in the framed section, may even help to remember him, the founding member of the Hungarian Socialist Party, since he was the president of the Budapest party organization from 1994, then a member of parliament until 2014, and between 2002 and 2009, the faction leader of the MSZP, then its president until 2009-2010. Before that... let's leave it. Now is not the time to get involved in silly adventures.
In any case, Ildikó Lendvai was in the thick of it, this is indisputable, so perhaps we can recall one of the iconic events of the year 2007, the socially sensitive closure of OPNI, which Prof. Dr. Zoltán Rihmer remembers as follows:
"At the same time as the Lipótmező was closed, the number of psychiatric beds was reduced by nearly 25 percent nationwide, but outpatient care was not drastically improved, and its funding was even reduced by 50 percent. The admission area of the closed institute (approx. 800,000 inhabitants) was distributed among the remaining psychiatric departments operating with a significantly reduced number of beds, where overcrowding increased and the patient-physician ratio, which had not been optimal until then, worsened even further. The closing of the Lipótmező is therefore only the most visible (smaller) part of the health »deform« of 2007, and it is a symbol of the negative process that started at that time and affected the entire domestic psychiatric care.
In the approach of socialist governments, cost reduction appeared as progression, as a euphemism for physical and mental destruction. And if it's progress, let's go back to euthanasia as a progressive way of cleaning up social excess, because in model democracies euthanasia is becoming an increasingly "successful" enterprise.
In Canada, the use of "medical assistance in dying" (MAID) is becoming more and more "popular", the state is ending the lives of tens of thousands with regulations relaxed to the point of absurdity - this would be the inverse of abortions.
But if we delve into the depths of human tragedies, in the vast majority of cases the cause is always of a financial nature, and for the state, institutionalized euthanasia is the most cost-effective procedure, naturally wrapped in the cloak of boundless humanity.
In his article last Saturday , Declan Leary, the editor of the American Conservative , mentions by name cases in which Canadian citizens were executed for surreal reasons. It begins with the case of 54-year-old Amir Farsoud, who, according to the official justification, was approved for MAID because of back pain, but in fact Farsoud is struggling financially, is about to lose his home, and feels that he has run out of options. He told Toronto's CityNews that he doesn't want to die at all, but he'd rather choose this path than end up on the streets.
"It is impossible to say," writes Leary, "how many of the tens of thousands of Canadian euthanasia victims were talked into the decision by death cult witch doctors or death commission bureaucrats, and how many went to their graves without their stories ever being made public." There is no doubt that the cardinal part of the problem is the budget calculation. Keeping people with chronic illnesses alive is expensive, and in a health care system like Canada's, every incentive is to limit such costs. But the expansion of the scope of MAID to people with mental illness is an even greater disgrace: starting next year, physical illness will not be necessary at all to justify euthanasia. Simple suicide becomes a state-sanctioned practice.”
And then let's quote Ms. Lendvai's high-flying line of thought again:
"If the poorer patient cannot accept the fee, he can go home. The question is whether his life comes first or his family's. Modern Taygetos, only not for babies, but for old people.”
If I didn't know who Ildikó Lendvai was, I could even believe from this passage that he was criticizing Canada, Belgium or other states that propagate the cult of death. But unfortunately, I know who he is, I know what he has done, and I also know why he writes what he writes. Piha.
***
The price of domestic gas will rise by 30 percent and the price of electricity by 10-14 percent;
profitable businesses and individuals with an annual income of over HUF six million must pay a special solidarity tax of four percent;
the government intends to introduce the household treasury tax from next year (this must be paid by those whose annual average daily cash balance is more than twice the average daily amount of their cash sales - ed.);
and the 15 percent VAT rate will be raised to 20 percent as of September 1, 2006;
the government will increase the simplified business tax (EVA) rate from 15 percent to 25 percent on October 1;
the health insurance contribution to be paid by employees increases from four percent to six percent, the employee solidarity contribution increases from one percent to 1.5 percent;
next year, the employees' health insurance contribution will increase further, from six percent to seven percent; from 2008, the government will introduce a property tax on residential and holiday properties above the average value;
and the previously promised tax reduction program will be postponed.
The austerity was far from over in the summer of 2006, its effects were visible in several areas.
Healthcare: the government did not increase the real value of the minimum wage, inflation was higher than the increase. Since the real value of the wages of healthcare workers was not increased, thousands of doctors and nurses left the field or the country. The grave sin of the second Gyurcsány government was that it neglected health care institutions: the condition of hospitals and medical clinics deteriorated drastically. As a result of the austerity measures, dozens of hospitals had to be closed, 3,000 doctors and 6,000 healthcare workers were fired, the hospitals' debt increased significantly, and HUF 600 billion were withdrawn from the healthcare sector.
Families: the Gyurcsány government abolished the family tax allowance for families with 1 and 2 children, and those with three children were reduced by 60 percent, to a ridiculous level. In addition to all this, they took away one year's GYES, withdrew the subsidized forint loans, thus driving Hungarian families into a currency trap. The price of textbooks skyrocketed, and the profitable National Textbook Publisher was privatized.
In 2 years (2007-2008), the left put more than 14,000 teachers on the streets and closed more than 100 schools. A further 748 schools were abolished, they were merged into other institutions, thus ending the local school in 1000 settlements. A total of 283 kindergartens were closed, and 1,191 kindergarten teachers were fired. At the same time, the travel discount for students was reduced by 17.7 percent, and 28 railway branch lines with a length of 942 kilometers were closed. By the way, kindergarten and daycare meals are paid for. The Gyurcsány government introduced the university tuition fee, which was abolished by the successful referendum in 2008. Not to mention that the unemployment rate increased from 5.9 percent to 11.3 percent as a result of the former prime minister's austerity measures.
Local governments: the debt of local governments was increased to HUF 1,300 billion, as money was taken from them. True, their responsibilities were not reduced. The situation is well illustrated by the fact that they left a debt of HUF 251 billion in Budapest alone. The development of MÁV was stopped: by 2010, the company's debt amounted to HUF 300 billion. The profitable shipping business (MÁV Cargo) was sold. HUF 80 billion in debt was accumulated at BKV, which made the company insolvent, and development stopped here as well.
The economic crisis of 2008 found the country in such a state.
The austerity measures of the Bajnai government
On April 14, 2009, the new MSZP government led by Gordon Bajnai, who called himself "experts" but was actually a neoliberal, announced its program on April 19, in which the budget expenditures in 2009 were 350-400 in 2009, and in 2010 It was planned to be reduced by HUF 900 billion (10 percent of the 2008 budget!) However, this involved cuts.
In the public sector, gross wages were frozen for two years (that is, wage increases could only be obtained through layoffs), the salary supplement for the second half of 2009 was withdrawn, the 13th month wage was abolished, and local government subsidies were reduced. They brought forward the raising of the retirement age, revoked the 2009 and 2010 pension adjustments, abolished the 13th monthly pension, and also introduced several social restrictions: they reduced sick pay by 10 percent, froze the family allowance, shortened the period of GYES and GYED from three to two for the year (nursery constructions were promised for this, but they did not materialize). The housing support system was abolished and the gas price and district heating compensation was gradually phased out. Subsidies for public transport were reduced, which made tickets and passes more expensive. The national share of EU agricultural subsidies was also reduced. The tax system was not spared the extreme cuts either: VAT increased to 25 percent, real estate tax and property tax were announced, and personal income tax increased.
Featured image: MTI/Attila Kovács