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The PVV is just a populist party, they pretty much say what they think people would like to hear. They have no real plans, they're basically Dutch Trump but fortunately it's not gotten quite that bad over here yet.
I really wish the election threshold would be raised a bit btw, there are so many parties which makes forming a coalition really difficult. For instance Groen Links, D66 and the Dierenpartij are all center left liberal parties. They could form something like "De Groene Democraten" for instance.
A healthy situation in my view would be the to have the following parties to choose from:
-(PVV: "Extreme right" populist nonsense. Rather not have it but I guess it serves some purposes. I just wish this role would be played by a more sensible party. The murder of Fortuyn certainly made matters worse..)
-VVD: Right. Liberals. They are not really conservative btw, on "Christian issues" I mean.
-CDA: Center. Christian Democrats. Moderate conservatives.
-My Groene Democraten  :Center left. With both liberal and some socialist views. Focus on environment and education.
-PvdA: Left. Social democrats
-CU: Left. Actual christians as in their bible contains the new testament. Conservative.
-SP: "Far" left. They should keep the PvdA honest (keep them on the left).
And some others like pirates for instance but not as many as now I'd prefer.
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Not on Christian issues but the VVD is conservative on immigration, security, justice and those kind of things.
I don't like the green democrat idea at all. The only reason D66 is palatable to me is that they're centre or only a little left at most economically. I'd be forced to vote VVD if they fused. The animal party will hardly want to fuse anyway since the reason they started is because they felt like GL didn't care about animal welfare enough.
I understand your argument that we have too many parties but I prefer the way it is now. At least you have the ability to vote for the party you agree with most instead of being forced to vote for a party where you don't agree with half.of their points. It also gives small single.issue parties a way to influence policy they would not have if they weren't in parliament. Even though I am no fan of the animal party at least this way their voice will be heard.
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What I'm most concerned about is having a country that can be governed. Even if an unlikely coalition, born out of necessity, right wing liberals and social democrats, lead the first stable government since the early 2000's people somehow are dissatisfied again and punish them in the following elections. And things are even worse this election than the last.
Historically D66 and Groen Links have always been about the same economically, the "left" in their name doesn't make them more leftist than D66. This does ofc vary a little with different leaderships. I don't think Van Mierlo would completely approve of the current one tbh. Getting rid of the basisbeurs (scholarship) while one of your main focuses is education, ugh..
I do like the idea of having the ability to have new, one issue or not, parties. Like I said, I don't want to get rid of that at all but it should be made more difficult to enter the political arena because they're just too many as of now and it's getting worse each time.
More importantly though, on the issue of impossible coalitions, it would help if people would invest more in trying to understand what actual ideologies stand for and how they came to be, what is liberalism, what are social democrats etc.
One thing that bugs me for instance is that the VVD didn't get punished for the financial crisis while they are, ideologically, the most in favor for policies that led to the near total breakdown of the system (they're of course not solely responsible). But no, let's make them the biggest party since because they posture to be the sensible alternative for the PVV. Xenophobia yay..
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You have no idea, take a look at their god
+ Show Spoiler +
But seriously though, they actually have reasonably well thought out policies apart from their main focus of reforming/ abolishing factory farming eradicating the human race.
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On March 03 2017 18:41 Penev wrote:
What I'm most concerned about is having a country that can be governed. Even if an unlikely coalition, born out of necessity, right wing liberals and social democrats, lead the first stable government since the early 2000's people somehow are dissatisfied again and punish them in the following elections. And things are even worse this election than the last.
Historically D66 and Groen Links have always been about the same economically, the "left" in their name doesn't make them more leftist than D66. This does ofc vary a little with different leaderships. I don't think Van Mierlo would completely approve of the current one tbh. Getting rid of the basisbeurs (scholarship) while one of your main focuses is education, ugh..
I do like the idea of having the ability to have new, one issue or not, parties. Like I said, I don't want to get rid of that at all but it should be made more difficult to enter the political arena because they're just too many as of now and it's getting worse each time.
More importantly though, on the issue of impossible coalitions, it would help if people would invest more in trying to understand what actual ideologies stand for and how they came to be, what is liberalism, what are social democrats etc.
One thing that bugs me for instance is that the VVD didn't get punished for the financial crisis while they are, ideologically, the most in favor for policies that led to the near total breakdown of the system (they're of course not solely responsible). But no, let's make them the biggest party since because they posture to be the sensible alternative for the PVV. Xenophobia yay..
But is that due to it being a 2 party coalition? I don't think so. We've had 2-3 party coalitions for most of our history and a majority of them collapsed. I share your concern of an unstable 5-6 party coalition but I prefer it over a treshold and less choice. It's up to the current parties to convince more people to vote for them instead of arbitrarily locking some parties out with a treshold.
I'm just going to disagree with your second point. I find D66 less left economically than Groenlinks. It's also partly due to their focus of government investment. Education is one of the few areas where even a lot of liberals feel government investment is justified. Sustainable growth / green energy not so much. Most liberals would argue for a simply carbon tax instead.
I agree that people should invest more in trying to understand ideologies but I don't think your conclusions follow at all. The causes of the financial crisis are still hugely debated and it being caused by a liberal ideology is your personal conclusion. I (and many with me) would argue that's certainly not the case.
If you're talking about The Netherlands specifically it's not true at all. Our crisis was caused in the housing market and due to excessive housing regulation (which has led to a shortage of houses for decades) and the mortgage interest rate reduction. A liberal would ease restrictions on building houses and abolish the mortgage interest rate reduction since it's a huge subsidy. The VVD was indeed in favour of keeping it but it wasn't much debated before the crisis anyway so I don't think it's fair to blame the VVD for that.
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On March 03 2017 20:31 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2017 18:41 Penev wrote:
What I'm most concerned about is having a country that can be governed. Even if an unlikely coalition, born out of necessity, right wing liberals and social democrats, lead the first stable government since the early 2000's people somehow are dissatisfied again and punish them in the following elections. And things are even worse this election than the last.
Historically D66 and Groen Links have always been about the same economically, the "left" in their name doesn't make them more leftist than D66. This does ofc vary a little with different leaderships. I don't think Van Mierlo would completely approve of the current one tbh. Getting rid of the basisbeurs (scholarship) while one of your main focuses is education, ugh..
I do like the idea of having the ability to have new, one issue or not, parties. Like I said, I don't want to get rid of that at all but it should be made more difficult to enter the political arena because they're just too many as of now and it's getting worse each time.
More importantly though, on the issue of impossible coalitions, it would help if people would invest more in trying to understand what actual ideologies stand for and how they came to be, what is liberalism, what are social democrats etc.
One thing that bugs me for instance is that the VVD didn't get punished for the financial crisis while they are, ideologically, the most in favor for policies that led to the near total breakdown of the system (they're of course not solely responsible). But no, let's make them the biggest party since because they posture to be the sensible alternative for the PVV. Xenophobia yay..
But is that due to it being a 2 party coalition? I don't think so. We've had 2-3 party coalitions for most of our history and a majority of them collapsed. I share your concern of an unstable 5-6 party coalition but I prefer it over a treshold and less choice. It's up to the current parties to convince more people to vote for them instead of arbitrarily locking some parties out with a treshold. I'm just going to disagree with your second point. I find D66 less left economically than Groenlinks. It's also partly due to their focus of government investment. Education is one of the few areas where even a lot of liberals feel government investment is justified. Sustainable growth / green energy not so much. Most liberals would argue for a simply carbon tax instead. I agree that people should invest more in trying to understand ideologies but I don't think your conclusions follow at all. The causes of the financial crisis are still hugely debated and it being caused by a liberal ideology is your personal conclusion. I (and many with me) would argue that's certainly not the case. If you're talking about The Netherlands specifically it's not true at all. Our crisis was caused in the housing market and due to excessive housing regulation (which has led to a shortage of houses for decades) and the mortgage interest rate reduction. A liberal would ease restrictions on building houses and abolish the mortgage interest rate reduction since it's a huge subsidy. The VVD was indeed in favour of keeping it but it wasn't much debated before the crisis anyway so I don't think it's fair to blame the VVD for that.
Of course, 3 party coalitions are fine, as they have proven in the past. They've only really started collapsing since Fortuyn, the rise of populism in the Netherlands. Before 2000 Dutch governments have been very stable for the most part. It's obv. the jumble of smaller parties we have now that I'm worried about.
Caring about the environment isn't necessarily a left wing thing, although today's green parties mostly are. It's totally feasible to have have a right wing party with a pro environment agenda. Don't forget it was the PVV that made the animal police possible and did you know a lot of animal protection laws in Germany originate from the nazi's? In times before when workers right's existed it was the rich who cared about nature because they were the ones being able to appreciate it. The poor working class, the left, didn't care at all because they were too busy staying alive.
Another thing that is often wrongly assumed to be a typical left thing is being lenient on immigration. In the 80's the SP, the most left option to choose in the Netherlands, proposed to have immigrants to be forced to be spread over the country to avoid ghetto's from forming. They were, as was tradition in those days :p, immediately accused of racism by both the left and right.
The Netherlands never had it's own crisis. The financial crisis, the one that affected the whole world, was caused by complicated financial constructs made to make as much profit as possible from unbacked mortgages in the US. This was possible due to deregulation of the financial sector by Thatcher and Reagan who removed much of what was put in place after the big depression. Btw if you'd like to read about the financial crisis I recommend "Dit kan niet waar zijn" (This can't be true) from Joris Luyendijk, it's an antropologic view of the London City he studied, working for the Guardian. All mayor economists agree about how this crisis started btw, and they all agree that it's very likely to happen again because very little has changed since the last one.
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That's not true. Most of our governments fell before the next elections. The coalitions in the 80's and 90s were pretty stable but even those usually did not last the full term.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_kabinetten_sinds_de_Tweede_Wereldoorlog
But the way they do it is. Like I said a carbon tax is caring about the environment too but not necessarily left wing. The way Groenlinks does it obviously is left wing though. Your example of the PVV isn't very useful. The PVV has multiple economically (populist) left wing points in their programme like retirement age back to 65 and no more deductible for health insurance. The PVV being for or against something doesn't make it left or right wing.
Yes the left isn't always for immigration. Esecially towards the fringes they often get back into an anti immigrant stance. The SP had also proposed a hotline for problems with Polish people before the PVV did.
That's just dead wrong. The housing crash in The Netherlands was caused by our own policy. The mortgage interest rate reduction made it attractive for people to get as high a mortgage as possible. That coupled with the fact that we've had an undersupply of houses for years put a massive bubble on the market. The credit crisis was the exogenous shock that popped the bubble but the bubble was inflated due to our own policy.
No not all major economists agree on it. Keynesian economists and journalists for the Guardian might agree but that's not the whole spectrum of economists. I'm not really interested in going into an argument about the financial crisis but it's causes are not as clear cut as you make them seem. You're also wrong that not a lot has changed. In fact there has been a shitload of new regulation and capital requirements. Look up Basel 3 and 4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III
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I didn't say it's left or right, the point that I was trying to make is the same as yours, that it isn't left or right (actually not the biggest fan of the terms btw).
We are talking about different things here, I'm obviously talking about the financial crisis that hit the world in 2008. When Wouter Bos had to invest vast amounts of cash into the banks so they wouldn't fall. I never mentioned people not being able to buy houses but I'll add to what you're saying (I'm not necessarily disagreeing with what you've said about the matter, mortgage interest rate reduction and all that): A big reason for people not being able to buy houses was because the banks didn't provide mortgages to people due to more strict rules and unwillingness to take risk plus people having less to spend both due to.. the credit crisis.
And I know there has been some regulation been put in (see above paragraph for example) but a lot of the proposed regulation didn't get through.
Just to make sure though: You don't really think that if the 2008 financial crisis didn't happen the Netherlands would have had a mayor crisis anyway? Because that's not true for sure.
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I don't like the terms that much either. Using such broad terms has its fair share of problems. As you pointed out both the far left and right can be anti immigration so where does it really fall?
Yes I get that you're talking about the global financial crisis. I'm just disputing the fact that the liberal ideology is the thing that caused it and that they should thus be punished for it election wise.
Yes we would've had a major crisis anyway. It wouldn't have been in 2008/2009 but it would've happened later if the structural weaknesses wouldn't be solved(how far into the future is anyone's guess). The financial crisis is the shock that popped the bubble. THe bubble was building decades before that. Our housing market suffered (and to an extent is still suffering) from some fundamental weaknesses like a lack of supply, high loan to value mortgages (so mortgages which are very high compared to the price of the house) etc. As long as those aren't fixed you're looking at a next economic crisis right there.
Of course it doesn't mean it'd be as severe an economic shock. The 2008/2009 crisis is truely exceptional in that regard but I don't doubt that we'd have walked against this problem one time or another.
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Yeah
Nice discussion I must say, I think the sum of both of the points we brought up paint a pretty complete picture. It's also funny to notice we aren't actually far apart voting wise even though we chose to address topics on somewhat opposite sides of the spectrum. We both might end up voting D66 (still not happy about the scholarship thing tho).
Muricans should take note (;
Edit: One more thing though; It's actually the VVD that has been the biggest obstacle to remove the tax reduction on mortgage interest historically.
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Yeah it's insanely hypocritical for the VVD to be for the interest rate reduction. For a party which is supposedly liberal and pro market they're fine with huge interventionism by the state in the housing market. The more left parties are right to want reduce it. It's not only bad for the housing market it's also very regressive. The rich benefit way more from it. It's actually one of the things which made me decide not to go for the VVD.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://faustusnotes.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/beastman.jpg)
