Wanna go Dutch?

In the interest of intercultural education, I wanted to share a great article from the New York Times Magazine that not only gives an American take on Amsterdam and life in the Netherlands, but that also presents social welfare from a very different perspective than the "They're trying to make us all socialists!"-type paranoia emanating from most conservative politicians and pundits throughout the last few months. From contributing writer Russell Shorto, "Going Dutch: How I Learned to Love the European Welfare State" is a study in contrasts - mostly those between the Dutch perspective on what it means to be a member of society, and the American.

There are two main questions Shorto answered from both the Dutch and the American perspective in his article, whether he intended to or not:

1. What about quality of life?
2. What about everybody else?

Number 1 is a question taken very seriously by citizens of welfare states, with mandatory vacation minimums and a culture that isn't centered around work. The monetary price the Dutch pay for a society that considers this question is one that would make any American jaw drop in sheer terror: the income tax in the Netherlands is 52%.

Shorto opens with his horror upon hearing this number, and after briefly trying to calculate whether or not I could pay my rent and still afford to eat on 48% of my current salary, I was in complete sympathy with him.

Actually, Shorto continues, it's not so bad. (What?!) Because income tax is one of the only taxes the Dutch pay. Social security is included rather than tacked on, state and local taxes don't exist, real estate taxes are much lower, etc. Not only that, but you get a heck of a lot of that 52% back in installments for various things from the government (not to mention the virtually free health care): child benefits, textbook accommodations, government-subsidized housing that carries none of the stigma it does in the U.S., vacation money. Wait, vacation money? Yup. Shorto says:

In late May of last year an unexpected $4,265 arrived in my account: vakantiegeld. Vacation money. This money materializes in the bank accounts of virtually everyone in the country just before the summer holidays; you get from your employer an amount totaling 8 percent of your annual salary, which is meant to cover plane tickets, surfing lessons, tapas: vacations. And we aren’t talking about a mere “paid vacation” — this is on top of the salary you continue to receive during the weeks you’re off skydiving or snorkeling. And by law every employer is required to give a minimum of four weeks’ vacation. For that matter, even if you are unemployed you still receive a base amount of vakantiegeld from the government, the reasoning being that if you can’t go on vacation, you’ll get depressed and despondent and you’ll never get a job.

And that's exactly the sort of quality-of-life issue that American society essentially ignores, expecting everyone to create the type of life that suits them best for themselves. The thing is, we don't. We can't, if we want to first make a good impression, then move up, in our chosen fields. I'm not saying I think the government should pay me to go lie on a beach, but in the U.S., the reward for time put in and a job well done is more work. And that kind of live-to-work attitude is a problem.

People with lower salaries may feel less obliged to stay at their desks after standard office hours than those making six or seven figures after bonuses, but the pressure to work increasingly harder in order to continue to prove oneself is society-wide in white-collar jobs. Being a workaholic is fine - if it's what you want to do. When it becomes so much the norm that no one blinks when junior staffers who barely make enough money to eat regularly work through lunch, check work email from home and have stress levels that are through the roof, something is seriously out of whack.

According to Shorto, the professional mentality that goes along with enforced vacation time and not checking email from home on the weekends isn't lax in comparison to ours - instead, the time away from the office (and all office-associated issues) seems to keep people noticeably more fresh, focused and productive when they're actually in the office. Food for thought, don't you think?

Next up, number 2, "What about everybody else?"

The vacation pay example given by Shorto is the sort of thing that Americans love to rail against in social welfare systems, saying it's ridiculous, encourages laziness and forces the hard workers to pay the "idle poor" to sit around and be unemployed. We're a work-oriented culture of do-it-yourselfers (Can you think of another country where the translated equivalent of "DIY" would make any sense at all?), and we hate thinking our hard work is helping someone else get ahead when we never feel like it's gotten us far enough ahead to relax.

But does it really matter who else the money generated by our work is helping, as long as we have what we need (and some of what we want)? Yeah, it grates against the American work ethic and sense of fair-play. Then again, how fair is it that affordable insurance, and therefore basic health care, is inaccessible to somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million Americans (that's more than six times the population of New York City, by the way)? Or that the vast majority of our public schools don't even begin to adequately educate our children, and the cost of a decent education has been sky-rocketing for decades? If we had a solid education system and health care that worked, I sincerely doubt I'd spend much time worrying about how many single mothers were receiving welfare benefits from my taxes.

Socially, the American system becomes more inadequate every year, which is laughable for a society that's widely considered the epitome of a developed country. We don't need to turn socialist - the Netherlands has a long history of capitalism (the Dutch East India Company, anyone?) - to support our citizens with effective social welfare programs that address basic rights and needs. Welfare, at its most elemental level, is intended to make sure that people are faring well. And isn't it one of the most fundamental responsibilities of a government to take care of its people?

So what about quality of life? Well, I'd like a better one on several levels, with universal health care, public education and Social Security leading the pack. And what about everyone else? I see no reason my work and income can't benefit society in general as long as my family and I aren't lacking for anything ourselves.

No, we shouldn't adopt the Netherlands' or France's or the United Kingdom's social welfare system as a whole - we're a different country, with a government that functions differently and a population that needs different things. But I think the country that showed the modern world how to make the democratic republic work can figure out how to establish a safety net of social welfare programs for its citizens without compromising its national character. Don't you?