For 18 months I’ve been playing
the part of the American in Holland. For the first few months I was
haunted by the number 52, the rate at which my income is to be
taxed.*
Yet as the months
rolled along, I found the defiant anger softening. I had noted with
pleasant confusion the arrival of two mysterious payments of $410
each in my bank account. The remark line said “accommodation
schoolbooks.” On looking at the payor – the Sociale Verzekeringsbank,
or Social Insurance Bank – I understood.
I have
two daughters, you see. Every quarter, the SVB quietly drops $665
into my account with the one-word explanation “kinderbijslag” or
child benefit. The SVB’s Web site cheerily informed me: “Babies are
expensive. The Dutch government provides for child benefit to help
you with the costs of bringing up your child.”
All
parents receive quarterly payments until their children turn 18.
Friends who have small children report that the government
reimburses as much as 70 percent of the cost of day care.
Last May
an unexpected $4,265 arrived in my account: “vakantiegeld” -
vacation money. This money materializes in the bank accounts of
everyone in Holland just before the summer holidays. You get an
amount totaling 8 percent of your annual salary. This is on top
of the salary you continue to receive during the weeks you’re
off skydiving or snorekeling.
Dutch law
requires all employers to give a minimum of four weeks’ vacation.
Even if you are unemployed you still receive a base amount of
vkantiegeld from the government. They reason that if you can’t go on
vacation, you’ll get depressed and you’ll never get a job.
The Dutch seem to be
happier than we are. A 2007 UNICEF study of children in 21 countries
ranked Dutch children at the top and American children second from
the bottom. And children’s happiness is surely dependent on adult
contentment.
I used to
think the built-in, paid vacations that Europeans enjoy translated
into societies where nobody wants to work and everyone is waiting
for the next holiday. This is not the case here. I’ve found that
Dutch people take both their work and their time off seriously.
Indeed, the two go together. I almost never get a work-related
e-mail from a Dutch person on the weekend. The Dutch work only
during work hours. But this seems to make them more productive, not
less. I’m constantly struck by how calm and fresh the people I work
with regularly seem to be.
The Netherlands also
has universal health care. Virtually everyone is covered. Consumers
have their choice of insurers and plans. But certain conditions are
maintained via regulation and oversight. It is illegal for an
insurance company to refuse to accept a client, or to charge more
based on age or health. A government fund compensates insurers that
take on more high-cost clients. It seems to work.
For moms,
insurance covers prenatal care, the birth of children and
after-care. This begins with seven days of five-hours-per-day home
assistance.
The Dutch
are free marketers, but they also have a keen sense of fairness.
Indeed, my
nonscientific analysis – culled from my own experience and that of
other expats – translates into a clear endorsement. Colin Campbell
has been in the Netherlands for four years with his wife and their
two children. “Four human beings end up going to a lot of different
doctors in 4 years,” he said. “The amazing thing is that virtually
every experiences has been more pleasant than in the U.S. There you
have the bureaucracy, the endless forms. Here you just go in and see
your doctor. It shows that it doesn’t have to be complicated. I wish
every single U.S. congressman could come to Amsterdam, live here for
a while, and see what happens medically.
Nearly all G.P.’s in
the country make house calls to infirm or elderly patients. Most
GP’s devote one hour per day to walk-in visits. In the US, for a
family of four, I paid about $1,400 a month for a policy that didn’t
include dental care and was filled with co-pays, deductibles and
exceptions. A similar Dutch policy cost about $390, with no co-pays,
and included dental coverage. 90 percent of the cost of my
daughter’s braces were covered.
Decent housing is
another area where the Dutch are in broad agreement. The Netherlands
has a public housing system in which qualified people get apartments
for below-market rents. About one-third of all housing is “social
housing.” But attitudes are different from those in the US
I was
surprised that a friend who is a successful psychologist lives in a
social-housing apartment. He has had it since his student days. The
term does not have the stigma that “public housing” does in the US.
While my friend obviously can afford to pay more than his
bargain-basement rent of 360 euros ($470), the system doesn’t
require him to move on. There is perceived to be a value in keeping
a mix of income levels in the units.
The government does
not own or manage the properties. Each is owned by an independent
real estate cooperative. The system is not-for-profit, but it pays
for itself. The housing market then is actually two real estate
markets running alongside each other. But one operates at
government-mandated cheaper rates.
I spent
my initial months in Amsterdam under the impression that I was
living in quasi-socialistic system. Yet, the Dutch pioneered the
multinational corporation. And last year the country was the
third-largest investor in U.S. businesses. The Netherlands’ has a
blend of free market and social welfare. How can these
polar-opposite value systems coexist?
The Dutch call their
collectivist mentality and politics-by-consensus the “polder model,”
after their areas of low land systematically reclaimed from the sea.
Everyone had to deal with water. With a polder, the big problem is
pumping the water. But your land lies in the middle of the country,
so where are you going to pump it? To someone else’s land. And then
they have to do the same thing, and their neighbor does, too. All of
this had to be done together. The nation today embodies a
centuries-old inclination toward collectivism, which one writer
called “the democracy of dry feet.”
In Europe, the postwar
cradle-to-grave idea of a welfare state gave way in the past few
decades to some quite sophisticated mixing of public and private.
And whether in health care, housing or pensions, the Dutch have
proved to be particularly skilled at finding mixes that work.
Russell Shorto
Amsterdam, Netherlands
*That 52 percent tax rate includes
social security, which in the U.S. is an additional 6.2 percent. And
in the U.S. you have state and local taxes, and much higher real
estate taxes. If you were to add all those up, you would get close
to the 52 percent.)
Adapted from Going Dutch - How
I learned to Love the European Welfare State (NYTimes.com)
Fall
2009