Economy of the Netherlands

The economy of the Netherlands is the 17th largest in the world in 2019 according to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

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Quotes edit

It is true that if you simply have market capitalism not embedded in a true democratic system, then you will get increasing inequality... And that is why every modern capitalist system has a welfare state and in Europe these welfare states consume 50 percent of GDP, redistribute it in fairer ways. I have always thought the European Union represented a truer embodiment of what I would regard as something like the end of history... The United States' model is a little bit more liberal and therefore we do less redistribution than, let's say, Holland or Sweden, but all modern states do that.
- Francis Fukuyama, as quoted in "Fukuyama: 'Putinism', Radical Islam No Alternative To Liberal Democracy" (30 January 2016), by *Charles Recknagel, Radio Free Europe: Radio Liberty.

Hollanders are not a nation to rob another of its property, but desire to live in friendship with all people, and trade with them.
- Jan van Riebeeck, Precis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope (c. January 1656 - December 1658), as quoted in Riebeeck's Journal (1897), by H. C. V. Leibrandt, Cape Town, p. 67

The composition of Unilever should serve as a warning that colonialism was not simply a matter of ties between a given colony and its mother country, but between colonies on the one hand and metropoles on the other. The German capital in Unilever joined the British in exploiting Africa and the Dutch in exploiting the East Indies. The rewards spread through the capitalist system in such a way that even those capitalist nations who were not colonial powers were also beneficiaries of the spoils. Unilever factories established in Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.A. were participants in the expropriation of Africa’s surplus and in using that surplus for their own development.
- Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Howard University Press. 1972. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-9501546-4-0.