Koopkrachtstijging - Zondag met Lubach (S09) - YouTube

Well now, I've got good news and bad news.

First the good news.

Most people's purchasing power will increase by one and a half percent next year.

Such nice figures ahead!

The cabinet's plans reveal that purchasing power will increase by one and a half percent.

But before we all head for the whores in a fit of euphoria...

There's also-- That's how we are.

There's also bad news, which is that it's total bullshit.

Because purchasing power is a complicated term...

So I'm about to explain it using, let's see...

Here, a cup of tea...

There, a saucer to go with it...

See, it goes like this.

Purchasing power is how much you can buy after you've paid your taxes.

So, when taxes go up, the purchasing power goes down.

And when things get more expensive, like groceries, the purchasing power goes down too.

But when you start making more money, the purchasing power goes up.

Simple enough. Right?

Yeah. I don't get what the cup of tea's for.

But you would say that what Rob Trip tells us here is good news.

Most people's purchasing power will increase by one and a half percent next year.

Yeah, and that Rob Trip tells us this now, that's because of this.

So we took a compass and a ruler and we had a look:

How will we arrange it so that the increase in purchasing power...

...will hit as many people in such a balanced fashion as possible?

Yeah, "in such a balanced fashion as possible".

Sounds like Rico Verhoeven on a unicycle.

But what Wopke here means is that all Dutch people should profit about equally.

So all the retirees, the working people...

...the welfare-empowered people, the charismatic VPRO-presenters...

...should all experience equal forward progress.

And Wopke's story sounds real neat, but something doesn't "wop" up here.

First of all...

Rob Trip says that most people will experience a one-and-a-half percent increase in purchasing power...

...but that doesn't happen in practice.

That one and a half percent is extrapolated from cabinet plans.

But other factors in your life have a much larger influence on your purchasing power.

When you leave your parents' home, when you get a child...

...or you suddenly get sponsored by a large animal feed company...

...your purchasing power will go every which way.

But in a prediction about the purchasing power used for policy plans...

...they, of course, cannot account for that.

That's why the Central Planning Bureau, the CPB, assumes that...

...whoever they're calculating their purchasing power for does squat.

"They do not change jobs, do not receive a promotion, do not become unemployed or unfit for work, do not marry or divorce, nor even get older."

Doesn't even get older...?

That only goes for me and Pino. (TL Note: Pino is the Dutch version of Sesame Street's Big Bird.)

We get a new picture made each year.

Oh, Pien and I...

But that purchasing power prediction doesn't have much to do with reality, as it turns out.

Because you might be happily celebrating Rob Trip's good news from the comfort of your couch...

...but when your dishwasher breaks because your toddler decided the guinea pig also needs a good cleaning...

...then that'll have a much greater influence on your wallet.

So that increase in purchasing power isn't about you...

...but about the median. Let me explain.

If you put the entire population of the Netherlands in a row...

...by order of how much their purchasing power goes up, you'll be working on that for days.

I once got 30 people to play along, but it was utter chaos.

Couple pro tips: Arrange plenty of bathrooms. Including for the ladies.

Plenty of coffee and maybe a few traffic controllers.

But once you've succeeded in that and everyone is standing in order of their increase in purchasing power...

...then the middlemost person of all those people is the median.

And that middlemost person, THAT's the one who gets a one-and-a-half percent increase according to current cabinet plans.

So in theory, one half will get less of an increase, and the other half gets even more.

But even THAT isn't what truly happens.

Because let's get back to Rob Trip, who confidently tells us...

...the purchasing power WILL increase, but that's absolutely not certain.

It's just a prediction. And those don't always come true. Watch.

This is what the Journaal said in 2016.

"We'll get a little more to spend, about one percent on average."

"Nine in ten Dutch people will experience a purchasing power increase in the coming year."

Yeah, the purchasing power would increase for the vast majority of Dutch people.

But this is what happened:

"Purchasing power shrunk for nearly half of Dutch people in 2017."

The past ten years, every Prinsjesdag-prediction by the CPB hasn't come true even once.

And that's not only because the life of ONE individual with a broken dishwasher and a clean guinea pig...

...cannot be predicted, but also because our whole country experiences big changes.

Because if the price of oil increases, purchasing power goes down.

Or when wages increase, the purchasing power goes up.

A certain brand of animal feed goes out of fashion? Purchasing power down.

"God damn it, fuck!" Calm down, calm down.

Uncalled for.

Where was I? Oh, right.

So that one-and-a-half percent purchasing power increase is a prediction about ONE person...

...for whom everything stays the same, who never ages a day, and who lives in a country where nothing ever changes.

But why is everybody always talking about that purchasing power, then?

Well, the government wants to paint a pretty picture.

That's why they have the purchasing power be predicted based on their plans for the coming year.

And not only for that one median, but for every income group.

Then the government gets figures like these back from the CPB, for instance.

Look, these little heads...

These are the various groups and their respective purchasing power increase.

You've got the elderly, the unemployed, independent entrepreneurs, millionaires.

Then you see that this one, for instance, gets a 0.7 percent increase...

And this one a 1.4 percent increase.

And let's imagine that what you see here...

...is the result of the government plans.

So the current coalition thinks this is best for the Netherlands.

But they also know: If they present this as it is to the public...

...everyone will say, "That's not fair!"

"Cause, see, this group here gets much less than this group!"

And then the government quickly goes and adjusts all manner of dials.

Because remember what the minister said?

So we took a compass and a ruler and we had a look:

How will we arrange it so that the increase in purchasing power...

...will hit as many people in such a balanced fashion as possible?

Exactly.

They start making little tweaks to taxes and returns until something nice pops out.

And then we get something like this.

Let's say that taxation on dogs decreases a little.

That's good for this head here.

But by tweaking that, another group experiences a downturn.

Ouch. The elderly.

Well, let's funnel some money into the social security system.

Yay, the elderly!

But yeah, then another group experiences a downturn: The millionaires.

Shit, the champagne! That kinda thing.

And they keep adjusting these dials...

...until everybody gets a sufficient increase, so that they can say...

"Hey, everybody will benefit!"

And you might think: "But what's so bad about that?"

"It's good that everyone gets about an equal increase?"

But because of all the messing with those plans...

...just for a few tenths of a percent difference, that has a flip side.

Yeah, this is Barbara Baarsma, professor in economy.

She can explain in exact terms what the government does, and why that's unwise.

So you know what? Let's tweak a little.

Extremely expensive policy, very ad hoc, super short-term...

...doesn't do anything for the long-term growth of this economy.

Alright. What I noticed was, she doesn't use her tea either!

Important.

And what she says is, the government pulls out all the stops...

...to give a last-minute boost in purchasing power to certain groups...

...for a few tenths of a percent difference.

So that adjusting of those dials, all that messing around with taxes, that's not at all beneficial.

This year, they screwed around with about 700 million euros in this manner.

And in 2016, it was even 1.1 billion!

Those are giant, vision-free investments, purely for a positive Prinsjesdag image.

Another big disadvantage, our tax system is only getting more complicated.

The director of the CPB, which calculates the purchasing power figures, even says so.

The fact is, our tax- and premium system...

...and subsidy system, the way it looks as complex as it does now...

...that might in part be because of that whole fine-tuning of those figures.

And that's something people don't always like very much.

No, that's something people don't always like very much.

I stopped paying taxes about ten years ago, myself...

...purely because I think it's too complicated.

No worries, the government knows that about me...

...they just go like this.

Because I might move abroad otherwise.

Measuring the purchasing power is not strictly nonsense.

It gives a certain image of how the policy might roughly affect various groups.

But that fake precision and those rash adjustments, that's pointless.

The cabinet only does that because the media is crazy about it.

Because the Journaal cheerfully opens up with the good news that the purchasing power will go up.

And it gets even worse.

Because what do you do if you really wanna get how it all works, Jeroen Overbeek?

Yeah, we'll talk to political reporter Ron Fresen.

Exactly. And what does that result in?

That results in the fact that the purchasing power figure we can report now...

...one-and-a-half percent increase for everybody.

That that's better than the figure we got back in August.

There's so much going wrong in that sentence, and then we're not even talking about the word order.

"Average." "Everybody." That can't be right, then.

Luckily we still have talk shows.

Margriet van der Linden had the Minister of Finance as a guest...

...so she had the opportunity to really put him through the wringer.

The good news is that almost everyone, really virtually everyone, will notice this increase in the purchasing power.

But this sounds a little like, as I mentioned before, like the good news show.

Because that's how this seems to work, just about.

On the other hand, something like the VAT goes up, which has people saying,

"Yeah, we'll feel that one."

Because groceries, things you spend money on, VAT goes up, so how will this benefit us?

No, M, more VAT and things getting more expensive is already accounted for in the purchasing power.

That's the whole idea of purchasing power. Otherwise, it'd just be money.

So when the interviewer says something like that, the minister thinks, "This'll be a cinch."

You can even see it in the look in Hoekstra's eyes when she starts talking about groceries.

..."Yeah, we'll feel that one." Because groceries, things you spend money on...

"Okayyy, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Chill. Okay."

"Relax, Wopke."

And they go really far to keep the positive image in place.

Because see, last week, on September 13, CBS announced the news...

...that the purchasing power actually reduced for about half the Netherlands' population.

So that was bad news!

Because a beaming minister told us a year earlier that it was going to rise!

So what also happens on September 13?

On the day that bad news came out?

Exactly on that day, the new predictions coincidentally get leaked.

And that gets the NOS so excited that they promptly forget about the bad news...

...dash to the Binnenhof and shout:

Mister Wiebes. --Yes? It sure looks great, those figures!

Ooh, it sure looks great, those figures!

Yay, mission accomplished! 700 million spent on a pretty NOS broadcast.

The tax system has been a massive, addled mess for years...

...but you also provided this FICTIONAL middlemost family with a theoretical benefit...

...of a few percent points of a theoretically expected increase in purchasing power...

...provided they don't age, the animal feed doesn't get any more expensive...

...and the toddler stuffs the guinea pig in the cutlery drawer, as it ought to be.

There. Phew, I'm parched.

Ah-hah! The tea!