Juno News - March 03, 2024


Fixing Hungary's fertility crisis - Miklós Szántó, CPAC Hungary chairman

Mentioned
Miklos Santo
Ottawa denies Alberta’s drug hunt scheme Trudeau's ＂online harms＂ bill is an all-out assault on free speech

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

145.45

Word count

1,156

Sentence count

63

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk to Miklos Santo, the chairman of the Conservative Party of Hungary, about the plummeting birth rate in his country. We talk about the government's family policy and how it has helped to increase the number of children.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.560 Alright, so we're here at CPAC and we're here with the chairman of CPAC Hungary, Miklos Santo.
00:00:06.260 Tell me about what Hungary has been able to do to turn around your birth rate. 0.95
00:00:10.520 I know that's been a policy that we've heard about in Canada, in our country.
00:00:13.680 We have a plummeting birth rate and nobody seems willing to actually address this issue.
00:00:17.960 Thank you very much for having me on the show.
00:00:20.400 Look, at the heart or at the core of Hungary's family policy is to create a so-called work-fair society instead of welfare society.
00:00:31.940 Meaning that the government launched 10, 14 years ago a program which literally forces or encourages at least via the taxation system everyone to join the labor market.
00:00:47.160 Meaning that all of the social benefits were cut, which social benefits were not related to having a job.
00:00:59.800 And all of the social benefits, including tax benefits and many other literally money related to having a family and having children, were attached to your income, to your legal salary.
00:01:14.960 That meant a very high, very intensive rise in employment and actually the unemployment rate in Hungary is around 3%.
00:01:24.840 So actually who can work nowadays in Hungary is on the job market and works.
00:01:30.600 And the important thing which relates to the family policy and to the rise in the birth rates is that if you're in the job market and if you establish your family and if you have one children, two, three, four, etc.
00:01:52.700 The more tax benefits, the more tax benefits, the more money you get from the state, I know it sounds a little bit socialistic, but that's the way how we can do this.
00:02:04.260 I think conservatives shouldn't be dogmatic if it comes to important issues.
00:02:08.980 So if you're in the job market and you do have a legal income and if you have a family and if you have the more children, the less tax you pay.
00:02:18.660 For example, mothers, women, after four children and from the next year after three children, they do not pay any income tax. 0.63
00:02:26.740 So the idea, the ideology behind this whole structure is to get people on the job market and to give them as many tax cuts, tax benefits and state fund as possible if they do work.
00:02:43.400 And of course, additionally, for women, there are extra special programs.
00:02:52.960 If they are not able to join the labor market because they are at home with the children, then they come, then they get extras from the state.
00:03:02.840 But only if they do have children and only if they are at home and not on the job market because they spend their time with their family.
00:03:11.720 In Canada, we have a problem where there are not enough people being born in our country.
00:03:17.200 So in order to sustain our social safety net, we have to import a population. 1.00
00:03:20.780 We've gone through a serious program of mass immigration and it's even stated in our census that that is the government plan.
00:03:27.020 And it seems, from my perspective at least, that the conservatives in Canada seem afraid to talk about demographics.
00:03:32.840 They are afraid to talk about birth rates.
00:03:34.280 I'm not quite sure why, but obviously in Hungary, that is not the case.
00:03:38.380 So what do you say to conservatives in Canada who may be, maybe the word is afraid, to talk about this issue?
00:03:46.500 It's maybe because of the, maybe because of the vote and political correctness, which is a, which is a no phenomena in Hungary.
00:03:54.800 There is, there is no vote, there is no political correct oppressed language in my country.
00:04:01.440 But environment, I mean political and social environment matters.
00:04:06.780 Let me give you an example.
00:04:08.460 In Hungary, the number of abortions in the past 10 years halved without any type of modification or amendment to the very low.
00:04:18.720 Which means that just because of, just, just because the Hungarian social environment became more family friendly, the number of abortions halved because people, mothers do thought that it's better, of course, to have, to have children.
00:04:38.480 One abortion is, is more than enough, of course, and it's still around 20 or 30,000 in Hungary per year.
00:04:47.840 But 10 years ago, it was around 50 or 60,000 per year.
00:04:51.640 And also, the number of abortions in the past 10 years, and as you already mentioned, fertility rate grew from 1.22, which was 14 years ago, to around 1.60.
00:05:08.920 Nowadays, it's still not 2.1, I do agree.
00:05:13.900 But we do see a slow but, but continuous change in the social environment and in the mindset of the people.
00:05:26.140 But, but because the, the mainstream is about having family and having children is good.
00:05:34.820 It's not, it's not, it's not a burden, the, the public discussion is not about whether newborn would mean some kind of a, a, a negative, a, how you call it, a, carbon footprint, carbon footprint, what I do here regularly from the West.
00:05:57.340 But the, but the whole, the feeling is that, that having a family and having more children is cool, it's trendy, it's fancy, and it's sexy.
00:06:08.800 And of course, there are the state programs.
00:06:11.000 There is the, the tax system, as I told you, the, the different family policies carried out, blah, blah, blah.
00:06:16.140 But it's also to, to know, it's also important to know that the, the environment, how you change the minds of the people is also very relevant.
00:06:26.420 Because on the, on the other hand, and with a very different mindset, liberals are doing the same.
00:06:34.960 Last question for you.
00:06:36.640 We know that CPAC has been branching out into other countries like yours and like Japan.
00:06:41.360 So what can we expect from CPAC Hungary going forward?
00:06:44.200 We would like to strengthen the global coalition of anti-globalist forces.
00:06:52.240 And we would like to prepare ourselves in Budapest, in Hungary, at CPAC Hungary at the end of April for the upcoming European elections.
00:07:00.600 Because we will have a European, Europe fight elections in early June.
00:07:04.200 And of course, we would like to prepare ourselves together with our conservative friends from the U.S.
00:07:09.460 for the upcoming presidential elections here in the U.S. November.
00:07:15.120 What we feel, and that's a, that's a good feeling, that our enemies on the left are so frustrated that we are trying to realize the nightmare of the liberals,
00:07:26.520 meaning the international coalition of national forces.
00:07:29.960 And that's, that's, that's good to see if they are frustrated, I think we are on the right path.
00:07:36.580 And the very goal at CPAC Hungary is to, is to go against the, the liberal mainstream, is to, is to show that we are the vogue busters and that we should drain the swamps both in Brussels and in Washington as well. 0.56
00:07:53.020 Thank you so much.
00:07:54.360 Thank you very much.
00:07:54.760 Thank you.
00:07:55.340 Really appreciate it.
00:07:56.120 Thank you guys.
00:07:56.360 Thank you very much.