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.]
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.
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 )