The quote is from our Prime Minster and I have this strange feeling that under no circumstances and in no reasoning situation should anytime the current Hungarian Prime Minister make a statement like that. Of course he did not mean everyday citizens; the story is much more complicated. It was a huge communication failure of which the opposition party took obvious and quick advantage of. But we’ll get back to this by the end of this post, let’s not rush so ahead.

But where did all of this started? About a week ago the new government revealed its plans about the upcoming actions to balance the budget. They proposed taxation changes (personal and corporate), and my estimate is that almost all families are affected. I’m not even trying push all the details of the package to you, but you might check out the critical post of Pestiside.

So knowing this whole story effects many people I was wondering what responses I would find in the Hungarian blogosphere. Here I a few I selected to share with you:

Bakura quotes a poll of an online Hungarian financial magazine, where readers could would how they feel about the proposed governmental package:
(Total 5 395 respondents)
Strick and fair (18 %)
Strict and unfair (54.3 %)
Soft and fair (2.5 %)
Soft and unfair (12.2 %)
Somewhere this, somewhere that (8.7 %)
I don’t know (4.3%)

Bakura adds his own comments:
“Fair or not? This is hard to decide. I would like to see how anyone would try to make fairer such a package consisting of many activities. Now the everyone will pay principle will be realized and they try to calm down the poor with the solidarity taxation of the richer. This will not succeed.”

Megmondós responds to the proposed action that would lift the taxation rate for small entrepreneurs in the entrepreneur’s simplified taxation system (referred to as EVA in Hungarian):
“Based on the announcements and news of the recent few days (week): they want to cancel this taxation option. But they are afraid of doing it directly. So they rather scare enterprises away form it.”

Urbangeri points beyond the actions themselves:
“The restrictions were necessary. There is no doubt about that and the Forint is still failing despite of the corrections. Of course the American interest rate raise is also thickly involved in this, but what is shit is shit, namely in this case the budget.

The problem is that this is not enough. The restrictions only worth something if real reforms and structural changes are started. Social structural changes. Because the structure is also in our head.”

I wrote earlier about the blog of our PM. It is still active and running (despite some of the concerns that it would slow down after the elections). He contributes very long entries, and from his recent relevant post I picked two sections which I think are important messages:

“I know that nobody likes to pay more taxes or pay more for the gas, electricity and I also know that this is huge burden for many. The illusion is still alive, that to solve the budget problems it is enough to say: “Go ahead and cut the costs even more”.”

“There is not other way: discuss, discuss and to listen to each other. Paying attention to suggestions and if there are good ideas, those have to be built into the program. This is not a question of prestige for me.”

Now get back to the initial point where I started. At a meeting (the same day his post I was quoting from was born; the blog entry was earlier) our PM had a meeting where a group of entrepreneurs tired to (according to the statement of the PM’s spokesman) “blackmailing” him that they would move administratively their company to Slovakia as the taxation system is much favorable there. This was the moment Mr. Gyurcsány very rushed out with the statement, that yes indeed they can leave Hungary behind, but in that case how the pensions is going to be paid? [Henrik’s note: I think he has a point there as in a free economy they could not stop the entrepreneurs from moving their operation to offshore countries anyway (even if it is just to Slovakia). BUT I do believe that even under this pressure and in a tense discussion he should not say these words as such. ]

And of course the news TV close to the opposition party, took great and quick advantage of the PM’s statement by cutting the few discriminating sentences out of context and showing it in a way that to me feels like if the PM would address his words to a much wider audience: if you don’t like the restriction, feel free to leave Hungary. And of course it is far from the original statement’s intention.

Very-very edifying indeed from many perspectives. I can’t promise that this was the last time you read about the war on budget deficit in my blog.

(The referenced blogs are in Hungarian, except for Pestiside)

Tags:
Restriction
Communication
Deficit
Taxation