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Going Dutch

nytimes.com

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Re: Going Dutch

#51

Post by undees »

benzim wrote: post #25
turkishrevenge wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but if they saw someone in need they wouldn't help them" -- this applies to Christians and non-Christians alike. Similarly, a Christian or non-Christian could easily help such a person as well. Given the overall message of Christianity (read: Christ) then, by your definition, there should be no want or suffering in the world, but yet there is. You are free to believe what you want about the Dutch, but at the very le…

But it doesn't apply to Christians and non-Christians alike. Conservatives and especially Christians give far more time and money to help those less fortunate. "Finally, the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation. Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giv…

"And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization"

I'm curious as to the percentage that goes outside givers' own churches.

"when they give, they give more money"

I'd also be curious to find out whether or not the less religious give more time, and how much money that time is worth.

Re: Going Dutch

#52

Post by randallsquared »

pragmatic wrote: post #30
lethain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in rural Japan last year, and had similar experiences with stores being open or lack thereof. There were three restaurants and two bars. One restaurant never opened for dinner, another was run by a family, was closed at 8PM and was closed on Sundays, the third was run by one woman and was closed for dinner on weekends and also tuesdays. One of the bars' closing schedule involved being closed on the third Sund…

That's how it is in rural America (Midwest, the South) also. You need a large population to support 24 hour consumerism.

But in rural Alabama, at least, Walmart is open 24 hours a day, and chain pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens as well.

Re: Going Dutch

#53

Post by randallsquared »

undees wrote: post #51
benzim wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it doesn't apply to Christians and non-Christians alike. Conservatives and especially Christians give far more time and money to help those less fortunate. "Finally, the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation. Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giv…

"And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization" I'm curious as to the percentage that goes outside givers' own churches. "when they give, they give more money" I'd also be curious to find out whether or not the less religious give more time, and how much money that time is worth.

I'd also be curious to find out whether or not the less religious give more time, and how much money that time is worth.

Depends on how you count worth. The lawyer who volunteers at a soup kitchen, to use a lesswrong.com example, is giving up X dollars per hour of income to provide far less than X dollars per hour of charity, and since this is true for people who give to charity in general (without reference, but I'd be very surprised if it were controversial), it seems clear that people who primarily give time are donating for reputation rather than effect. I've no clue about the relative proportions of time and money the religious and non-religious give, though.

Re: Going Dutch

#54

Post by timr »

benzim wrote: post #39
jules wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Dutch will talk about how they don't think anyone should be without health care, but if they saw someone in need they wouldn't help them. [citation needed]

I was referring to this quote from the article. "If you tell a Dutch person you’re going to raise his taxes by 500 euros and that it will go to help the poor, he’ll say O.K., he said. But if you say he’s going to get a 500-euro tax cut, with the idea that he will give it to the poor, he won’t do it. The Dutch don’t do such things on their own. They believe they should be handled by the system. To an American, that’s…

The same thing happens in America -- we talk a good game about charity being driven by individual donations, but we don't tend to donate very much.

Last I heard, your average US charity has less than 30% of its budget met by donations.

Re: Going Dutch

#55

Post by philwelch »

eru wrote: post #16
jonas_b wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it was true, would that in the case of NL indicate anything in regards to its taxes-welfare state? I thought it was a widely held "fact" that the NL is overcrowded and that dutchmen should try to find their lebensraum elsewhere.

Be careful playing with terms like "Lebensraum".

It's actually fairly astute. The reason "expanding Germany into the territory of neighboring countries we don't like" was so popular to Germans was because Germany (then and probably now) is fairly dense. One of my friends studied in Germany. One of his professors said something like, "Germany has never had enough land. We tried expanding once but it didn't work out so well."

It's easy to imagine the Netherlands having the same problem. Of course, emigrating to a less dense country is an easier solution.

Re: Going Dutch

#56

Post by crux_ »

endtime wrote: post #49
jd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands it's not a matter of population -- shops are not allowed to be open outside the regulated hours. I believe the law was introduced a few decades ago in order to protect the mom and pop stores (a misguided attempt to put mom and pop stores on equal footing with larger businesses. If the mom and pop store can't afford to stay open at night then nobody is allowed to. Because that's "fair".) Since gas s…

>If the mom and pop store can't afford to stay open at night then nobody is allowed to. Because that's "fair". Any time I finding appealing stories of the allegedly comfortable northwest European life, I just remind myself of things like this.

... On the other hand, a lot of the appeal in such a life is in the fact there are still lots of unique mom and pop stores, often with generations of history, still in existence...

Re: Going Dutch

#57

Post by tybris »

ellyagg wrote: post #36

Speaking only for myself as a US citizen, I'm proud of the fact that the US has led the world in per capita income the last few decades. For a country our size to consistently be number 1 or near the top (depending on who's doing the analysis) is pretty amazing. I think there's room in the world for a country with an ethic that favors aggregate production. Why does everyone have to be the same? People are free to mov…

> I'm proud of the fact that the US has led the world in per capita income the last few decades

Huh? Aren't they on par with countries like the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, etc?

Re: Going Dutch

#58

Post by eru »

jonas_b wrote: post #19
eru wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful playing with terms like "Lebensraum".

You're right, it was probably unnecessary. It's a pity though, cause the metaphorical meaning of living "room" is precisely what I meant.

In modern German, Lebensraum is still a perfectly normal word when used as "the place where animals live". But we are very cautious about our history and the history of words.

Sometimes bordering on (self-) censorship. So that caution is not necessarily a good thing.

Re: Going Dutch

#59

Post by eru »

nihilocrat wrote: post #32
lethain wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in rural Japan last year, and had similar experiences with stores being open or lack thereof. There were three restaurants and two bars. One restaurant never opened for dinner, another was run by a family, was closed at 8PM and was closed on Sundays, the third was run by one woman and was closed for dinner on weekends and also tuesdays. One of the bars' closing schedule involved being closed on the third Sund…

Also had a similar experience while living in Munich a few years ago. I learned I had to plan out my food purchases much better, but otherwise it wasn't very inconvenient. Definitely a change of pace, and I comforted myself thinking that it meant people didn't have to work at their crappy grocery store jobs late / on Sundays. If it somehow enabled 50 cent beers and 2 euro bottles of (good!) wine, I am not about to co…

The limits on opening hours for German shops have mostly been lifted in the last years.

Aldi enables 50 Cent beer and 2 Euro wine. Their drive hard bargains with their supplieres. Interestingly Aldi pays their employees quite well and seems to occupy a higher moral ground in the German opinion than Walmart does in America. (Lidl, the second big discounter chain, has a reputation for mis-treating employees, though.)

Re: Going Dutch

#60

Post by eru »

philwelch wrote: post #55
eru wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful playing with terms like "Lebensraum".

It's actually fairly astute. The reason "expanding Germany into the territory of neighboring countries we don't like" was so popular to Germans was because Germany (then and probably now) is fairly dense. One of my friends studied in Germany. One of his professors said something like, "Germany has never had enough land. We tried expanding once but it didn't work out so well." It's easy to imagine the Netherlands havi…

"Germany" [1] did expand quite successfully eastwards during the Ostsiedlung (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostsiedlung) in the middle-ages.

Modern Germany is dense, yes. But guess what: People are migrating en masse from states like Saxony-Anhalt (118 inhabitants/km²) to Baden-Württemberg (301 inhabitants/km²).

[1] In quotation marks, because there was no state called Germany back then.

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