On the same page where the Neue Zürcher Zeitung this morning describes the record departure of millionaires, stands the answer a Western cabinet does give. Chancellor Friedrich Merz reported on Thursday morning in Berlin that the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition has agreed on a package that lowers pressure on virtually all the axes the Voting Behaviour matrix identifies as "pressure factors". Taxes down. Bureaucracy down. Labour-market flexibility up. Housing-construction obstacles down. "Heute ist ein guter Tag", said Merz. And that is, measured by the calculation rules, simply true.

The package as it lies on the table in Berlin:

Why is this relevant for the Netherlands? Because the package does exactly what the last few Dutch cabinets have not done. Germany reduces on the axis the Voting Behaviour matrix calls "fiscal predictability". The Netherlands raises there — through Box 3 revisions, dividend-tax swings, and an ongoing discussion about wealth gains. Germany loosens on the axis "labour-market elasticity". The Netherlands tightens there via the DBA Act and by curtailing self-employment. Germany cuts bureaucracy with the Beweislastumkehr: if the government does not respond within four months, the permit is granted. The Netherlands averages above six months and has no reversed burden of proof. Germany makes building easier by making the Vergesellschaftung of construction firms legally impossible. The Netherlands does the reverse via nitrogen rights and grid congestion.

The matrix cannot be softened

Anyone who takes the trouble to run the Voting Behaviour matrix seriously for the German and the Dutch cases sees the same formula work in both directions. Party × Person × Baseline = Projection. Germany reduces in the model on all three axes at once: party axis (redistributive pressure drops with the tax cut), person axis (labour-market flexibility makes more sectors mobile within their own country — you don't have to leave), baseline axis (bureaucratic relief pushes down the cost bill of every entrepreneur). The product becomes smaller. The outcome becomes milder. The departures slow down.

The Netherlands raises in the same formula on each of those three axes. Box 3 loads up. Self-employment retreats. Permit timeframes lengthen. The product becomes larger. The outcome becomes steeper. The departures accelerate — with a two to four-year lag on Germany, but the curve is fixed.

Anyone who sees Germany relieve and the Netherlands raise is not looking at two different countries. They are looking at the same matrix, two opposite inputs. And the matrix does not calculate emotionally; it only calculates.

What the Netherlands could at least copy

Copying is an ugly word in political The Hague, but the German reform contains three elements that can be adopted without ideological pain — because they carry no left-wing and no right-wing signature, but are simply targeted reductions of the pain threshold.

One. The Genehmigungsfiktion for non-safety-critical permits: if the authorities do not respond within a fixed period, the permit is granted. This forces no policy choice on any civil servant; it forces only timeliness. For the Netherlands it means the end of the building permit still "under processing" after eight months and of the grid connection that is only offered after two years.

Two. The Beweislastumkehr for government reporting requirements: every report the government requires from companies must be substantiated by the government — not automatically presumed. In the Netherlands the administrative burden for SMEs has risen significantly over the past ten years because every new law produces a reporting stream by default. The reversed burden of proof forces the legislator into sobriety.

Three. The flexibilisation of temporary employment contracts: from renewing three times to renewing six times. This needs no argument for the Netherlands — it is precisely the instrument the labour market lost after the Work and Security Act, and which particularly torments start-ups, seasonal businesses and care institutions. Reintroducing it is not deregulation; it is giving back what was there.

These three together can be achieved structurally for under the €10 billion/year Germany is committing to real tax cuts. They do not cut taxes, they only cut friction. But in the matrix friction weighs more heavily than the rate.

The choice no one makes out loud

What happens if the Netherlands does not follow? The matrix calculates it through. The baseline axis keeps rising (grid congestion, nitrogen, Box 3 uncertainty, labour-market cramping); the person axis stays thin (little mobility because the entrepreneur is tied to local customers — up to the point where he no longer wants to be); the party axis probably moves after 2028 further in the direction of redistribution. Germany, meanwhile, relieves on all three. The result is not a dramatic exodus, but something worse: a steady thinning of the productive middle segment that can choose. The entrepreneur with two locations shifts his centre of gravity. The engineering firm that opens in Emden instead of Delfzijl. The shareholder who moves his holding to Frankfurt.

Each one small. Added up: our industry sinks. Not loudly, not as a scandal, but as the harbour on the engraving above sinks — dark, extinguished, with silent chimneys, while on the other side the light rises.

The question in the headline is not rhetorical. It is a bill. If the Netherlands does not follow on at least one of the three axes Germany is unloading today, then the curve the matrix already indicated two years ago will follow. Anyone who does not want that must choose one axis and unload seriously on it. Otherwise Merz's guter Tag becomes our bad year.