On the very same page where this morning's Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports the record exodus of millionaires, the answer that a Western cabinet does give is set out. Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced on Thursday morning in Berlin that the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition has agreed a package that, on virtually every axis the Vote Impact matrix identifies as a pressure factor, lowers the pressure. Tax down. Bureaucracy down. Labour flexibility up. Housing obstacles down. “Heute ist ein guter Tag,” Merz said. Measured against the calculation rules, that is simply accurate.

The package on the table in Berlin:

Why is this relevant to the Netherlands? Because the package does precisely what recent Dutch cabinets have not done. Germany is lowering on the axis the Vote Impact matrix calls “fiscal predictability”. The Netherlands has been raising it — via Box 3 revisions, dividend-tax reversals, and an ongoing debate about a capital-gains regime. Germany is loosening on the “labour-market elasticity” axis. The Netherlands is tightening it via the Wet DBA and restrictions on self-employment. Germany cuts bureaucracy with a reversed burden of proof: if government does not respond within four months, the permit is granted. The Netherlands averages well beyond six months and has no reversed burden. Germany is making construction easier by forbidding the «Vergesellschaftung» of housing companies. The Netherlands, via nitrogen rights and grid congestion, is doing the opposite.

The matrix does not yield

Anyone who runs the Vote Impact matrix once, seriously, for the German and Dutch cases sees the same formula work in opposite directions. Party × Person × Baseline = Projection. Germany lowers on all three axes simultaneously: party axis (redistributive pressure falls with the tax cut), person axis (labour flexibility makes more sectors mobile within the country — no need to leave), baseline axis (bureaucratic relief lowers every entrepreneur's cost account). The product shrinks. The outcome softens. Departures slow.

The Netherlands raises on each of these three. Box 3 loads up. Self-employment retreats. Permit timelines lengthen. The product grows. The outcome steepens. Departures accelerate — with a two- to four-year lag behind Germany, but the curve is fixed.

To see Germany relieving and the Netherlands raising is not to look at two different countries. It is to look at the same matrix with opposite inputs. And the matrix does not calculate emotionally; it only calculates.

What the Netherlands could at least copy

Copy is an ugly word in political The Hague, but the German reform has three elements that can be adopted without ideological pain — because they carry no left- and no right-wing signature, only a targeted reduction of pain-thresholds.

One. The Genehmigungsfiktion for non-safety-critical permits: if government fails to 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 would mean the end of the building permit still “under review” after eight months, and of the grid connection offered only after two years.

Two. The Beweislastumkehr for reporting obligations: every reporting requirement the government imposes on businesses must be justified by the government — not assumed automatically. Dutch administrative burden on SMEs has risen significantly over the past decade because each new law delivers a stream of reports by default. Reversing the burden forces the legislator to sober up.

Three. The flexibilisation of temporary contracts: from three to six extensions. This needs no defence in the Netherlands — it is precisely the instrument the labour market lost after the Wet Werk en Zekerheid, and it particularly punishes start-ups, seasonal firms and healthcare providers. Reintroducing it is not deregulation; it is returning what was there.

Together, these three cost less than the €10 billion a year Germany is committing to real tax reduction. They lower no tax; they lower only friction. But in the matrix, friction weighs more heavily than rate.

The choice no one names out loud

What happens if the Netherlands does not follow? The matrix runs it through. The baseline axis keeps rising (grid congestion, nitrogen, box 3 uncertainty, labour tightness); the person axis stays thin (little mobility because the entrepreneur is tied to local customers — until the moment he isn't); the party axis will likely shift further toward redistribution after 2028. Meanwhile Germany relieves on all three. The result is no 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 small on its own. Added up: our industry sinks. Not loudly, not as a scandal, but as the harbour on the engraving above sinks — dark, cold, with silent chimneys, while on the opposite bank 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 relieving today, the curve the matrix indicated two years ago holds. Whoever objects to that curve must choose one axis and unload it seriously. Otherwise, Merz's guter Tag becomes our bad year.