Read all posts for ‘welfare state’

The beauty of childhood is its lack of expectations Photo credit: Powerhouse Museum Collection Every year, on the 25th of December, everybody in Romania celebrates Christmas. But some Romanians also use the occasion to commemorate the former communist president, Nicoale Ceaușescu. They gather at the Ghencea Cemetry and in front […]

While developing countries move towards the welfare state, European countries need to redesign their welfare model. European states have become so big they are now unwieldy. Basic safety nets have been stretched to unexpected sizes and because the state supports everything that “people deserve”, it’s getting harder and harder to […]

Whenever I hear about the so-called “welfare-state model”, I always think of Polygraf Polygraphovitch Sharikov. He is a protagonist in Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantastic story The Heart of a Dog. In the early days of the USSR, a professor-surgeon created a hybrid between a dog and a man, which turned into […]

In spite of the recent downturn in the economy, Hungary is still considered a welfare state. Political statements echo this view, claiming that healthcare is for free. The moves by the former government, which tried to implement a “visit fee” of one Euro to help finance healthcare, are often criticized, […]

What would you do with a country where you have a very generous healthcare system, an aging society and a pretty complicated economic situation? Hungary is well known as a country on its way to embracing Western European standards in terms of social security and economic success. A lesser known […]