Tax, healthcare, immigration: why Dutch people voted for Geert Wilders | Hacker News Reader

Tax, healthcare, immigration: why Dutch people voted for Geert Wilders

theguardian.com

44 pointsPaulHoule126 comments

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.

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.

They built loads of condos in Vancouver which were only advertised for sale overseas in Asia. Residents in Canada weren't given a chance to purchase.

40% of Canadian Federal MPs are landlords.

>Canada's housing crisis stemmed from a lot of outside money buying up property simply to sit on it and leave it empty/unused

Is canada's vacancy rate significantly higher than other developed countries?

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...

British Colombia has the same problem as California in that it is a lot of land but most of it is uninhabitable.

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?

PVV proposes to stop all immigration

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.

Poland.

> 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.

In many EU countries one of largest immigrant group is from Poland.

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.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/poland-government-admit-muslim-mi...

> Poland.

Poland never stopped immigration. In fact, it received roughly double the amount of immigrants in 2021 im comparison to 2 decades prior.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/957100/poland-immigratio...

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.

Facts and Accuracy matters.

> PVV proposes to stop all immigration

The PVV proposes a "freeze on asylum" and "a generally more restrictive immigration policy".

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.

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.

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.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNTFRTINUSA

[2] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NLD/netherlands/fertil...

> 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.

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 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.

What are the British population's attitude towards this post-Brexit reality now? Has anyone reflected on it?

Probably a 48%/52% split between "this is exactly what we said would happen" and "we've been hamstrung by leaders not negotiating a good deal"

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.

> food chain or energy negotiations

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.

No, I remember energy prices going up way before Ukraine war. Starting in the summer of 2021 we had multiple energy providers going bankrupt.

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.

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 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.

> 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.

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.

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…

> 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

[0] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do...

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.

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.

Funny enough the rowhouses on my street are all 3 stories...

> 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?

Texas values libertarianism, individualism, the right to bear arms, etc which might be fine but seems out of place here.

>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.

> 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?

Certainly, but those buildings are not very old.

> Hilversum

Wealthy. That probably explains some of it.

Ironically we're only here because we couldn't find a place in Utrecht.

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

Well, if it helps, my landlords moved to the US so it's a fair trade I suppose. Also, it's Hilversum, not Naarden. I should be OK.

I love the framing 'environmentalism'. Nature is dying and we're stuck on blaming the messenger. I wheep for our children.

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.

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.

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.

I appreciate the sentiment but the idea that people support policy that’s good for them isn’t much better either.

For an obvious example check how many people support the Affordable Care Act vs Obamacare.

> For an obvious example check how many people support the Affordable Care Act vs Obamacare.

100%, since they are the same thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act

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.

affordable care act vs Obamacare

Those are the same thing…

That's the point. People liked the policy, but we're biased about anything with the word "Obama".

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.

> Sounds rather condescending.

It is, and it isn't really true either.

* 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".

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.

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38413594

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.

And, if not stupid, they must be doing it deliberately, so they're evil.

A basket of deplorables

Funny coming from The Guardian, the working man's newspaper.

> Like Jeanette, she was drawn to Wilders for what he has said about housing and a promise of free transport for elderly people

Interesting, I assumed the Netherlands would already have free travel for the elderly. Most (all?) councils in the UK provide this, at least on buses.

It differs on a per-municipality basis. There's no national system.

Ah I see. Here I think it's funded by your council, but can be used nationwide.

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"...

how bad of a housing crisis is in the netherlands?

Wherever I look in europe there is a housing crisis for a reason or another.

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.

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.

Yea this seems to happen more and more.

The east and south of NL are more doable IMO. But I rather work remote and live somewhere else. I’m not a fan of how NL is developing.

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.

[1] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/dossier/asylum-migration-and-integr...

Why is Poland (EU member) lumped in with Ukraine and the former USSR who need permits?

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).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_crisis_in_the_Netherl...

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.

And it's been this bad for more than a decade.

Can universities not build their own dorms / halls of residence?

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.

Difficult times are fertile ground for the cult of personality.

There is a very good chance Trump would be elected again.

For the median worker, healthcare, housing + utilities and food costs have shot up.

The cost of sustaining yourself has gone up but wages haven’t.

Yet we bring in more people to the country. I’m okay with controlled high skilled immigration but totally not okay with illegal immigration.

We should really working on policies that lead to good gradient of fixed resource ownership (land and housing, healthcare).

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