Why far-right Wilders won the Dutch election | Hacker News Reader

Why far-right Wilders won the Dutch election

jeroenvanbaar.substack.com

Homes and culture.

House prices are so far above inflation that affording a home is a nightmare.

Dutch tolerance for other cultures and languages is fantastic but it's also breeding resentment because of assumptions by "outlanders" that learning local norms and language is optional to the point Dutch speakers can feel strangers in their own land.

Wilders played to both. The latter is his standing ground and the former he's pledged to fix although God alone knows how.

(Non Dutch, sometime resident, frequent visitor)

>it's also breeding resentment because of assumptions by "outlanders" that learning local norms and language is optional to the point Dutch speakers can feel strangers in their own land.

I was wondering about this too; did not see any charts/data/observations of it in the article. I thought outlanders assimilate to become inlanders, but it looks like that takes a long time and presents as social tensions: "What do you want the country to look like, in a reasonably forward-looking way?"

Left-wing populists unfortunately cornered themselves into not being able to discuss illegal immigration like adults.

Yes, the essay even has a quote explaining why someone voted for Wilders: "I want my own home". And the essayist more-or-less ignores it.

The culture thing is going to build over the next decade across Europe. IMHO it's defensible to want to preserve your language and culture. Tolerant cultures cannot tolerate intolerance and survive.

Note that under the Dutch PR system, they were the largest party, but well short of a majority. Indeed, it is unlikely that they will form a government.

Housing is probably at the root of this protest vote. Housing is a principle mechanism for transferring wealth from people who create it to those that don't. This is fine if the beneficiaries are the retired etc who cannot produce wealth, however it becomes problematic when the wealth flows into the hands of the already very rich.

Not sure how someone can write an article on the shift towards more conservative politics and fail to mention that the individual income tax rate for the middle class in the Netherlands ($75k+) is nearly 50% now. And that's just the income tax. I'm sure that has something to do with the shift.

Really not. This is a protest by those who, rightly or wrongly, don't expect to ever reach that tax bracket.

> Not sure how someone can write an article on the shift towards more conservative politics and fail to mention that the individual income tax rate for the middle class in the Netherlands ($75k+) is nearly 50% now. And that's just the income tax.

Think of all the free* healthcare though.

The current elites didn't do their jobs.

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