From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People’s_Party_for_Freedom_and_Democracy#/media/File:VVD.svg
A local branch of the powerful Dutch liberal party VVD has issued a strongly worded rejection of the proposed basic income pilot project for the city of Utrecht.
The VVD’s Utrecht spokesperson on work and incomes Judith Tielen writes that she is responding to questions from the public about the city’s “ridiculous experiments” and gives seven reasons why her party opposes the basic income pilot: poor experiment design; costs; the moral need for benefit recipients to reciprocate; the reasonable nature of current conditionality; the risk of increased “hammock-based” welfare scrounging; the primacy of national over local legislation as well as a general claim that basic income doesn’t solve anything but actually creates more problems.
The intervention by the VVD, whose leader is Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, illustrates the lines of attack that basic income opponents will take when the Utrecht initiative is debated by local politicians in September [2015] and more generally, as basic income continues moving up the national political agenda.
Language DUTCH:
Judith Tielen “7 redenen waarom de VVD het ‘experiment basisinkomen’ in Utrecht afkeurt”, VVD Utrecht website, 11 August 2015
This political party (VVD) in the Netherlands can’t come up with new ideas, only critisism and small talk. Indeed like the leader of this party (Mark Rutte) says: “Vision is an elephant that stands in your way”.
And this way, you really write off many people not giving them the freedom and independence this party is always talking about. The status quo remains with 1 million people in welfare at this moment. ( 1 million people want to work on 50.000 vacancies in the Netherlands….)
Great analysis. Some other pontis.1. Rutte is a zombie-PM. Highly unlikley that he will regain credibility with large parts of his potential electorate. His party having the problem that there is no real successor and Rutte as the PM is very difficult to replace especially during the run.This process best case scenario for his party (replacing Rutte) probably goes by him stating that this is his last term well before the elections and bringing in the replacement leader.He messed it up completely by giving away mainly things that hit people directly in their wallets while getting other issues back without direct financial consequences for the voters. Plus it looks like he himself moved substantially to the left iso making it clear that the cabinet is left from him and his party. Breaking several important electionpromises and he simply doesnot look reliable/credible anymore.Plus it became more clear that he is a bit of a nitwit who simply cannot make rather simple calculations or do simple bookkeeping. 2. As a consequence thereof as well as that his coalition partner has moved considerably to the middle while they have made their gains in last election nearly all at their left the cabinet looks highly unstable. The parties could keep it alive unnaturally to avoid new elections but also drop it unnaturally to avoid more damage.Thing is we donot know and they donot know.3. Stategic voting that brought this cabinet its majority looks highly doubtful in a next election. They basically broke their promises on too many issues and often one day after the elction. Difficult to see that many people will repeat stategic voting now. If you’re not getting what you want in the first place you better vote for the real thing (SP and Wilders).4. Wilders looks to have made a slight adjustment in strategy. Less only hard one-liners. Imho the right strategy for him people had enough of the previous Wilders. But unlike Rutte he adjusted the brand and not throw away a lot of the brandvalues like Rutte did and got caught with.5. Their, the new cabinet’s economic policies are horrible. The only proper thing is keeping the debt low. But basically it is more state and more transfers to the unproductive, hardly something that will work especially if the country’s economy is already slightly under water. Very social indeed, but doing the job and get the economy going again is another issue.