[apexalpha]

Dutch here, too. While everyone below a certain income gets benefits like healthcare subsidy you can still live okay on a McDonalds salary. If you make €10 an hour you get €1600 a month. And at that level you pay almost no income tax. While not a lot, you don't necessarily need the foodbank or other subsidies than the regular ones to make ends meet.

[Balgair]

The parallels to the Roman Grain Dole[0] cannot be missed. The Cura Annonae warped Rome from top to bottom, from calories, to shipping, to politics, to military; nearly every aspect of Rome was touched by it. Heck, it likely outlasted Rome herself.

Those subsidies, like the current ones, run deep.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae#Politics_and_the_...

[eptcyka]

Just 5 years ago, I would've considered 1600 Euros or the pound equivalent a month to be plenty of money. At the time, I was a student living in the UK. Some years earlier still, whilst back in my native baltic state, that kind of a monthly income would seem super comfortable.

[ido]

The biggest difference is that housing is a lot more expensive in western cities - it is likely that even a modest 2-room (1-bedroom) apartment in a major city like Amsterdam would cost the majority of that wage to rent (and we're not talking about just students, but older people who can't get better jobs).

[tripzilch]

You say it like you just grabbed a random example, but Amsterdam is one of the most expensive places to rent in NL. It's also generally not at all representative for the Netherlands as a whole.

[ido]

Ok, you may replace it with London, Paris, Zürich, Munich, Copenhagen, Stockholm and probably a dozen other western european cities (not to mention major American cities, which are sometimes even more extreme).