Up against the limits to growth
Simon Kuper
Financial Times
Over-construction and understaffing have become “global problems” since Covid-19, but the Netherlands had already “run out of space and staff”, says Simon Kuper. Even if a recession temporarily loosens the jobs market, the problem will “simply resurface whenever growth resumes”. The country, “well-suited” to globalisation, is probably the first “to hit the limits of economic growth”. Until 2008, Europe’s biggest port had had 26 years of unbroken growth. As a result its population “mushroomed”.
