The 40 gypsies from Gyöngyöspata, who don’t even use the more acceptable term Roma to describe themselves, have been assigned the job of clearing hibiscus bushes and undergrowth for four months. They are among 300,000 Hungarians who will soon be performing “community” work under a new law, which dictates that anyone who is out of work for more than 90 days in a row forfeits the right to social welfare and membership in the social insurance system.
Or maybe not. I have close family connections in Hungary and speak the language fairly well. My late father-in-law was a [url=http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/temetni_tudunk_-_the_hungarian_uprising_of_1956.html]’56er[/url] who fled a [i]truly[/i] repressive government.
If you distill it down to the basics, how is this different from FDR’s WPA and CCC job-creation work?
The [i]Ciganok[/i] are very hard-working and creative people. They helped re-launch the Hungarian economy after decades of communist stagnation. Coming from India about AD 1300 and speaking a language akin to Sanskrit they have always been a bit on the margins, but also quite fundamentally understood by the Magyars who arrived but a few hundred years earlier as horse nomads.
The article even misses the fundamental point of why someone would plant “true Hungarian oaks” — which is that after some of the very best French oak, Hungarian oak is the most sought after in the world for the production of barrels in which to age wine.
And back to the original point. What on earth is wrong with demanding of a physically capable person on public assistance for whatever reason … that he actually, you know, DO something of benefit in order to receive it?
I’m old enough to remember the county-based “Keepers of the Poor” in New England, who insisted that those on public assistance actually work at things like growing food for the truly indigent — the poor farm — or working in the county woodlot to ensure that old widows had enough firewood to get through the winter.
The Hungarians are on the right track here, and the article is but one more example of the death-rattle emanating from the progressives’ utterly anachronistic understanding of how the world works. After a century of failure it is well high time to push it into the landfill of history, and I commend the Hungarians for their courage in taking the first steps to accomplish that end.
This work requirement makes perfect sense to me. If the unemployed worker doesn’t like his assigned task, he might seek a job he prefers. The concept of “the dole” being an entitlement is one that the West must re-think, if we are to get our financial houses in order.
Bart, my father’s cousin was also a ’56’er. I never had a chance to learn the language but I did hear family members speakign it when I was younger.
On a lighter note, I groaned at the leaden pun goulash archipelago, meant to remind us of Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag archipelago.