Government debt keeps falling in Netherlands: debt-to-GDP ratio fell to 43.2 % of GDP by June 2024, a nearly 30-year low. Government recorded a surplus of 8 billion euros from January to June 2024
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1fvv01s
Posted by Straight_Ad2258
29 Comments
source : [https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2024/39/decrease-in-public-debt-continued-in-first-half-of-2024](https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2024/39/decrease-in-public-debt-continued-in-first-half-of-2024)
Thats good yes?
So what does this mean exactly?
what having a high population density, low car dependency and good economy does to a mf
the Dutch cities didn’t choose to move away from car centric and low density infrastructure in the 70s and 80s because of climate, they choose so to make a more efficient use of space and to save money on infrastructure
this is because
* car infrastructure is far more expensive to maintain than bike infrastructure
* less car dependency leads to more population dense cities, which means that utility and infrastructure costs are spread over a larger number of people
**the way you can think of is that electric utility lines, gas lines, water lines, ,sewerage lines, the street itself cost nearly the same whether there are 100 people on a street or 500 people.** it truly is mindblowing how inefficient single-family home suburbia is
not to say living in suburbia isn’t nice, it truly is , but it brings out external costs that few people understand, and now that repair and maintaintenance is coming due after 50-70 years, most US and many Europeean cities will simply break the bank in trying to maintain their sprawled infrastructure
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/5/14/americas-growth-ponzi-scheme-md2020)
that’s a good news! Reduction of debts is always good for any economy!
Time for some long term revenue generating investments. Infrastructure is probably not the way, so I would propose some heavily subsidized tech sector investments. Probably under a military umbrella so it is legal to use state funds.
Trying to involve some regions that are economically lagging would also be a good investment, but except for rails that won’t make a large difference I have no idea how to do that.
Nice surplus Netherlands, can I get 0.01% of that?
Please.
Nice ! Better invest all of that in Defence. /s
as a German resident
sorry for WW1, you guys can occupy NRW and try to fix it
win-win for all sides
Netherlands gets more territories, NRW gets more public transport infrastructure , more fietsstraaten all over the cities ,and Duisburg isn’t part of Germany anymore
What would happen if a country had 0% debt or close to 0 somewhere from 1-4%?
Wow, now I can really understand the extreme budget cuts to research and education!!! MAJOR/s
Wish USA could do the same
US govt: wtf is a surplus??
But I thought we had a budget deficit?
Our governments have been doing the opposite for 17 years🇬🇷🇬🇷💪
Siphoning money from the poor
Well, education, health care, the housing market and public services aren’t what they used to be, but at least we recovered from handing out all that money to the banks in ’08.
France should bring in Dutch advisors ASAP.
This would make me happy weren’t it for the fact the government lied and retroactively increased interest rates for student debt due to our finances not being where they should be…
Just don’t get addicted to black zeroes like your neighbor did
Reducing debt and still posting positive GDP growth. Nice!
Whenever it comes to Germany’s sluggish economy it is often superficially blamed on low deficit and not on structural issues or exuberant welfare spending. The Netherlands, Switzerland, the Scandinavian all successfully run their economy without resorting to deficits.
This surplus should be used to increase our investment in R&D, which, with 2.2â„… of GDP is well below EU recommendation of 3% and even further below that of the US (3.5% I believe). Our current government should also have never abolished our newly set up growth fund, which invested in high tech start- and scale-ups
That’s what you get when you’re some kind of tax haven and when people have to pay thousands of euros per months to get their child in childcare if they want to keep working.
Looks good on a graph, but I’d never, ever live in the Netherlands. I don’t have that kind of family wealth.
And still they’re raising VAT and cutting critical funding for education and environment 🤬
The liberals (economic) are in power, they have been for almost 13 years. They’re cutting and cutting and cutting all social benefits and government services. And refuse to invest in the economy instead giving tax breaks.
Our country has the lowest debt to GDP. It has had for years. And the government is still shouting we need to cut back: the current coalition is cutting healthcare again by 5 billion. And education by 1 billion.
This country is headed for disaster.
Great! Now you can stop being a tax haven then, right?
_Italy left the chat_
God I’ve seen what you’ve done for others…
Now build housing.