Tuesday, May 5, 2009
By the Way / Hannan / Media New York Times Magazine Goes Dutch
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Tue, May 5, 2009 at 6:42 AM
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Writer Russell Shorto has spent the past 18 months living in Amsterdam. He rides bikes to get places, not just to burn calories, drinks espresso at movie houses and pays taxes at a 52 percent clip. In other words, he's a socialist.
Wait, no, that's not true at all. The point of Shorto's piece about life in Holland (currently the most read at NYTimes web site) is to convince Americans that the European welfare-state is nothing like how we imagine it. (American media overly simplistic? Never!)
Sure, he says, the tax rate hurts. But after you add in state, local, real estate and social security, it's not unlike what most people face in the States. And that's without the round-the-clock child care standard for every new mother, the $4,000 vacation stipend on top of the salary you still earn during your mandatory eight weeks and the $600 quarterly payments that every parent gets until their kids turn 18. Socialism, schmocialism. Sounds pretty sweet to me.
In light of the massive government intervention during Obama's first 100 days, Shorto's is a well-timed article. The "s" word has become the new cry wolf for any lazy ass American who equates some painful, if necessary, big spending as an ideological sea change. But as Shorto points out, "socialism" as it's practiced in the Netherlands isn't that dissimilar; the Dutch are fierce proponents of the free-market. And their health care system is the envy of much of the industrialized world, including America (Bush II sent advisers to Holland two years ago just to crib notes.)
Most interesting: Shorto's contention that Dutch socialism has its roots in modern religion. Weird. It's almost as if Jesus, had he been around today, would have been all about the social safety net.
There is another historical base to the Dutch social-welfare system, which curiously has been overlooked by American conservatives in their insistence on seeing such a system as a threat to their values. It is rooted in religion. "These were deeply religious people, who had a real commitment to looking after the poor," Mak said of his ancestors. "They built orphanages and hospitals. The churches had a system of relief, which eventually was taken over by the state. So Americans should get over 'socialism.' This system developed not after Karl Marx, but after Martin Luther and Francis of Assisi."
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