Going Dutch

I second that.

No fucking way you’re going to get me to watch Matt “never proofread, never explain” Yglesias talking to Matthew “who the fuck is Matthew Continetti?” Continetti about baby care. Neither one of these overgrown teenagers has ever even held a baby, for chrissakes. They are little boys who have been educated to believe that every thought they have must be true because they thought it, and that the rest of us are teetering on the edge of our seats to hear them dribble their pearly pearls of wisdom down their chins (double on the left, weak on the right).

Do the still frames of these faces predict pretty much the entire content of the arguments?

Or do I have to click play?

You have to be a bit lucky with the person assigned to you (though you can ask for a replacement), but my husband and I will always be very very grateful for our first ‘kraamhulp’ (specialized after childbirth carer). Most Dutch women either have their child at home or get home a few hours after the birth and it is really nice to have someone take care of you, and teach you the tricks of childcaring (I had no idea that even dressing a baby can be done in easier ways) and help you breastfeed. She also checks the health of mother and baby, because the midwife usually only comes twice that first week.

It is not totally free though, you pay a small co-pay per hour, so not everybody opts for the help. It is also not provided by the government, but by specialized commercial institutions. The *payment* is part of government and healthcare regulations. The healthcare in the Netherlands is provided by competing insurers who have to follow the limits governments has set. Our first health-insurances pre-dated socialism; end of the 18th century commercial companies provided medicaid-like facilities for the poor masses created by the Industrial revolution – but when those institutions grew and became more competitive they developped flaws . It only became Universal health care when Hitler occupied the Netherlands and implemented the German Krankenkasse system to make it obligatory for everybody below a certain income.

Our taxes are progressive, 52% is the top. Our IRS has an English section (www.belastingdienst.nl). VAT is 6% for essentials (i.e. food), 19% for ‘luxury goods’.

In spite of what the NY Times piece says, the government doesn’t give an allotment, every employer is legally oblidged to pay 8% of the annual income in the summer (usually May). So it is more a legal obligation about *when* your wage is paid.

We bike because the Netherlands is flat and full (parking is hell). Biking in the Netherlands is a form of transport, not a sport. I’m currently searching for a dog trailer for behind my bike, which makes my English husband giggle – but he was happy to bike to work when his office was 18 km from our house, especially since his employer offered showers and lockers for people who bike to work. A while ago I came across a page made by an American sitting on an Amsterdam corner for 73 minutes, making pictures of byciclists. The funniest part for me is that I don’t understand what suprizes him since most of the things he sees are boringly normal ;)

This Anglo-Dutch bike blog really opened my eyes to what’s possible. Bikes bikes bikes!

Drezner seems to be arguing against a strawman.

Also, there already are programs in the US that send a visiting nurse/social worker/equivalent into the homes of (mostly poor, single, teenager) mothers. If we’re worried about government paternalism — which I agree is a genuine concern — the thing to do is not to critique an apparently voluntary Dutch entitlement program available to all members of society, but to ask why this “open, vibrant” US society is sending meddling social workers into the lives of young, disproportionately minority women.

As an immigrant into Dutch society, and a man who acquired a new-born here, I found the kraamzorg to be a very wonderful thing. If it compromised my Anglo-Saxon vibrancy (and I’m not sure it did, or that I had much to start with) it was a price well worth paying.

We did also have a grandmother in residence for the first few days, as it happens, but the kraamzorgers (we had two, although not simultaneously) were still immensely valuable at teaching us the current state of the art in neonate wrangling, politely but firmly showing visitors the door when their time was up, sending the mother to bed, cleaning, making sandwhiches and giving pharmacists some much-needed grief about the necessity of providing medication (for the mother) in a timely fashion.

(Of course, I share with previous commentators a deep and abiding indifference to your interlocuters’ opinions on these matters, and I have neglected to expose myself to them. Besides the cricket is on, so my audiostream is spoken for.)

Meanwhile, Shorto’s article was finally published in translation in this weekend’s NRC Handelsbad, but I can’t say I found it any the more persuasive for being in Dutch. (It’s a shame the NRC no longer seems to have a column from the FT’s Dutch-raised Simon Kuper; I’d ‘ve liked to see him respond, for sure.)

I haven’t seen the videos (I don’t like bloggingheads either), but generally, I agree with Witt. The social-work ethos in the US is affected by the race situation here, as “the poor” tend to be equated with “African-Americans”–though 100+ years ago, as I understand it, similarly to the case in England, “the poor” were largely Catholic, with about the same dynamic. The idea is to raise the putatively uneducated to a middle-class standard. In Europe, where the population is generally homogeneous, contempt for the poor is less of an issue, as they’re seen as effectively members of the family. (So the theory goes. I suppose the fact that tradition still plays a large role in Europe, where people still live not so very far from where their ancestors going back generations did, also causes this not to be seen as an issue.) It’s not totally unreasonable for people to fear their individual ways of doing things will be seen as “uneducated” by professionals trained to recognize that dichotomy.

by the way, we’ve discussed the system of Kraamzorg and welfare state arrangements for newborns/parents in the Netherlands here before:
https://crookedtimber.org/2008/02/06/maternity-nurses-in-the-uk/
and
https://crookedtimber.org/2008/01/03/2-weeks-of-birthleave-for-fathers/

Biking in the Netherlands is a form of transport, not a sport.

Indeed. As someone who biked for fifteen years (albeit nearly a decade in the City of Dreaming Spires and Double-Locked Bikes, where it’s necessary) it pains me to see people who are compelled to cart bikes to “good cycling roads” on the back of cars and SUVs. But bakfietsen are fantastic.

I thought that Continetti’s time as American Tory Boy ran out a few years ago. More fool me. He’s still clueless, though.

Looking at that second screencap again, I think John and Belle should dress up as Matt #1 and Matt #2 and record their own bloggingheads episode.

You really really couldn’t find a woman who might have been interested in joining in this discussion? Really? Or just didn’t think of it? How very typically disappointing.

Also, I have to agree with Katherine and emjaybee; it seems an odd oversight that there are no women discussing the program.

I’m not clicking the video links, but anybody who argues against a program like this is a moron. Especially in the U.S. where we find our families scattered over a much larger geography than Europe. I have 4 kids and the want-to-be-helpful grandparents lived at distances ranging from 400 to 3000 miles at the births.

I’m intimately familiar with the terror of harming your newborn (fades after the first few kids, fwiw), the challenges of getting breast feeding going, mom and dad figuring out how to split sleep schedules, the practicalities of bathing, changing. Also sometimes there are postnatal issues that need monitoring — my kids all had transient post-natal jaundice, other babies need careful weight monitoring, colic, etc.

Honestly, it’s great when grandma helps out, but not all families actually want grandma living in the house. Not all grandmas want to be quite that immersed in baby care either. A home health aide who comes in for a fixed period on a schedule and then leaves, or can even be fired or sent away if there’s a personality conflict, sounds pretty freaking ideal.

I’m pretty sure I pay pretty close to 52% in initial income tax rate already, too. IRS rate + payroll (don’t forget the employer contribution, that’s coming out of your pay too) + state/city/county + property taxes. And I have full “health care coverage” as a university professor that actually sucks. We’re being forced once again to randomly change doctors even while in the midst of treatment because the HMO is pushing doctors off their rolls again.

You should also have seen those bills for both the hospital and emergency room care for the jaundice versus the home health care we knew to insist on for the later babies. But there’s nobody who’s thought carefully about health care for more than 30m who doesn’t understand that particular piece of idiocy about our current health care system.

Some notes I made while watching Henry and Dan ‘debate’:

Henry – assumes a causal relationship from a higher welfare state prop. of GDP and a ‘less vibrant’ economy. Ignores several factors, including that Holland is doing rather well, considering that their only resource is people (the USA lives on a vast continental-scale resource and power base).

Daniel – ‘shudders at the idea of somebody coming in and telling them how to heat their formula’. Doesn’t understand the idea of ‘optional’.

Henry – points out that Holland’s system is much better for people in the bottom 50%; ignores the idea that that might be rather important. Later, does pick up on the idea that, since most travel from the USA involves people from the upper half (third?) of the USA income distribution, that USA travelers might have a distorted view.

Daniel – again, assumes ‘vibrancy’ is being causally traded off.

The Dutch system of post-birth care seems to be much more ambitious than the Danish where you (i.e. mothers who have given birth) “only” get two visits from a midwife and two from a nurse (sundhedsplejerske, for those who want to google that). This goes back to the 1930s, btw.

Considering that we Scandinavians tend to see the Dutch as being pretty traditional familywise, that’s a bit interesting.

Ingrid, in reading your response it struck me: I never saw my being Flemish as an etnicity! Now I can understand better my co-etnicians. The chaos is still there and it’s a distinctive non-ethnic thing. As long as we are happily chaotic, Belgium exists ;-) Yes, why not?, we’re fighting the war on being over-organized! By the way: in the match of creepy extremists Flanders was ahead by a mile or so just to be beaten on the finish line by Holland, yet again ;-(

Henry,

I don’t understand this:

so much as a general openness to opportunities, diverse and interesting culture etc, which I think is present in the US but not so much in the continental European states that I have lived in (Germany, Belgium, Italy).

I never actually lived in the US but was there for a good third of my time during 4 or 5 years. As far as I can see you rather compare urban vs. rural cultures (where do/did you live?). Maybe on the score of opportunities there’s something in what you say – continental Europe does not have the ambition the US has (which is a good and a bad thing because ambition has good and has bad aspects). But on the other 2 scores: no, I don’t think that’s true but am interested in you going in a bit more detail – maybe you’re right, maybe there is a sense in which Europeans are financially more egalitarian but less diverse in their everyday encounters.

Barry, numbers like that can be highly misleading. They represent, in the Dutch case, mostly imports that are directly exported again, to Germany mostly, and the rest of the EU too. If you pick a 17 million inhabitants-sized part of the US that contains a major seaport, you’ll easily find that it “exports” similar amounts to the rest of the US.

The question is: do contacts with other Europeans count as international, or as the equivalent of large distance contacts within the US. The truth will lie somewhere between those, but I find that American tend to see the EU as a sort of badly functioning US, and count intra-EU contacts relatively more as “national”, while Europeans themselves consider the other parts of it very much as other countries.