Merijn Oudenampsen

Holland isn’t a country, it’s a business at best, the French author Houellebecq wrote in his bleak 2019 novel Serotonin. Internationally, the Netherlands has a reputation as a frugal nation. Yet this is a rather recent development. In the sixties and seventies, Dutch politicians built one of Europe’s most generous welfare states with high wages, a large social housing stock...