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

theguardian.com

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

#101

Post by longdudefromnl »

fzeroracer wrote: post #87
longdudefromnl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

See my reply above. My whole point is that the EU was never a good plan.

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

#102

Post by longdudefromnl »

cjrp wrote: post #91
longdudefromnl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 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.

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

#103

Post by huijzer »

longdudefromnl wrote: post #38
misja111 wrote: post #16

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 wors…

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 ang…

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.

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

#104

Post by ghaff »

longdudefromnl wrote: post #100
easywood wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

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

#105

Post by cjrp »

longdudefromnl wrote: post #102
cjrp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm talking about having left the EU. Countries then have to sort out these deals themselves, that's the whole point.

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

#106

Post by CalRobert »

pelasaco wrote: post #97
CalRobert wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-siz…

> 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.

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

#107

Post by CalRobert »

misja111 wrote: post #95
CalRobert wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-siz…

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…

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

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

#108

Post by theironhammer »

fzeroracer wrote: post #55
longdudefromnl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ang…

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.

[flagged]

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

#109

Post by theodric »

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.

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

#110

Post by theodric »

CalRobert wrote: post #89
misja111 wrote: post #16

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 wors…

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-siz…

> Hilversum

Wealthy. That probably explains some of it.

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