Nieuwe Winterswijksche Courant, 23 October 1963
Workers will then earn around ƒ 15,000 – Smaller towns (including Winterswijk-Aalten) merged into large cities – Further industrial revolution with possibilities currently beyond imagination!
One can indulge in the most elaborate fantasies regarding the rise in labor productivity in the near future, but with normal, steady development over the next 37 years, real income per capita will be 2.5 to 3 times greater than in 1963. The amount available for spending exceeds our imagination: a worker currently earning ƒ 6,000 per year will then have more than ƒ 15,000 to spend.
Prof. P. de Wolff, director of the Central Planning Bureau, presented this as a topic for discussion to the participants of the “Netherlands in the Year 2000” conference of the Netherlands Discussion Centre in Oosterbeek. He had calculated that by the year 2000, the population of our country would number 20 million souls. Prof. Jac. P. Thijsse of the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague also based his work on this figure. In his plans, he concluded, among other things, that by 2000, perhaps 95 percent of the population would live in cities. These people would not only live in cities, but according to his vision, there would be many cities in the Netherlands outside the Randstad Holland with 750,000 to one million inhabitants. He had assumed a density of 50 people per hectare. This relatively high population density need not hinder the “livability” of the cities, as this is a matter of quality in urban planning and housing construction.
Prof. Thijsse stated that to accommodate the expected population growth, it is necessary to begin building 125,000 homes per year immediately. Using a map of the Netherlands in 2000, he showed that cities are hubs within an area with a radius of fifty kilometers. He had also formed “ring cities” from, among others, Apeldoorn, Deventer, and Zutphen; Arnhem-Nijmegen; Winterswijk-Aalten; and Enschede-Hengelo-Almelo, disregarding provincial borders. He also anticipated that national borders would no longer exist by then. In this regard, he pointed to the large city formed by the towns of Sittard, Geleen, Heerlen, the German city of Aachen, and the surrounding areas.
According to Prof. Thijsse, not a single airport in our country is in the right location. He had projected the major airport of 2000 onto the Wadden Sea, which was yet to be reclaimed. If the Netherlands maintains its function, as currently derived from transport to and from the European hinterland, Prof. Thijsse envisioned new port and industrial areas in the Western Scheldt and on the land yet to be reclaimed between Den Helder and Wieringen.
In his economic vision for the future, Prof. de Wolff assumed that no major conflicts or enormous depressions would occur in the coming 37 years. He calculated that if productivity increases by 2.7 to 3.25 percent per year and working hours are reduced to 35 hours per week, gigantic tasks must be completed in the Netherlands, given the then-altered composition of the workforce.
How the industrial revolution will proceed cannot yet be foreseen, but this development will be completely different from what is currently imagined. Perhaps certain types of labor will become so scarce that, for example, clothes will no longer be washed but thrown away, and washing dishes will likewise no longer be feasible. Perhaps people will then have to perform auxiliary tasks themselves during part of their free time, such as washing cars and painting houses. Prof. de Wolff also saw major tasks for the government and could find no room to lower taxes over the next 37 years. Not even if the defense budget were to disappear because the concept of war had become obsolete.
