One of the reasons given for this shortage was budget limitations. There just wasn't the money to hire care workers. I scratched my head at this.
The elderly here stick to their political parties more or less for life. They make up one of the biggest voting bloks, but they invariably vote against their own interests out of party loyalty.
The Netherlands has been under austerity for getting close to two decades, if I understand correctly. "There isn't the money for social programs", "We need to tighten our belts and be thrifty." In the meantime, not naming names, one of their elected leaders gave billions in tax write-offs to a major petroleum interest. In hindsight, he might as well have been shoveling public funds down a well, because the world is rapidly divesting their governments from fossil fuels. But there wasn't the money for social programs.
Maybe if they hadn't pandered to business interests propping up a dying industry they'd be able to spend the money they'd saved on taking care of their elderly and disabled and they wouldn't have had to cut their benefits. It makes you wonder how much inertia will have to be overcome to end a failed policy now that it's becoming clear that it has only done harm.
According to EU statistics as of 2014, the percentage of people in the EU living in poverty has risen from 16% to 23%. I suspect that percentage has risen further since then. The result of austerity has been to increase poverty. Instead of addressing the rise in poverty, the Netherlands moved the goalposts and set the poverty line lower so as to exclude more people from qualifying. It doesn't change the circumstances of the newly disqualified poor, but it makes the statistics look better.
Risk Of Poverty - Netherlands Statistics 2017
Poverty In the Netherlands - Armoedefonds
What all of this means for regular people is that they fall just above the poverty line and no longer qualify for any form of subsidy or assistance. The line is set so that even if you are working it's likely that you will make just €1000 or €100 too much to get a rent subsidy, for example. Rent might take up as much as 1/3 of your salary, but you earn too much to be considered poor by the authorities. It also means that your rent could go up every year. You might be forced to go without meals or new clothes or anything else, for that matter.
What do they offer for help? Budgeting classes. More austerity. Your problem isn't that you haven't got enough money to make ends meet. The problem isn't the deep gap between the cost of living and wages. It isn't the fault of bad policy. No. The fault lies with you. If you would just budget better and give up all of your human comforts, you wouldn't be broke. With the elderly they attempt to address it by calling for more volunteers to do the work that they won't hire people to do for a living wage. And to their credit, the Dutch volunteer and help each other out as much as they can, but they're still getting ripped off. As in many other countries, the long-term disabled are often assessed as being able to work and get their benefits cut. The retirement age gets raised so that people who were looking forward to collecting the pension they've worked for all of their lives see it get snatched out of reach again.
There is also a growing discontent among the Dutch concerning immigrants, specifically refugees. According to them, the refugees get everything easy. They get everything for free. Housing, a subsidy to live on, help getting work, etc. I started wondering what the real problem was. Are the refugees taking something away from the Dutch? Are they getting something that the Dutch aren't getting? And then it hit me. They're getting help. They're getting help. They're not better off than the Dutch, there's absolutely nothing to envy in terms of the quality of life the refugees have, but they're getting help. Help that the Dutch aren't getting. Help that the Dutch need too. And it's not their fault. It's not the fault of the native-born citizens and it's not the fault of the refugees, the failure is in economic policy. But the government that drafted that policy and set it into law is out of reach, so it's blamed on the refugees instead because they're visible. Austerity has created this situation more than anything else, and it's terrible both for the Dutch and for the people fleeing their homelands to come here.
Things are not perfect here in the Netherlands. Not by a long shot. Unfortunately much of the poverty is hidden, because nobody wants to admit to being poor. They go on working and scraping by on a bare margin and nobody knows.
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