...Soup kitchens and bread lines seem out of place in this affluent country long known for its generous welfare system, administered until recently by generations of socialist-leaning governments.
But the growing dependency on private charity by thousands of people reflects how Holland — long admired for its fast-paced growth, high employment and prosperity — is increasingly falling on hard times. After years of strong growth, the economy has ground to a near standstill and since April 2004, the number of people receiving free food packages at the Dutch Food Bank has jumped from 600 per week to nearly 5,000. Thousands more go without...
...The most recent preliminary figures from the government's Bureau for Social and Cultural Planning indicate that at least 11% of the Dutch population, or between 700,000 and 800,000 households, lived in poverty in 2004...
...Immigrant families...account for 33% of the country's poor although they make up less than a fifth of the population, according to SCP figures...
So, let's see, if they didn't have to support the large unemployed immigrant community, their poverty level would be 8.27%; and if they didn't have immigrants at all, they would have full employment and actually *need* 10% more workers from the rest of Europe. By george, I think Europe could solve its perpetual 10% unemployment rate overnight.
| That assumes the locals would pick up the slack ... |
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