So many people seem to forget that - helping those with the least, helps us all. From a purely mercenary point of view, it helps build you more customers and more skilled workers.
At which level they should or should not exist is dependent on many parameters, but I would not classify it as bizarre.
People in the US are fortunate enough to have so much space that many times distances themselves serve as the gate, but if you live in a more dense society, perhaps a controlled border is necessary for some purpose.
It is dystopian though, I imagine it is a direct representation of lack of trust between the members in society, and likely related to the size of wealth gaps.
Every EU country is.
At current technology levels, it's simply impossible to have a "social net" (i.e. guaranteeing every citizen enough resources for a minimum standard of living) and open borders (i.e. infinite demand for said resources)
Oh? Well how easy is it for a poor person from India to move to the Netherlands to take advantage of this?
That being said, there is a different argument to be made. The Netherlands does not have a lot of private schools, and private schools generally tend to not be more exclusive than regular schools. This means that an applicant that went to private school might have an advantage but generally you can go to any school and there will be plenty of decent paying jobs or chances for you. Along with that, every person in The Netherlands is able to go and study. Either you take out a (compared to the US, small) loan and even that is being reverted to a gift from the government or you work along side to it. I am quite sure that this is not the case in India and therefore a poor person will have less of a chance then a rich person. But this is unrelated to the companies hiring and it is purely related to your study.
The point of the parent is that it is hard for a random Indian to immigrate to the Netherlands, that they must show some skill or ability in order to gain entry.
The argument is that the Netherlands can afford their social net because they do not have an endless stream of people coming asking for benefits. So by limiting the amount of immigration, the Netherlands is acting like a gated community.
A further argument along these lines would be, if you do not feel that the Netherlands is acting as a gated community. Should the Netherlands open it's social programs to people not in the Netherlands? i.e. Should Americans or Mexicans be allowed to apply and receive benefits from the Netherlands even though they have no tie to the Netherlands?
From a cultural standpoint I wouldn't want to open up further, from a purely theoretical standpoint I would have no problem opening up our social programs to outside the Netherlands if the additional group (regardless of it being a group, country, province, state, whatever) pays the same amount of tax as we do. But good luck implementing that, income tax for India is max 30%, compare that to our lowest bracket which is already 37% and goes up to 50%.
If you throw in people that live in earthquake/typhoon/volcanic/etc locales, with different diseases and food production, natural resources, climate, and scale up the population of people to administer all those benefits by a couple orders of magnitude, you can bet you’ll be paying a lot more in taxes to try to afford the same quality of life for everyone.
But from the mercenary point of view, I think reducing poverty is worth it from a security and quality of life point of view. If public spaces are dangerous that is no good for people and poverty also degrades peoples quality of life, examples like not having to step over homeless people outside your front door don't really have dollar values, but they make people happier.
Not trying to be crass but that's literally reflected in the real estate prices. Homes in areas with lots of homelessness and related crime in the area will have lower prices than equivalent homes somewhere else. It does have a dollar value.
But it's not extra money in your pocket if you don't sell your property.
(As an American) when I think of places that fight crime primarily with welfare (aka the idea better policing doesn’t work, equality will fix it), I think of San Francisco and Seattle which have crazy homeless and crime problems.
However, it seems to me like in Europe, plenty of places seem to do this and see positive results.
What’s the difference? Why is the welfare city of San Francisco terrible but the welfare city of Amsterdam/Stockholm/etc seem to be fine?
I am in Canada, so we have a blend of American, and European society, and it seems that when people want to extract money from the community, the problem isn't resolved. I see this in the homeless/drug space from activist organizations who are extracting lots of money from government, but are not doing a good job of solving problems, as that would end the flood of money.
As an aside: The big cities in the Netherlands also have some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. If you pick a random smaller town/city it is likely to have less poverty than Amsterdam, (but also less wealthy residents).
My neighbor was the director of a homeless shelter and the crap he had to deal with was unreal.
I look at it kinda like the anti car movement. The big companies supported whichever side would save them money. They supported getting rid of street parking for bike lanes and making parking under a building part of code.... then sabatoged it by making the parking all permit only or very expensive. Now theres too little parking either way to go shopping and the anti car people get to look bad. But it didnt really affect the average s class driver at all so who cares right?
This is just the impression I got working downtown for 10 years. Probably have some misunderstandings.
The political reason for the Dutch social safety: stop an impending socialist/communist revolution. This was a real threat in Europe at the time. A second reason was scientific: poor people were spreading diseases which are a threat for everyone. A third reason was economic: healthy and happy people work harder.