Politics and Elections in the Netherlands: coalition agreement presented

[Zinneke]

It's not a mere technicality. You are posting a flawed list (also containing non-crimes such as "denial of the Armenian genocide") and presenting it as if these are all convictions: "PVVers [sic] (...) have an entire list of candidates with various crimes." Then you act all pissy when called out on the fact that some items on the list are mere allegations, which undermines your implicit claim that all items on the list are convictions.

I am not at all "outraged" over what happened in the SP. I am not surprised. And I don't even dislike the SP that much politically. I found it an interesting story, relevant to shed light on in this thread. Are you ever going to contribute anything here, or would you rather continue to be the annoying parasite of the thread, living off better posters' content and responding to it with falsehoods and non-info as you have been doing for years?

Did you not understand I was giving you the benefit of the doubt so we could move on. OK I will spell it out for you : you are right, some are crimes, some are allegations. You posted allegations so I assumed we were discussing this subject, as well as crimes. You are right, David, not all of them are crimes. EDIT : oh and I still think Armenian Genocide denial is something worth reporting on extensively more.

You can remove my posts by hitting the ignore button in the top right btw.

[Zinneke]

Something else leaked:

The next Dutch government might implement a "social flat tax". Everyone would pay a 35% tax rate, but high-earners (I guess the threshold will be something like 70k) will pay an extra surcharge of 10-13% (the surcharge wouldn't take deductions into account). Currently there are 3 (officially 4) tax rates: 36% (first 20k), 41% (20k-65k) and 52% (65k+). Marginal tax rates are criminally high here, I really doubt there is any incentive to work more if you're a renter earning 25k and don't have any young children. The marginal income tax rate already is high (41%), but if you add all phase-outs for tax credits and means-tested benefits that rate gets really high. So I'd personally support the social "flat tax" (it also would include slashing deductions, so overall the tax code would be simplified which is really necessary).

Sylvester Eijffinger (professor at my university ) has strongly supported a simplified tax system with 1 rate and a surcharge for years. CDA and to a lesser extent the CU also have been pushing for this for years, since almost everyone would pay just the 35% rate (and even the ones who pay the surcharge only can deduct to the 35% rate) the tax code wouldn't distort choices made by families as much as it currently does. But the problem is that hard choices would have to be made if you want to reduce income tax rates by that much, so it's still very possible to push for tax reform fails in the end.

On the subject of tax reform, I saw your post about deregulating the housing market in the Netherlands on the Economics board and I was wondering if the subsidy or hand-back to landlords still exists, as well as the cap on the amount of housing they can provide, given the major housing crisis/bubble in the big cities? Would you be in favour of scrapping this? Would the VVD, or more realistically, D66, ever lobby for this?

[Zinneke]

mvd, given that previous governments have been sensitive to foreign policy decisions, are there any that you think might cause a rift?

[Zinneke]

I didn't see his debate with Wilders but Asscher completely blew the first debate, which was his chance given it had the 4 other parties that were competing for his electoral share. His 1 vs 1 with Bruma was so strange.

[Zinneke]

Why is FvD doing well in the polls?

Josse de Voogd did write an article about VNL (and to a lesser extent FvD):

https://www.trouw.nl/democratie/nieuw-rechts-voor-wie-minder-minder-te-ver-gaat~a5b478df/?

(I believe it's behind a paywall though).

On twitter he wrote this:

https://twitter.com/jossedevoogd/status/880786181751005184

For non-Dutch speaking people (do any non-Dutch speaking people read this anymore ?): He writes that his prediction of the FvD electorate was reasonably correct. FvD scored well in wealthy LPF (Fortuyn's party) municipalities. Upmarket populism like he says. The FvD is like a wing of the PVV, but the wing that currently dominates the PVV is the southern Catholic more economically leftist wing (overlaps witht the SP electorate), and the FvD electorate doesn't really feel at ease there. FvD still does quite well in Limburg though.

Read from then on.

I would probably add now the anti-political sentiment that these negotiations provoked.

[Zinneke]

The youth wing of the CDA criticized the coalition agreement and said that they won't support the coalition unless student loans are replaced with study grants (like we used to have). CDJA said that it's unacceptable that foreign investors get a 1.5 billion tax cut through the repeal of the dividend tax while students have to take out huge loans to pay for their tuition.

[rant]Since the next coalition will increase spending by a huge amount (8 billion euros, which is more than the planned tax cut) I think it makes more sense to slow down those huge spending increases instead of not repealing a horribly inefficient (and probably illegal) tax, especially if you are a member of a party that ferociously opposed a left-wing coalition. But that's just my neoliberal opinion.[/rant]

Anyway, it does surprise me how this coalition manages to splurge 14 billion euros (!) while still pissing off a lot of people by not fulfilling their election promises. It's just never enough .

During the "leaks" it was said that the tuition fee would be cut to around 1 grand for the first year, which sounds like a fair policy given its the most important year and after that you can work part time without as much stress. What happened to this?

[rant] Also, Bruma repeatedly said during the election that the Bachelor grant would be made free again. Surely with D66 they could have forced VVD's hand? And now they write open letters to Henk Kroll about how they are defending the boomer generation!

tsjeven...[/rant]