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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

#81

Post by underseacables »

xnx wrote: post #75
underseacables wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

ghaff wrote: post #78
PaulHoule wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by longdudefromnl »

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.

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

#84

Post by ghaff »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #35
rutierut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ov…

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.

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

#85

Post by surgical_fire »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #30
ChatGTP wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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...

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

#86

Post by surgical_fire »

YiraldyGuber wrote: post #76
ChatGTP wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#87

Post by fzeroracer »

longdudefromnl wrote: post #83
fzeroracer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

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 they need a deal when that's exactly what they wanted? It sounds like you want the ability for a country to leave the EU, but then not have to negotiate all of the benefits that came with being in the EU. Which, isn't exactly how it works.

As a similar analogy, it would be like if one of the states here in the US successfully seceded. The US would be under no obligation to make deals with said state, they would have to negotiate as two separate countries and all of the geopolitical stuff that comes with it.

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

#88

Post by CalRobert »

gbrindisi wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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

#89

Post by CalRobert »

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-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.

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