I have known many Dutch people over the years who have gotten a lot of benefits from the state from unemployment to housing. Some of it clearly fraudulently too. Seems to be unsustainable.
Government projects are quite corrupt, and often go way over budget. Of course, this is a global problem as well.
The main problem is corporate tax evasion. Pretty much every multinational funnels money via NL, while paying almost nothing.
For example - IKEA, Walt Disney, FAANG, Uber, and innumerable more are all Dutch BVs for most global activities.
The reason there’s so many Teslas is because up until 2021, you could get significant tax benefits, if you purchased an electric car via your employer for “work”. If you look past Teslas, you’ll see that most people own average family cars.
Amsterdam does have people with “expensive tastes”, but that’s not representative of the rest of the country. It’s similar to what you’d see in New York or London vs. the rest of their respective countries.
Most of the wealthy people I know own businesses (and as such benefit from the lower taxes), or own lots of rentable real estate.
This is a significant piece of information in this discussion.
source - https://www.statista.com/statistics/780316/market-share-of-t...