

Going Dutch, Not So Fast - aahendriksen
http://www.nrc.nl/international/opinion/article2248923.ece/Going_Dutch_Not_So_Fast!_
A rebuttal to Russel Shorto's NYT article "Going Dutch" by a Dutch Columnist living in NY.
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lucumo
This article came up in another thread, let me repeat what I've said there,
because this article is inaccurate:

The 20 USD/h sounded like a bit much, so I did a check on that number.
According to a site about wages by the largest Dutch union, the minimum wage
for a 40 hour workweek is 1491.70 EUR/month. That comes down to about 8.61
EUR/h or (current FX on Yahoo) 12.06 USD/h. It may be higher if a union
negotiated more for a certain sector, but in general, 12.06 USD/h is the
minimum wage.

It seems like Ms. Mees is exaggerating a bit to make her point.

Another inaccuracy in her article surfaces when she refers to the polls that
say that Wilders' party is currently leading. The polls she is referring to
suffer from severe selection bias. People sign up to be part of the panel that
gets polled. Since Wilders' supporters are mostly disgruntled with current
political affairs, it seems very likely that they are overrepresented in those
polls.

I don't think she was aware of that though. These polls are done weekly and
generally get some press (sad but true), mostly without any critical note (or
any note at all) about the methodology (even sadder). [Wilders may very well
gain quite a following, but it's not evident from those polls.]

( Original here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624823> )

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russell
Mees's is a typical blog. Pick a couple of items from a thoughtful article and
rant on. You should read Shorto's article too.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html?_r=1&em)

Her first point of contention is that the Dutch tax rate is 52% and that is
unamerican. The average aggregate tax rate for Americans is about 31%. If you
add in health insurance, employersponsored or otherwise, the "tax" is probably
in the 40-45% range.

The Dutch have a lot of silly automatic benefits payments like a book
allowance for children and a vacation expense allowance in addition to paid
vacations. If you remove those, I suspect that there isn't a huge difference
in tax rates, maybe less than 10%.

Mees devotes half her post to proving that the Netherlands isn't crime free by
listing immigrant committed crimes that were so egregious that they made the
news here. Case not proven.

