The government takes away your "right" to find your own balance between opportunity and security. The government takes away your choice and your power as a consumer to discriminate between different suppliers, which causes those suppliers to be worse than they might otherwise be. For some things, like health care, the assumption is broadly correct, if the quality controls work (that's a big if). For most other things it is not correct at all.

Not everybody wants to retire at the same age or at all. Not everybody wants to secure the same pension or start saving for it at the exact same time of their life. Not everybody wants to go to university. Not everybody wants to have children or send them to the exact same (mostly broken) type of school.

Not everybody wants to buy expensive protection against being fired or getting sick for a week. Not everybody wants to support the local opera house, museums, the government's very own TV network or that network's very own classical orchestra. Not everybody wants to subsidise railway lines to remote parts of the country or the post office there.

And then there's the problem that some groups of people that are close to the government or belong to well unionised traditional industries are getting a lot more out of it than everybody else. The system isn't driven by need, it's driven by affiliation. Affiliations are a complex web and hence entitlements are organised in an extremely complex and ineffecient way that makes people want to stay put once they have a achieved a certain entitlement status.

At the end of the day, we're paying 50% into government coffers and yet we have widespread poverty in many European countries because the poor are a minority without much of a say in anything.

I'm not arguing for letting people go hungry, untreated and homeless when they cannot help themselves. I'm arguing for redistributing money instead of forcing canned buying decisions on everybody. I'm convinced that catching those who fall does not take 50% of all monies earned.

Not really. It's a matter of risk pooling and public good. In health insurance, for example, it's understandable for a healthy person to pay a premium higher than the value of the services he actually receives. In exchange, if he suddenly gets in a car accident, an expensive procedure may be affordable. Additionally, his disabled neighbor may be able to afford his otherwise extremely expensive care. This sort of scheme only works effectively when everyone participates, especially the healthy, low-cost folks, who bring down the cost for everyone else.

The same or similar concepts apply in unemployment insurance. Someone with a stable job may not feel he needs unemployment insurance, but paying into the system makes the system possible. If only the unemployed and underemployed paid for unemployment insurance, we wouldn't have such a thing.

With education, things are a little different. There are some people who will never have children to benefit from paying for public education, but these people indirectly benefit from living in an educated society. I don't have children, but I'm more than happy to contribute to public education, since I value literacy not only in myself but in others.

Arts (e.g., your TV, symphony, and museum examples) are basically an extension of education, though I suspect some people would probably argue against me there.

Infrastructure in rural areas is expensive, but in my experience, at least, those rural areas are often poorer than the more urban areas. Your options seem to be (a) cut those people off from society, (b) subsidize their infrastructure, or (c) pay them to move elsewhere. I think (b) is the most reasonable option.

In the end, the people in the most need generally have the least to offer, so the people with the most to offer either have to subsidize, or the least have to go starving. Universal, progressive taxation seems like a very reasonable way to accomplish the goals of a civilized society.

Now I'm assuming you're strictly talking about health insurance (though the same concept applies to homeowner's insurance, etc.), but isn't subsidizing high-risk/high-cost subscribers inherent in some forms of insurance? Take a pension, for example. Some people will live much longer than expected; some will die a year after they retire. The only way to account for this, other than periodically adjusting each retiree's income based on how unhealthy they are, is to pay for the pension of one ancient retiree with the funds from one who died young.

This causes problems, to be sure, in that it disincentivises some, but not all wellfare recipients from trying to escape their poverty, but it prevents people from dying of hunger in the streets, which is, imho, a good thing.

According to the chart, Hungary takes 50% more than the Netherlands. Are there any objective metrics at all that suggests that Hungarians are 50% better educated, have 50% better health and child care or 50% better pensions?

Stealing might be an inflammatory word, but what's going on in Hungary (and, indeed, many other European countries) certainly isn't a mutually beneficial transaction.

The problem here is that Hungary's cash salaries are much cheaper than average, whereas Hungary's non-financial compensations are merely quite cheaper than average.

The only systemic problem described in the article is that private bosses have to shoulder the burden of helping mothers and older workers. Helping them is a societal decision, it ought to be supported by society: if you want to help pregnant women, let bosses fire them, then have the government compensate them with tax money coming from all companies, not only from those which hire child-bearing-age women.

Simply have the state pay their wages while on maternity leave (and the father's on paternity leave). That's how it works in Canada. Works well.

How does Canada handle those parts?

So like most things, "it's complicated". This article oversimplifies to the point of it being flat out wrong.

And not only that, it's completely unoriginal, being an exact transcript of what every shopkeeper in Europe will tell you after you've bought him a few drinks.

I don't understand Fidesz - or their motivations. I don't have the context (I'm rather new to living in Hungary) but it looks to me like they think they can tax their way out of the hole the socialists left behind. The fact that we have the highest VAT in Europe now seems to corroborate with this view.

The problem is - it doesn't work. People just find ways around the taxes. They have to do so. People need to eat and live and if they do everything above board they will not make it.

So as I read your post - I was bemused, trying to picture this Hungarian who pays all his taxes.

As for paying the taxes? Some people do have to. You may go to jail if you're in the way of people who have good political connections.

Fine, I can see that. But your post barely says anything about this problem, focusing instead on how much it is you would have to pay.

Which is exactly what every shopkeeper does after you buy him some drinks. Hence the confusion :-)

And yes, also, that when you get sick of it all, and go the hospital that is financed with your tax money, not those, who do not pay the taxes, you are literally scared of the conditions. You are walking on tiptoes in piss.

This is basically what I can whine about when you have paid me a drink.

This is not true, the maternity is paid by the state. He mentions the high taxes as another problem, but in fact that's why they are that high, it's the same problem looked from the other side.

Also, there is a lot of productivity lost during the transitions.

It's common here, that women on maternity take a correspondence course or learn languages, etc. Often they are more skilled at the time of their return.

The law is like that because companies are much more powerful than the individuals. They have to take you back, that's fine, but still they can (and often do) offer you a position 300 km from your home, or exclusively in night shifts, effectively force you to quit.

As for point two, just because she's more skilled doesn't mean there isn't a productivity loss. It takes a little while to get settled (back) into a job. If the employee on maternity leave has been taking correspondence courses, good for her, but her replacement has spent that time working at the actual job. If the replacement has been doing good work, I would rather keep him/her rather than hire back the original worker, who might be "out of the groove" after a long maternity leave.

If they can learn a language or take courses, why can't they come back to work?