Vol. 42, No. 09
A Country So Great, Half the Young People Want to Leave
AT A GLANCE
• The Netherlands is an example of a socialist country that did not deliver as promised.
• The healthcare system is a disaster, and so are other government programs.
• The Dutch have learned the hard way that a pie-in-the-sky welfare state does not work.
• Many Dutch have already left the country, and half the young people want to leave.
“We are, of course, a country that is at its core deeply socialist.”
Mark Rutte, the former prime minister of the Netherlands, spoke those revealing words during a parliamentary debate in 2020. “I believe in a strong state,” he continued, calling the government “a shield for the weak.” He pointed out that roughly 45 cents of every euro a Dutch citizen earns flows to the government, describing this process as “an endless transfer of money from one group to another.” And if you think that was bad, just wait; it gets worse. He closed with this single sentence: “And as a liberal, I feel very much at home there.”
Mind you, Rutte campaigned as a self-proclaimed liberal and maintained the most powerful position in this small country of the European lowlands for more than a decade. When he said the Netherlands is at its core deeply socialist, for once he wasn’t lying. For a man who built his career on lies and the “active forgetting” of his own mistakes, that is saying quite a lot.
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