"Bush campaign ads using team"

[kandrathe]

I think you flirted with Socialism after WWII because you could afford it due to your past colonial adventures, particularly the diamond trade in Africa. Your society has some very extremely wealthy people who were supporting an inordinately large welfare population. Your society was once described to me when I was younger as a place where half the population supported the other half, but I think that level of generosity had faded recently.

The Dutch system of disability benefits has been a particular focus of reform. It has been described as the "weak spot of the Dutch welfare system" and by 1993 nearly a million people were receiving disability payments, nearly one adult person in seven. (7) The response was to begin to reduce the control of the social partners and to introduce extra inducements to employers to retain or hire the disabled. This was linked with a more stringent definition of disability coupled with a broader definition of the ‘suitable’ employment a person could be expected to undertake. The revised tests were applied to all new claimants, and those already receiving benefits are being reassessed. The impact was initially significant and the number receiving disability benefits fell to 850,000 in mid-1996, a fall of over 8%.

Another major change in the Dutch system has been in the approach to lone parents, who are now expected to actively look for work once their youngest child reaches the age of five (previously it was twelve). This reflects an important change in social attitudes, partly linked to the overall increase in part time work and in women’s participation in the labour market. Lone parents are likely to receive their assistance payments through the municipalities, so local integration strategies now have to address their needs around child care, flexible working hours, and so on.

The National Assistance Act was revised in 1996 and the different categories of social assistance recipients have now been replaced by an overall assumption that all those who need assistance who can work should seek to secure an income by participating in the labour market. Welfare benefits should only be provided for those who are unable to get jobs and benefit levels should be set at rates that are sufficient but which preserve incentives to work.

Some raw numbers;

• Netherlands has 7.2 million workers (44.1%) with a population of 16.3 million, low unemployment rate of 2% to 4% and GDP per capita of $28,600.
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• United States has 141.8 million workers (48.4%) with a population of 293 million, unemployment rate of 6.2%, and GDP per capita of $37,800.<>
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