Oh, yes I agree with you. I think socialised medicine would be a wonderful thing for Americans. And also a better system for disability. I know someone my age (twenties) who had to wait several years after losing their eyesight to be able to see a doctor because they had to be blind for a certain period of time before disability kicked in. By that point, the damage was irreversable. And I know of plenty of people in the states who don't have access to health care. It's quite sad.
I'm glad you can find Hungary on a map. :) I'm not surprised to learn this, though.
You're right about Hungary. A lot of people here don't realise that, though. With the change over in 1989/90 and the brand new democratic government, people were bright and hopeful for the new system. When the newly elected government did not succeed to get us out of debt (it was a huge debt and we're out of it now. Kádár, the communist politician who was in power for the last few decades of the communism borrowed a lot of money from foreign banks to increase the standards of living, which was good in the short term and people were pleased with him, but it was a problem for the government that inherited the debt), when homelessness appeared (it was unheard of before), and inflation and the problems of privatisation and all the stuggles of massive social upheaval... when that wasn't fixed in four years, people were upset and elected a different party. And the elections swing back and forth each time, since it's too big a problem for anyone to fix in four years, but things have been steadily improving.
Still, we're not there yet and things take time, and many people I know talk nostalgically of communism, when they had enough to eat, but my friends who see the bigger picture understand that it's a process.
Hungary's in the EU and we want to be part of Western Europe and we have taxes like in Western Europe (59% is the tax bracket most people are in) but we have wages like the Balkans.
(Don't get me wrong, I love the Balkans. I speak two Balkan languages (Serbian and Macedonian) which means I can make myself understood anywhere in the former Yugoslavia, except, perhaps, in Kosovo because I don't speak Albanian (yet), but their economies, level-of-living, and crime rate are worse than ours. Health care is much better in Serbia, though, than in Hungary.)
I don't know, give us another 20-50 years. We'll get there. We were occupied by Russia for 40 years, and before that it was Hitler, and before that was about 30 years of golden age with Austria-Hungary (before that we were part of the Hapsburg empire but were just one of many minorities) and before that it was the Turks... :)
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Date: 2009-03-08 05:28 am (UTC)I'm glad you can find Hungary on a map. :) I'm not surprised to learn this, though.
You're right about Hungary. A lot of people here don't realise that, though. With the change over in 1989/90 and the brand new democratic government, people were bright and hopeful for the new system. When the newly elected government did not succeed to get us out of debt (it was a huge debt and we're out of it now. Kádár, the communist politician who was in power for the last few decades of the communism borrowed a lot of money from foreign banks to increase the standards of living, which was good in the short term and people were pleased with him, but it was a problem for the government that inherited the debt), when homelessness appeared (it was unheard of before), and inflation and the problems of privatisation and all the stuggles of massive social upheaval... when that wasn't fixed in four years, people were upset and elected a different party. And the elections swing back and forth each time, since it's too big a problem for anyone to fix in four years, but things have been steadily improving.
Still, we're not there yet and things take time, and many people I know talk nostalgically of communism, when they had enough to eat, but my friends who see the bigger picture understand that it's a process.
Hungary's in the EU and we want to be part of Western Europe and we have taxes like in Western Europe (59% is the tax bracket most people are in) but we have wages like the Balkans.
(Don't get me wrong, I love the Balkans. I speak two Balkan languages (Serbian and Macedonian) which means I can make myself understood anywhere in the former Yugoslavia, except, perhaps, in Kosovo because I don't speak Albanian (yet), but their economies, level-of-living, and crime rate are worse than ours. Health care is much better in Serbia, though, than in Hungary.)
I don't know, give us another 20-50 years. We'll get there. We were occupied by Russia for 40 years, and before that it was Hitler, and before that was about 30 years of golden age with Austria-Hungary (before that we were part of the Hapsburg empire but were just one of many minorities) and before that it was the Turks... :)