Works Progress Administration in Hungary, Nick Gillespie Defending Child Labor and on Bill Maher, and a Revealing Insight on Welfare

Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have got to be salivating over this disturbing report via Spiegel:

They set out at seven in the morning, carrying spades, axes and scythes, and climb one of the hills above Gyöngyöspata, a wine-growing village in northern Hungary: Forty gypsies and their supervisor.

This group of dark-skinned men and women, consisting of old and young people, teenagers and widows, represents the advance guard of a massive undertaking currently underway in Hungary. Under Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's plan to promote national renewal and moral rearmament, more than half of all the unemployed nationwide are to be put back to work.

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.

Are "forced labor camps" being created here, in the middle of the European Union, as the Hungarian daily newspaper Népszava wrote? Are unemployed people from remote villages being housed in worker camps on large construction sites? No one has to work against his will, but everyone who does show up for work is paid the legal minimum wage, says Karoly Papp, the state secretary in the Interior Ministry in charge of the program.

 Wait, it gets worse:

The government is still searching for projects to put the army of the unemployed back to work, at a monthly wage of roughly €290 ($418). There is talk of building dikes, planting trees and collecting herbs. The crew in Gyöngyöspata is "de-bushing" 16 hectares (40 acres) of overgrown community land to make way for the planting of "real Hungarian oaks," as the local mayor, a member of the radical right-wing Jobbik Party, puts it.

Well blow me down!  Looks like we have a genuine government make-work program creating billions of dollars in wealth!  What? You mean "de bushing" a bunch of brush fields with tax dollars probably isn't an efficient use of resource and money?  Don't be silly, all government stimulus money creates wealth!  Those dastardly rich and their hording of capital are to blame!

But in all seriousness, I can understand why the unemployed in Hungary might like this, but how do the taxpayers put up with it?  Just read this:

The things Prime Minister Orbán and his friends in the Fidesz Party are prescribing don't always make sense. However, there is no mistaking that they are in a hurry. The package of laws, ordinances and guidelines to define labor policies, which Orbán got off the ground in only 15 months, reads like the minutes of a top-down coup d'etat.
Orbán's concept of moral renewal and economic rehabilitation for Hungary has several tenets: Those without work are to be given work; those who are already working should work more in the future, but without being paid more; in the interest of the country's "stability," those who hold political power today should be allowed to remain in office for as long as possible; and those who once had power and did not use it for the benefit of the people should now be punished.

Well if it smells like dictatorship and totalitarianism, looks like dictatorship and totalitarianism, you know what comes next.  I bet this is what Keynes was talking about in his introduction to the German edition of The General Theory.

Yesterday, on the John Stossel show, he had Reason's Nick Gillespie and Vice President of the Cato Institute David Boaz on defending such liberal punching bags like child labor, insider trading, and organ sales:

Also be sure not to miss Gillespie's great appearance on Bill Maher just a few weeks ago:

"I'm the mayor of the poorest town in the U.S."

Gillespie- "You must be very proud."

Classic.  When I was down in D.C., everyone was raving about the video.  Thankfully I finally got around to watching it.

I will end with this very insightful e-mail via the LRC Blog:

My wife works for the state. As an anarcho-capitalist, that drives me crazy. But she is one of those folks who has honest intentions and chose her career path because she wanted to help people. She is a counselor (social worker) whose job is to help single mothers get off of government welfare. However, having worked in this area for years, she sees government welfare for what it is—a means to foster dependency. It breaks her heart to see the people who really do try beat down, and those who are perfectly happy mooching off the system rewarded.
A number of times we have gone into our own pockets to help individuals who we thought were serious about improving their lives but were discouraged by the state. Her employer prohibits this practice, and my wife could lose her job if they found out.
My wife is currently working with a woman who is in desperate need of transportation. She lives in a rural area where there are virtually no employment opportunities, and has no family to help her. She was recently accepted at a local community college to take classes in cosmetology, but the state-provided public transportation service twice failed to pick her up to go to the orientation despite the arrangements being made by my wife. The result is that the woman won't be able to start school until next year.

After looking at what is available from the state (nothing) and the area churches (very little), my wife decided that the only alternative would be for us to buy this woman a used car. So my wife contacted a friend of hers in that business. Of course, as you well know, the government's Cash for Clunkers program decimated the used car market. My wife's friend said that he has never seen prices this high for used cars. So instead of getting her a $500 car, the best he could do was a car for $1,900. Okay, that stinks, but it wasn't like it was totally unexpected.
So now we look into getting the woman a drivers license (she moved from another state and hers had expired). It turns out that it will be a month before the DMV even has an opening so she can take the test!! And now the state requires two separate tests, the written test and then the driving test, on two separate days. This woman lives nowhere close to us, but it will be up to my wife and I to get her to the DMV not once, but twice because of stupid bureaucratic rules.
I cannot express to you how frustrating this has been. Every time you think you're clear, another obstacle is placed in your way. We hear all the time from the Limousine Liberals and the politicians that only the state can take care of the poor. Yet, it is this very institution which hampers us, or, in some cases, completely prohibits us from helping those who really need it. I truly believe that most human beings are compassionate and empathetic. Or, at least, enough of us are that poor people aren't going to be left starving in the streets absent government "assistance." Once again, the state is not the solution. As always, it is the problem.

While it is aggravating to read something like that, this is a good pick-me-up:

Update- It looks like Libyan rebels are finally making headway on overthrowing Gaddafi by capturing his sons.  There you have, our Nobel Peace Prize winning President just financed the overthrowing of a government with our tax dollars and the left has nothing but praise for him.  Oh how the tides do change with the President has a D next to his name.  At this point we can only hope that no blowback (see CIA trains bin Laden and U.S. backing Shah coup in Iran) comes from this.  Seeing as how we don't really know the rebels' true intentions or beliefs, God knows what happens from here.  In other news, it looks like the BBC has finally come clean in its role of promoting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953.