Weird to read a post here from a foreign newspaper trying to describe what happened in my own country. But largely it's true, many people are unhappy with the amount of migration, the housing crisis, the rising cost of living and also what they feel is too much environmentalism. They feel that the parties that were in the government during the last 10 years did not take their concerns seriously or even made them worse.
Whether the PVV can turn things in their favor is questionable, it's easy to shout things from the sideline but many of the current problems are still there because they are inherently difficult to solve.
For instance, PVV proposes to stop all immigration. Apart from the economic problems that this might cause, it is simply not possible due to EU legislation. For which he has a solution as well; NL should step out of the EU. Being primarily an export country, the consequences would be disastrous for the Netherlands.
The housing crisis is another example of an ongoing problem. A major cause is the fact that NL is a very crowded country, it's just very difficult to find any fee space to build on. What makes this even more difficult is certain environmental regulation that forbids any project that increases nitrogen deposition. Again this regulation comes from the EU so NL can't just change it.
Quote: Again this regulation comes from the EU so NL can't just change it
This is -I think- (one of) the main reasons people voted PVV. We (the Dutch people) can't even make their own decisions! And when things fall apart (and they are: housing, inflation, too much environmentalism, declining healthcare, etc) this is exactly what we need: make decisions to fix this. But we 'can't' because of EU. This is extremely angering and fueled the rise of PVV. And don't get me wrong: I'm one of them. And no, I'm not 'far right'. I just want to fix things. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't help others.
I find it a large leap to go from "broken housing, inflation, too much environmentalism, and declining healthcare" to "the EU is the problem". All these "problems", as far as they exist, exist in the whole EU as well as in the US. The cause is therefore unlikely to be the EU.
A more likely cause of some problems is the lack of people in the working age, that is, a demographic problem. The US has solved (historically) and is solving this via immigration, which is exactly the thing that Wilders wants to stop. Put differently, who is gonna build the houses? Many Dutch youths have completed a bachelor or master degree, so are not interested in that line of work.
The main reason is that people don't feel like being responsible for their own solutions, just expect it from a savior - failing EU then a local one. They keep blaming whoever else while forgetting THEY are part of the EU and THEY vote for every single point on the EU action list and legislation, yes including environmentalism. And continuing to not feel responsible, they vote for the guy who takes them out of that EU responsibilities, while promising he will deliver locally on exactly the same points he failed previously to deliver on the EU level. And the voters believed him, of course, ignoring there are green and left-wing parties on local level just as well. Well, this eternal naivety some iron hand will save us, same since the dawn of history...
I would hope people would look at Brexit as a model of how well that line of thought works. Especially as we're seeing how ugly the downstream effects are years afterwards.
Generally speaking, bad. Polls indicate that favorability for Brexit is probably around 35% or lower. It's been getting worse because a lot of the current crisis's the UK faces are the direct result of Brexit. Because a lot of things they took for granted in regards to stuff like the food chain or energy negotiations is something that directly impacts an individual's day to day life.
The UK along with Norway export gas to EU during summer which is stored for use in winter.
UK does not have expensive gas/electricity because of Brexit, it is because of Ukraine war. The rest of EU is just as bad or worse when it comes to energy prices. The economy in Germany is worse than UK this year. The latest data regarding budget deficit from France is just as bad as UK.
Not sure what food chain issues, the UK needs cheap labour to work the fields, UK people won't accept that work, so cheap labour is brought over from Asia for seasonal work. The new young generation Polish/Eastern Europe people are no longer are interested in such work either.
And don't forget the usefulness of the UK for USA is now hovering just above nil. From an Establishment point of view David Cameron has got to be the Biggest Donkey in years! And what do the Tories do, they reward him.
> It baffles me that there was even a need for 'a deal'. I mean: WTF. Can't we just be free?!
Sure, but that freedom means not doing any trade with your neighbours, not letting people from your country visit the EU (and vice versa), not importing any energy, etc.
Why does the EU have to limit trade? Importing energy? Can't you just leave that to the countries themselves? That's my whole point: the EU was never a good plan.
> Can't you just leave that to the countries themselves?
No. A big point in favor of the EU is that countries do not negotiate individually but as a single block. This is an advantage because it gives them more power and the ability of getting better deals (in aggregate). Which is exactly the sort of "bullying" that you are complaining about: by deciding to go alone, the UK is weaker and gets worse deals.
In fact, a well-functioning EU is one of the only ways in which European countries can hope to count anything in a world dominated by much larger economies (US, China, India, ...)
Call me naïve, but what's the point of 'more power'? And 'better deals'? Didn't we have enough food on the table before the EU? Sure, striving for better is fine, but enough is enough right? And if you've build an economy that's favorable for everyone (as the Dutch have. Especially knowledge. See ASML) you don't need to convince other countries to do business with you.
I just don't see the added value of the EU. What I see now is a wealth transfer form the Dutch to the 'poor' EU countries. If you don't believe me, checkout the pension fund management of the Dutch. (more than 1000 billion euro 'disappeared' over the last 10 years and shows up in Greece, Italy, Spain. Or as windmill. Or a rainbow flag.). Man, I get angry even talking about it. Wasting the future of my children.
To defend (y)our interests against other economic blocks that are more powerful and not necessarily nice to you. With ASML you are well covered for now, but China is catching up. And how can 18 million people compete against 1.4 billion? The Dutch GDP is just a bit higher than Beijing'!
I'm not gonna defend every EU policy and I am not arguing that the current state of the EU is satisfactory. All I am saying is that European countries are better off together; there is a reason why "divide and conquer" is a thing.
>> the EU wasn't really cooperating in making a deal with the UK.
Could you clarify this? What kind of deal should the UK have gotten?
Should the UK get a better deal than other countries which are not in the union?
Give the UK (the people in the UK) the freedom to do business with whomever they want. Without 'bullying' border rules. But no, EU said: You left us and that makes us angry.
My whole point is: there should never have bin a EU. What was wrong with the agreement between countries?
There was always a tension between some sort of common market trade organization and a European superstate—which the UK never fully bought into in important aspects anyway.
You should have stayed in the EEA or EFTA then. The UK was one of the founding members of the EEA. Tatcher was quite against the EU and the Euro anyway.
I don't understand your point. The EU and all of the stuff associated with it was part of the agreement. Brexit was the UK backing out of that agreement, which means now they need to negotiate with individual countries (and the EU as a bloc). Which means now they need to figure out how the borders are going to work, how immigration/travel is treated, how imports/exports should be treated etc.
Why is it baffling that they need a deal when that's exactly what they wanted? It sounds like you want the ability for a country to leave the EU, but then not have to negotiate all of the benefits that came with being in the EU. Which, isn't exactly how it works.
As a similar analogy, it would be like if one of the states here in the US successfully seceded. The US would be under no obligation to make deals with said state, they would have to negotiate as two separate countries and all of the geopolitical stuff that comes with it.
Canada is not at all a crowded country, yet it has housing crisis. At least Netherlands had the foresight to create dense, urban spaces with cycling infrastructure and half decent public transit. All they need to do now is replicate this. The thing about environmental concerns is that the nos should be balanced with human quality of life, and in that lens the Dutch way really works better than many other developed countries.
As is with Canada, the problem is always investors. Canada's housing crisis stemmed from a lot of outside money buying up property simply to sit on it and leave it empty/unused, and in the Netherlands you see similar trends along with investors buying up property the moment it appears. Additionally, any bans on things like Airbnb gets overruled by the court system.
These are all things that lower taxes and kicking out foreigners can't solve, because that just opens up more property for investors to swoop in and buy. You stop investors from speculating on property and make it illegal for property to go unused and you solve a good chunk of the issue right there.
Real estate investors expect to earn income from the properties they buy, and thus try to rent them out, especially when interest rates are above zero as they are now. Often the financial plan assumes that rental income will be used to pay the mortgage, property taxes, and other costs.
I assume the OP is referring to (largely Chinese) real estate buyers, where the goal isn't so much earning a return, but instead finding a safe place to stash money. I know this was reported as a problem in Vancouver, BC, but I'm unconvinced it's a true problem outside of hyper-local areas. I've also seen the same argument about luxury flats in London (mostly Middle Eastern buyers here).
And of course, the reporting always calls out the non-native buyers, largely ignoring that wealthy Americans, Canadians, and Brits also own multiple homes spanning many nations, and can't inhabit them all at the same time.
The way a country gets crowded has less to do with the actual land, and more to do with the rate of growth and investment in infrastructure.
The Netherlands had a similar population to Canada in 1950, but today's population is dramatically smaller. Combine that with a historical higher tax rate and investment in infrastructure, this is not something that can be replicated...
Or, also like California, there are places where land is pretty inexpensive but they are less desirable for various reasons and there isn't a lot of local employment available. (Yes, a fair bit of land is mountainous but there's also a fair bit of habitable but undeveloped/lightly developed land.)
Canada and Australia are both facing a housing crisis, and that's mostly due to the fact that the country is huge, but the actually livable parts of the country are fairly small. Then add in the standard Anglo Neoliberalism and surprise surprise big money controls what little habitable space is available.
I've lived in both and worked outside in -40C and +40C, and both are rough. I'd rather be in Virginia and 4 actual seasons. Or San Diego, where there is just one.
> Canada and Australia are both facing a housing crisis, and that's mostly due to the fact that the country is huge, but the actually livable parts of the country are fairly small.
I can’t speak for Canada, but in the case of Australia - there are heaps of small towns in Australia with affordable housing, it is just few people want to live in them. The median house price in Hay, NSW, is only AU$237K (US$157K). Hay is “liveable” - its climate is mild (mean min is 10 deg C, mean max is 24.3 deg C, 368.3 mm annual rainfall). It is on a major river. But, who wants to live in a town of 2500 people which is 5 hours drive from the nearest major city?
> part from the economic problems that this might cause, it is simply not possible due to EU legislation
This is definitely untrue as countries like Poland show well enough. You do not need to stick to every EU rule, you just need to be well off enough to pay off your fines.
I'm a recent immigrant to NL but one kind of surprising thing is how low density a lot of the cities are. Look around Hilversum, Houten, etc. (random examples I'm familiar with) and it's mostly rowhouses. It seems like there should be an opportunity to replace a lot of these with something like the 4-5 story buildings you see in Paris, for instance.
Also, quite a few cars (and big SUV's, and even quite a few full-size American pickup trucks, bafflingly). Biking to school with my kids is frustrating and sometimes feels dangerous. Though maybe that's just Hilversum. They seem really eager to rely on supposed woonerfs instead of actually providing separated infrastructure.
I feel like "I generally favour immigration but understand that having a substantial influx of a population that does not integrate well, regardless of their background" is a hard stance to take. I don't really align with any party so far as I can tell (not that it matters, I can't vote). I'm originally American and if there were large groups of people moving here from Texas, not learning Dutch, and bringing Texan values I'd be pretty worried.
In Hilversum you will see a lot more big SUV's than in a typical Dutch city, the area ('Gooi') is considered quite posh in the Netherlands.
Yes there definitely are possibilities to make more out the existing urban area's. But wherever someone has an idea for building more houses, there always are others that are against it. In your case, building 4-5 story buildings would be seen by some as disturbing the skyline of the city. They'd rather keep their current small city atmosphere.
> I'm originally American and if there were large groups of people moving here from Texas, not learning Dutch, and bringing Texan values I'd be pretty worried.
Sure just replace the rowhouses with skyscrapers and burn the cars.. looking the results of the last elections sounds like your Californian and not Texan values are what worries the Dutch people.. unbelievable
You may be relieved to find that California is extremely restrictive with respect to building skyscrapers and considered by many to be incredibly accommodating of private automobiles.
Anyway, this is a gross mischaracterization of my comment. Wanting my child to be able to bike to school safely doesn't mean burning cars. And I explicitly noted Paris since it's an example of a dense city with surprisingly low building heights.
> It seems like there should be an opportunity to replace a lot of these with something like the 4-5 story buildings you see in Paris, for instance
You know what "replace a lot of" means right? Concretely, you are saying that people should leave their homes to make more place for new people..I can imagine why people won't like it.
> I'm originally American and if there were large groups of people moving here from Texas, not learning Dutch, and bringing Texan values I'd be pretty worried.
I think you did a mischaracterization of the Texan values in the first place.. no?
> Every city has replaced old housing with new over time. Should there still be straw huts on the Seine?
Where? I remember staying in a 19 century house in Utrecht, which still there... I lived in Germany until some years ago in a 1910 building, which I don't think they will rebuild it that early. I think you came to Europe with a different expectation maybe?
>Every city has replaced old housing with new over time.
They have. But arguably it's hard to move the needle a huge amount by piecemeal replacing 2 story buildings as they come onto the market with 4 story ones.
I wonder if the people of Hilverrrsum/'t Gooi do or will soon have qualms about the riff-raff/nonhereditarily landed folks moving to their neighborhoods after being priced out of the major Randstad cities
> Again this regulation comes from the EU so NL can't just change it
I agree with you, even worse is when some mayor candidate comes with that and we all know that in the city level, youhave almost no change to influence such decisions.
However EU, has nothing set in stone and it is democratic. NL don't have to leave EU, but join the (increasing) block doing lobby to change those rules.
> Apart from the economic problems that this might cause, it is simply not possible due to EU legislation.
It is possible. Don't give them money and only provide basic shelter. Do you wonder why the migrants don't stay in Eastern Europe? Because here we offer accomodation in tents. There isn't enough social housing for citizens (largely Roma), let alone migrants.
We have friends and neighbours from Germany who want retire early and to move back to Eastern Europe because they are unhappy with the federal government taxing them nearly ~500€ in order to house and feed migrants. These neighbours are working class people of retirement age, who left to Germany during the communist regime, leaving everything behind. There they were housed in a Lager common social housing with shared toilets and showers and they had to work to support themselves. Now they see how migrants are treated and view them as freeloaders. The fact that they're muslim and also cause problems doesn't help either.
So I'm not at all surprised the Dutch voted with Wilders.
> It is possible. Don't give them money and only provide basic shelter
In the EU you would have to reduce your welfare state to that level for your own citizens as well. The ECJ says[0]:
> It follows that the level of social security benefits paid to refugees by the Member State which granted that status, whether temporary or permanent, must be the same as that offered to nationals of that Member State
Then maybe refuse to register them, like the Hungarian authorities do? Understaff and reduce migrant registration offices to a bare minimum like the French are doing with immigration offices.
Hungary and Poland have repeatedly boycotted and vetoed the EU's migration policies. If this gets support from a country like NL, there is hope to change the EU's ill suited Merkel/Juncker policies on migration.
The alternative is right wing populists like Wilders winning elections in more EU states. Consider LePen's FN winning the French elections for instance. In the German government there is already consensus on a stricter migration policy in order to stem support for the far right.
Russia is also using migrants to put pressure on Polish, the Baltics' and Finnish borders. We shouldn't allow this.
I think Wilders is pretty well known in the anglosphere, or at least I've been following him for a very long time. (Long before I got a job related to political science where I can listen to the 538 podcast and claim it is work related.) On the other hand, I've been a fan of the Netherlands too.
Is there a documented case in history where this has been beneficial ? Not attacking you btw, I'm actually wondering if anyone has known this to be effective?
Immigrants seem like a token thing to get angry about when the chips are down and the country is mismanaged.
> Immigrants seem like a token thing to get angry about when the chips are down and the country is mismanaged.
This has been the primary opinion of center to leftleaning parties for a decade now. There are very real problems with immigration, even more so if a large part of immigration consists of migrations of cultures that are incompatible with western ideas.
Poland has actually let in a record amount of migrants, particularly from non-EU countries.[1] Turns out their tough stance was a bunch of posturing and politicking. Perhaps the money they make from selling visas under the table trumps the solidarity payments.
It's difficult to look to historic precedent because the heart of all of these issues is fertility. This [1] is a graph of fertility rates in the US. Fertility rates just started plummeting catastrophically in the 60s. The exact same thing happened in the Netherlands. [2]
And that's what's causing the crisis. Fertility rates define not only the population in a region, but also the age distribution. Low fertility rates result in a population that will have many times more elderly people than youthful people, and will start shrinking far more rapidly than most realize. It will lead to both economic and social catastrophe. Trying to use mass immigration as a means of solving this problem is an inherently modern idea, because the problem did not exist in the past.
And IMO this isn't just an issue of management of a nation. Trying to create a stable economy and healthy society with a collapsing fertility rate may well just not be possible. On top of cultural conflicts there's also the fact you'll have to tax the death out of the youth in order to subsidize the elderly, at the same time those youth will find ever shrinking economic opportunities as your economy itself also naturally shrinks.
Its a problem of metrics, if you look at the conditions of the middle third of the population, then historically less migration is better as a rule. If you look at GDP then it's more muddy.
As an example the Australian immigration restriction act created some of the best conditions for workers, due to a high value of labour leading to high wages, increased negotiation power, and investment in labour saving innovation.
It was good for the nation and individual workers, but to use terminology familiar here, a single generation decided to enshitify the country and cash in, extracting all the present and future value of existing institutions.
Part of this is a massive propaganda campaign to try and convince you that every measure to restrict migration is racist or misguided... However migration is the most important and significant policy for a long term outcomes in a nation, we have millenia of history to show this.
Refugees from Africa and the middle east have struggled to assimilate, require more state resources, and generally commit crimes at a higher rate than natives and immigrants from other areas.
This question is too broad to receive any satisfying answer. What's beneficial for a freemarket supporter is probably hurtful for a communist, with a lots of nuances in between. Also arguably the phenomenon is new in its current conditions, so historical precedents wouldn't be persuasive. However, the fact is that big influx of culturally different people usually upsets societies (and it is as much true for, say, India, or Kenya as for Netherlands), and it is reflected in political opinions shift. It's objective reality we can observe, and rhetorically discarding it (as a 'token thing') won't make it disappear.
I know quite well what kind of people are "noticing".
It's not immigrants that I'm afraid of where I live. They are typically hard working people, doing all sorts of jobs. From food-delivery to software engineering.
It's the people "noticing" bullshit that I am really wary of.
We see this in many democracies. On one side, we have a feel good but do-nothing-useful group of politicians. On the other side, we have hate spewing politicians. At some point, people get tired of voting for do-nothing crowd and vote for the shitty crowd, it usually makes things worse.
There is a burning building. One group just stands there taking pictures. Another group tosses gasoline into the fire. These are the two choices voters have…
Frankly I'm afraid most people voting for those fascist parties (and other right wing parties) had no clue what they were actually voting for.
Populism works really well, sadly.
I think it's time for a populist progressive left wing party in The Netherlands as a counterweight to the havoc the parties on the right are causing.
Liberals in general branded anyone with any concerns about immigration as racist. This let the right-wingers control the debate and play on peoples' fears. The results were Brexit, Trump and now this guy.
> The "regulation that comes from the EU" was redacted and implemented by the Dutch government
This is partially true. The directive of the regulation came from the EU, the concrete implementation from NL. And at that point it was not clear to anybody that nitrogen deposit restriction would be such an important part of it. But, in that way, the Dutch are responsible for the problems that this regulation currently causes. However, if it would have been purely a Dutch regulation, the Dutch could simply amend it or drop it altogether. Since the regulation comes from the EU, this is not an option.
> ... the nitrogen limitation was introduced in the Dutch implementation of the directive and it's not present in the regulation of most of the other countries.
The nitrogen limitation was not specifically mentioned in the initial Dutch implementation, nor was it in the EU directive. It followed from the principle in the EU directive; that nature in the Natura 2000 area's is not allowed to deteriorate. The reason it is on the Dutch agenda at all, is that Dutch environmental organisations realized that nitrogen was a threat and even took the Dutch government to court to act on it.
> How the housing crisis relates (in a tiny part), with this specific environmental regulation ...
When the Dutch government lost the case about handling nitrogen in 2019, 18000 building projects had to be halted. That's no tiny part.
> Since the regulation comes from the EU, this is not an option
You are right in that they cannot drop it, but they can amend it. The issue is that if they want to drop the nitrogen requirement they would have to come with scientific arguments on how the nitrogen limits doesn't hurt the protected areas, or alternative means to protect those areas from the nitrogen.
> The reason it is on the Dutch agenda at all, is that Dutch environmental organisations realized that nitrogen was a threat and even took the Dutch government to court to act on it
I fully agree with your point
> 18000 building projects had to be halted. That's no tiny part
I'm sorry I wasn't clear in my comment, it's definitively not a tiny part of the total building projects (for context, currently in NL there are like 75k ongoing), but of the housing crisis as a whole.
In my opinion there are many issues with housing in this country. ie. Empty houses due to investors not wanting to rent, cultural tendency for low population density projects, lack of labor, massive (badly implemented) intervention from the government, etc.
Around 20 million people are feed by their agriculture. I think it's fair that a country and not EU decides if they want to have local agriculture or not.
Actually is the EU (well, all the member states together) with the Common Agricultural Policy who decides, as without subsidies there would be no industry. Why do you think that the BBB (Farmer's party) doesn't want out of the EU?
> Around 20 million people are feed by their agriculture
This is a nice political slogan, however I don't think it's true. Just go to your local supermarket and try to find anything of Dutch origin besides tomatoes, meat, eggs and milk.
By the way, I support the idea of each country having their own strategies resources guaranteed, and this includes food.
The issue here in my opinion is the way they grow the produce. They could grow less, export less and pollute less. As an example: From all the EU exports, eggs of NL origin represented 42%, while poultry meat represented 23% [1] (2013 data) This makes absolutely no sense in a country of the size of the Netherlands and it makes even less sense considering they are selling them very cheap, as you can see by the low GDP impact of the whole industry.
I think in since the COVID pandemic and with War in Europe is clear how important is for every single country to have food security for its population. Every country is responsible for themselves. Nobody is coming to help them. So to have a good and effective Agriculture is a geopolitical advantage today.
> They could grow less, export less and pollute less.
Maybe, but it just make sense if you first reduce your costs and pressure in the housing market. Sounds like thats what the Dutch people is asking for and what the new government is saying they are going to do. If that's what really going to happen. Just the time will tell us.
When you look at the electorate of the PVV in general, it consists of people who experience more difficulties to get by. They are more lonely...
Sounds rather condescending. I don't like it when armchair experts place such subjective labels on people. "Lonely, less intelligent," etc. It's second guessing a persons vote which is a tacit way of undermining that vote.
Rather they should analyze policy and try to understand why those policies did not have a positive impact on the lives of voters who opposed them, not assume it is because they have some negative attribute.
In general the trope of a smug liberal is a thing, but I think you made the jump to intelligence:
>>Matthijs Rooduijn, associate professor of political science at Amsterdam University, says such views are common among Wilders voters. “When you look at the electorate of the PVV in general, it consists of people who experience more difficulties to get by. They are more lonely. They feel that they are being neglected. They have tough lives basically, economically but also culturally,” he said.
Of course this trope doesn’t come from nowhere, but this is a professor of political science, who said nothing disrespectful about the intelligence of the group. I am inclined to think that the observation is based on some research findings and has some relevance.
There was a post yesterday, or maybe the day before, here on HN about a BBC study that talked about intelligence related to a vote for Brexit. They claimed that people of low intelligence voted for Brexit.
While I worry about the recent success populism is having in Europe I too take issue with the way the politicians and their voters get presented in media. "Far right" is overused, worries about massive uncontrolled immigration played down and attributed to racism, etc. People don't just start voting populists out of thin air. They face some real issues. Ignoring those and resorting to labels will only push them further into populism and maybe some real extremist politics since there's nobody else addressing their concerns.
I did not like the policy. It caused my health insurance to jump from about $40 a month to $300 a month. My deductible went up, my co-pay went up, it got worse. There was a time when I had to let the health insurance go because I couldn't afford it anymore. The government should not have intervened in the marketplace, and I will not support a government health insurance program, everything the government gets involved in goes completely out of control.
Also, the ACA has undoubtedly resulted in more people getting more healthcare than in pre-ACA. The provisions to require covering people with pre existing health conditions and eliminating out of pocket maximums are a massive improvement over the pre-ACA days.
The point was that a lot of people support things differently based on what they're called.
And, yes, if nothing else people with pre-existing conditions being able to get healthcare outside of employers (even if expensive) is a significant win IMO.
I think the "joke" was that opinion polls will show very different results if you call it "The Affordable Care Act" vs. if you call it "Obamacare" -- a fact which casts doubt on the decision-making abilities of voters.
I don't see it as condescending, I see it as just factual descriptions. Of course, assuming that their research is sound.
They should understand the voters' profiles as well as analyze why previous policies did not yield positive results. The two are not mutually exclusive, and are very probably interrelated.
Stupidity is the new elitist insult. It started to be really noticeable with COVID-19. People with different opinions were simply labeled as too stupid to understand the gravity of the situation. Same is happeneing with democracy. Voting for the other side? Must be dumb as fuck... People seem to have lost the ability to accept that there can be different opinions.
* 17 procent aged 18-34 voted PVV against 7 procent in the previous elections.
* 10 procent of people with a higher education voted PVV.
* PVV won country-side, but also in coties.
* M/F ratio is 53-47.
Source: NRC, 25-11-2023
Also: "difficulties to get by" should have been left-wing parties' priorities, but just one of them has been campaigning on that consistently (although they lost again in these elections).
> a tacit way of undermining that vote.
It has "deplorables" written all over it. While I don't pretend to have the answers, The Guardian is trying to solve the problem by sticking fingers in their ears and shouting "na na na na na, I can't hear you".
With all due respect (and I'm definitely more on the Israeli side of this latest conflict) - those Arabs and Africans coming in don't get their own state in Europe in any way, shape or form.
This term "Islamophobia", I do not think it means what you think it means.
This name-calling and marginalising is damaging. It causes people who may have been open to reasonable solutions to _the real issues of immigration and non-integration of minorities_ to shut their ears and edge closer to extremes.
37 seats out of 150 is a hair under 25%: a largish plurality by Dutch many-party standards, but hardly an overwhelming mandate. Anything Wilders wants to do has to be accomplished by consensus with other parties who want to work with him. We'll see if that even happens. What this should be, however, is a wake-up call to the other parties that they cannot take support for granted.
I'm not from the Netherlands, but Geert Wilders' biography on Wikipedia suggests he has a more diverse background and life story compared to many German politicians, which is intriguing and seems at odds with media portrayals.
However, I'm curious about his educational background. His credentials from the Open Universiteit, listed as 'Rechtsgeleerdheid (deelcertificaten),' appear to be partial certifications rather than a full degree. if it is true, as it looks, it reflects a broader trend in Europe of politicians having limited formal education, a sad and recurring phenomenon regardless of their political stance"...
Very bad. Houses have doubled in price in just a few years. Many first-time home buyers cannot afford a house at all, and some say they never will as things look right now.
The government introduced various policies to remedy this, but all has failed. A few years ago they made it easier to fund young people, e.g. by allowing parents to gift 100k EUR to their children in a tax-free manner as long as it's used for buying a house. This resulted in higher housing prices because more people can afford higher prices, and it also disproportionally benefits people who have rich parents.
Now they've backpedalled on that, and the focus is now on disincentivizing investors. They raised ownership transfer taxes for people who buy a house for the purpose of renting it out. They also raised rent taxes. This works a bit better, but not enough. The core problem is just not enough housing. Also, renting out has become less profitable, so some landlords are selling those houses. This has raised concerns that we'll have too few rental housing.
It's not even just a matter of not building quickly enough. The electricity grid is full (not enough capacity), so there are more and more places where new houses can't even be attached to the grid.
My impression is that the government tried to 'solve' the problem with one main constraint in mind: to never allow the prices go down in any meaningful way. Hence the ham-fisted attempts to instead tweak taxes and ease credit conditions.
I guess that's the implicit constraint that none likes to talk about or admit. It doesn't help that no matter what you do, some population will be screwed over. I have seen that people who used to worry about not being able to afford a house, and who have now somehow managed to buy one, now start worrying about their house value going down.
This cannot be solved with just one trick or just in a few years. You need strong, resolute, long-term actions. But that doesn't fit in an election cycle.
Definitely. People don't hate the game, they hate losing at the game.
Problems can be either solved in a constructive way (we see that's not going to happen) or in a nonconstructive way (societal explosion or breakdown of some sort). Or sometimes problems get superseded by bigger problems. Like when recently the home prices went down just a little bit, it was because of ECB's hand forced into fighting inflation with higher interest rates, which made mortgages less accessible.
The worst in Europe, and since much longer than any other country in Europe.
It's common for Dutch universities to only accept international students on the condition that they (i.e. the student) manage to find housing themselves, because there have been many cases where they enrolled but just couldn't get housing anywhere. You don't see that in other countries.
Pretty bad. It's a combination of legislation issues with nitrogen [1] and having shot the construction workforce in the foot in the previous financial crisis (large out flow of workers).
Very bad. In Amsterdam demand is crazy. People are being scammed on Facebook groups desperately hunting for a place to stay. Interestingly, a lot of adverts for flat sharers say "no internationals" - make of that what you will. I was there this summer and was offered a 1 room bedsit for 3000 Eur/month.
Pretty bad. We had to accept an 18 month (instead of 12 month) contract and overbid by 200 euro a month for a 4 bed house in Hilversum. Also pre-paid a year, but I think that was more to do with me being self employed.
Though it still felt downright easy compared to Ireland, where we came from.
The one dutch guy I know that bought a house bought it in ... Belgium.
Rents are horrendous. House prices the same.
The problem is kicking out those dirty foreigners who sweep your streets and raise rent prices won't lower rents. At best they will plateau for a little while.
They aren't even kicking out all of the foreigners. He specifically wants to kick out all 'non-western' foreigners which is already a fraction of a fraction of the people who immigrate to the Netherlands. It's just red meat to racists who want to divert the problem away from things that are harder to solve to something that's easier and gets you voted in.
I imagine things will go down the same way as it did in the UK.
> He specifically wants to kick out all 'non-western' foreigners which is already a fraction of a fraction of the people who immigrate to the Netherlands
Here is a page the Netherlands government with more specific numbers [1]. In 2022 there were roughly 250k immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Ukraine, or Poland, and the next three biggest sources were Syria, Turkey, and India, combing to maybe 50k combined.
I find two distinct reasons why people may dislike or speak against a news source :
1. Quality of investigation, journalism, writing, reportage
2. disagreement with overt or subtle position, bias and perspective
Fwiw, Without detail, your comment is automatically presumed in category 2.
I for one find guardian very opinionated and biased, but eminently readable. It has a very overt perspective, but it generally has good quality writing. I would not make it my only / primary source, but I don't automatically shun it either.
I automatically filtered it out precisely because I believe what the (interestingly downvoted to near white) parent says; it's closer to an entertainment source than a news source. They picked their audience, and the headlines are written accordingly, then follows some words to make up the article — or at least that how it always reads to me.
It’s not that much worse than the daily mail. I don’t think biased news is failing. On the contrary, the more government spending follows fake news suppression, the more profit in biased news. See American tv news for the same general trend.
Whether the PVV can turn things in their favor is questionable, it's easy to shout things from the sideline but many of the current problems are still there because they are inherently difficult to solve. For instance, PVV proposes to stop all immigration. Apart from the economic problems that this might cause, it is simply not possible due to EU legislation. For which he has a solution as well; NL should step out of the EU. Being primarily an export country, the consequences would be disastrous for the Netherlands.
The housing crisis is another example of an ongoing problem. A major cause is the fact that NL is a very crowded country, it's just very difficult to find any fee space to build on. What makes this even more difficult is certain environmental regulation that forbids any project that increases nitrogen deposition. Again this regulation comes from the EU so NL can't just change it.