Fascinating. Maybe a similar mental model applies as in Switzerland. I am a foreigner living in wealthy Switzerland. They also talk about themselves as being very poor a few decades ago. Maybe it is that people really were poor back then, just not as poor as the other europeans, and this for them is hard to imagine.
According to the statistics that I can find, they have been one of the wealthiest european nations for 250 years now, with GDP per capita being 50% higher than the Netherlands consistently for the past 70 years.
According to the statistics that I can find, they have been one of the wealthiest european nations for 250 years now, with GDP per capita being 50% higher than the Netherlands consistently for the past 70 years.