SwiftVets.com

[Hammer2]

We all know that Kerry and the Democrats have advocated European style Socialism for decades.
America is always derided as backward, compared to our more enlightened cousins overseas.

Here is a delightful article that describes the problems of having such a Euro-Utopia:

http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=541372.html

Hey, look! A strike in Holland!
Thomas Fuller/IHT
Friday, October 01, 2004

AMSTERDAM Hans Thysebaard, a 34-year-old Dutch firefighter, spends his days cutting people loose from crashed cars, spraying down burning buildings and diving into frigid canals when cars veer off the road.

The work is physically demanding - broken knees and ankles are common, he said - and emotionally trying. He can't forget the day last March when a 21-year-old victim of a car accident died in his arms. "That's mentally very tough," he said.

Now, Thysebaard has joined the ranks of the angry in a country better known for its even-temperedness.

With a yellow badge proclaiming "The Netherlands can do better" pinned to his black fireman's jacket, he joined an antigovernment rally this week to protest plans to have firefighters retire at 65 rather than 55, the current practice.

Port workers, garbagemen, airport employees, ambulance drivers and tram operators have also taken part in strikes and demonstrations during the past few weeks as ill humor has built over a wide-ranging package of changes that the government says are necessary to get the Dutch economy growing again and to prepare for an aging society.

The protests will climax Saturday, when unions expect at least 100,000 people to congregate in Amsterdam in what could be one of the largest antigovernment demonstrations in recent Dutch history.

The changes proposed by the government, and the reaction of unions and workers, are familiar in Europe.

Faced with an aging population, creaking health care systems and a swelling tide of red ink, leaders have vowed to cut taxes and government spending and make it harder for people to get unemployment and disability benefits.

What is different in the Netherlands is that the Dutch are not the striking type.

Over the past decade an average of 19 days per 1,000 employees has been lost to strikes in the Netherlands, fewer than half the level of the United States and one-sixth the level of Italy.

Economists say it is a measure of the deep resistance to the changes sought across the Continent that even the Dutch are now hitting the streets.

In the Netherlands, "There are major differences on how the modern welfare state should operate," said Paul de Beer, a professor of labor relations at the University of Amsterdam.

The rightist governing coalition says the traditional Dutch system of collective bargaining and social consensus is not suitable for a more competitive world.

"One of the guiding principles of this cabinet is that people should be more responsible for their own lives," said William Lelieveldt, spokesman for the Finance Ministry.

Lelieveldt said the government realized the changes would cause hardship, but added: "Obviously there is no reform without the pain it causes in society."

Angry workers say this is not the "Dutch way."

"The Dutch way is to take care of people who have less," said Gerard Admiraal, an emergency services worker who attended a protest at Schiphol airport Tuesday.

"This government wants everybody to take care of themselves," Admiraal said. "Only the rich can do that."

During the 1990s, economists praised the Dutch system of consensus between workers and employers, which was dubbed the Polder model, a reference to the country's low-lying land recovered from the sea - and an image that evokes the huge collective efforts to build the dikes that keep the seawater away.

Under the Polder model, the Netherlands was described as an economic miracle in Europe, with unemployment dipping to near 2 percent and economic growth consistently higher than its neighbors.

But two years ago the Dutch economy began to crash. Growth today is below zero and the government is borrowing heavily to pay for its deficit - which at 3.2 percent of gross domestic product last year violated the European Union's rules.

Last week, the Dutch finance minister, Gerrit Zalm, said the Polder model was no longer appropriate for the Netherlands.

"No substantial change in social security and social insurance ever happened in the polder model - only in a conflict situation," Zalm told Reuters.

Zalm is leading efforts to get the new laws through Parliament because the prime minister, Peter Balkenende, has what doctors describe as a serious foot infection, a symbol, some Dutch say, that the country is walking with a limp.

Using its slim majority - 77 of the 150 seats in Parliament - the government is striking at the very heart of the consensus system.

Among the measures it is proposing is a law that would make it no longer mandatory for collective wage agreements to apply to all employees in a given sector.

The move will not have significant immediate consequences - experts estimate that only 8 percent of workers fall outside of collective agreements - but it has enraged the Dutch unions.

"This is a declaration of war," said Lodewijk de Waal, president of the Netherlands' largest trade union federation, FNV.

"They did it to punish us, more or less," he said in an interview. "It fits into a system in which they say that in general people in the Netherlands are lazy, are inclined to live off benefits, and that they work less than others."

One of the sorest points is the government's plan to withdraw tax breaks for people saving for early retirement in an effort to push back the retirement age.

De Waal said that if the government did not back down on this issue after Saturday, he would propose a series of work stoppages or strikes in various sectors of the economy. Another option would be to call a referendum to challenge the changes.

De Waal added that he was puzzled as to why the government was insisting on the question of early retirement because the Dutch had reformed the system during the 1990s and much of it is individually financed: Workers pay contributions for their own early retirements.

De Beer, the professor, agrees with this. "In some respects the Dutch welfare state is less vulnerable than other European countries," he said.

But the government has the backing of the country's employer's federation, VNO-NCW, which says that the Dutch need to work longer in life as the society ages.

Jacques Schraven, the head of the federation, said he believed that the country's leaders would "stick to their guns," and criticized the unions for an attitude that he said amounted to living in the past.

"Their strategy is that gains achieved in the past, protection, early retirement, need to be maintained or only changed marginally," Schraven said in an interview.

The government plans to abolish unemployment benefits for people who have not worked four of the past five years, and offer instead a welfare payment of E1,098, or $1,350, per month for a family or E550 for a single person. This would replace a system in which unemployed people receive a check that is 70 percent of the value of their last paycheck.

For an average wage earner this amounts to about E2,500.

However, said Thysebaard, the firefighter, "Money is not the issue." He is more concerned with a healthy retirement.

"In our line of work people who retire at 55 with 100 percent of their health - there aren't that many," he said.

International Herald Tribune



Copyright © 2004 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
_________________
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
"An armed society is a polite society" - Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won't be needed until someone tries to take it away." -- Thomas Jefferson

[Nathanyl]

I'll tell you what. If you want to start understanding the problems in Europe this is a great article to begin with.
_________________
Bill Hershey
www.worldwar4.net