Today I read an interesting article by Russell Shorto in the NRC Handelsblad. It’s an adaptation of an article he wrote for the New York Times. You can read the latter one here. In it Shorto discusses several aspects of American and Dutch society, mainly the attitudes towards welfare and taxation and the balance between government intrusion/intervention and freedom. I like articles like this. They offer me more information on issues that I am pondering already. For example it made in part clear why American society is the way it is and why Americans have such a different attitude towards inequality compared to us.