Breaking the Largest Shoulders: How the Politics of Envy Impoverishes Belgium

A man carries someone on his shoulders. A second person is added, then a third. The structure begins to sway, but the hand that keeps piling on the weight calls every new burden fair. Until everything collapses. That is the danger behind Belgium’s slogan about the largest shoulders: treating the economy’s capacity to bear the burden as though it were inexhaustible.

Those who can contribute more may be asked to do so. But once that principle becomes a permanent suspicion of anyone who works, builds a business or accumulates wealth, solidarity takes on a different meaning. Economic success becomes a debt that can never be fully repaid. Politicians no longer have to justify their spending; they need only identify a new payer each time.

35 Private-Sector Workers for Every 100 Residents

The Federal Planning Bureau’s June projections for 2026 put private-sector employment at approximately 3,265,000 employees and 926,000 self-employed people. Together, they represent some 4.19 million private-sector workers. Against the population of 11.90 million in the same projections, that amounts to approximately 35.2% of the population. www.plan.be

For every 100 residents, only 35 work in the private sector or are self-employed. That leaves 65 other residents: almost two for every private-sector worker. Belgium builds its prosperity on this narrow base of private-sector workers. Continually loading more burdens onto those same shoulders undermines the economic capacity that makes our social protection possible.

The political task should be to broaden that base. Help more people into work, enable investment and raise productivity. Constantly promising new spending while passing the bill to the same workers and businesses ultimately makes social protection itself more vulnerable.

Belgium Chooses a Large State

The Federal Planning Bureau projects government employment in 2026 at approximately 952,000 people, or some 8% of the total population. www.plan.be

For the international comparison, we use the OECD’s harmonised figures for 2024. These measure government employment as a share of total employment:

Under this OECD definition, Belgium had approximately 943,000 government employees in 2024. Belgium’s share is about 55% higher than Germany’s, 47% higher than the Netherlands’ and 25% higher than that of the United States. France ranks above Belgium. We are therefore not an international exception without parallel, but neither are we a country in which the state plays a modest role. data-explorer.oecd.org

Anyone who wants a larger state must demonstrate that the services provided justify the costs involved. A government job cannot be exempt from the requirement to operate efficiently simply because its salary is funded by taxes. Taxpayers are entitled to a state that accounts for its staffing and spending.

Labour Already Bears the Heaviest Burden

The fiscal reality is harsh enough without exaggeration. According to the OECD’s Taxing Wages 2026, taxes and social security contributions in Belgium accounted for 52.5% of total labour costs in 2025 for a single employee without children earning the average wage. The OECD average was 35.1%.

Of every €100 spent by the employer on that employee, approximately €47.50 remains as take-home pay in this standard case. www.oecd.org

That is why the suggestion that only a small group of untouchable billionaires will pay the next bill is so misleading. The ordinary Belgian worker already lives under a system that takes a very large share of the reward for their labour. Anyone seeking to get ahead by taking on more responsibility, working longer or starting a business deserves a government that makes that prospect attractive.

The promise that everyone else will automatically be better off once the rich pay more confuses tax revenue with wealth creation. A tax can redistribute resources. Whether it strengthens society over the long term also depends on how those resources are used and how it affects work, saving and investment. A budget cannot rest indefinitely on the assumption that behaviour never changes.

Large Revenues Do Not Guarantee Good Management

The national accounts published in October 2026 show the already considerable financial weight of the Belgian state. In 2025, government revenue amounted to 49.2% of GDP. Primary expenditure reached 52.2%, with interest payments adding another 2.3%. Total spending therefore amounted to approximately 54.5%. The deficit stood at 5.2% of GDP and public debt at 108.1%. www.nbb.be

A government that collects such sums yet records such deficits must first defend its own choices. Presenting every new tax as moral progress is a convenient way to avoid that examination. Citizens must prove that they need their money; the state’s need for it is taken for granted.

A serious social policy must also aim higher than simply administering benefits. At the end of 2025, Belgium’s National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance recorded 537,728 employees and unemployed people with recognised long-term incapacity for work, plus 38,915 self-employed people and assisting spouses. Together, that amounts to 576,643 people, or approximately 4.9% of the population on 1 January 2026. This refers to incapacity for work lasting more than a year. www.riziv.fgov.be

Behind those figures are people who deserve protection. But where recovery or adapted work is possible, public policy must also provide a route back. Leaving people trapped in dependency for years and then presenting that situation as a social victory reflects an impoverished understanding of human dignity.

Levelling Down Makes Nobody Stronger

The persistent temptation in the radical left’s debate is to treat the prosperity of some as the cause of the difficulties of others. Once that premise is accepted, the objective shifts. Narrowing the gap begins to look like a victory in itself, even when hardly anyone is better off.

That is the politics of envy. Within that logic, pulling down those at the top is easier than strengthening the economic position of those at the bottom. Improving education, making entrepreneurship accessible and helping people out of prolonged inactivity require difficult reforms. Naming an enemy wins applause more quickly.

The phrase “the largest shoulders” can thus become the benevolent packaging for a much harsher idea: that the state has an ever-expanding claim on the fruits of other people’s efforts. Anyone who asks where the limit lies is then treated as though they oppose solidarity. Moral pressure replaces economic debate.

The Communist Temptation in New Packaging

I call this the communist temptation: the belief that social justice arises primarily from placing economic independence under political control. The danger emerges when ownership becomes suspect, success is equated with exploitation and the state increasingly decides which outcomes remain acceptable.

The historical warning is concrete. The Bolshevik seizure of power took place in 1917; the Soviet Union was formally established in 1922. The promise of workers’ liberation was accompanied by the elimination of political competition and the construction of a party-state. Revolutionary leaders claimed the power to decide the lives of those they professed to liberate. www.bpb.de

It is precisely in a free society that we must challenge, before it is too late, the economic and moral premises that make dependency more attractive to those in power than independence for the citizen. A society does not become fairer because growing numbers of people need the state’s permission or support to get ahead.

Where the Radical Left and Political Islam Converge

This criticism takes on a broader significance where parts of the radical left seek allies among Islamist movements. The political Islam those movements advocate is an ideology of power that uses religion to determine how society should be organised. Aligning with such movements puts the left’s credibility as a defender of individual freedom to the test.

At the presentation of its annual report on 30 June 2026, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warned that hostility towards Israel and antisemitism provide common ground for extremist currents with otherwise sharply different ideologies. Since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, the agency had observed expressions of solidarity between such movements across their ideological boundaries. ebs.publicnow.com

There is a disturbing political affinity here. Those who divide the world exclusively into oppressors and oppressed can come to regard every enemy of the West as an ally. The freedoms of women, minorities and dissidents then disappear from view as soon as their oppressor uses the appropriate anti-Western vocabulary.

In such circles, antisemitism provides a dangerous bridge: Jews are held collectively responsible for supposed power or wealth, or for Israel’s actions. That is not emancipation. It is an old logic of persecution adopting a new political language. A left that shows sympathy for it repudiates its own claim to defend universal human rights.

Strengthen More Shoulders

Belgium needs policies that recognise economic independence as social progress. Work must genuinely pay. Those who can return to employment must have a practical route back. Businesses need predictable rules and room to invest. Public spending must be judged by its results, even when it carries a social label that seems to place it beyond criticism.

The ambition must be to enable more people to build assets, acquire knowledge and strengthen their ability to withstand adversity. That requires a different attitude towards success. An entrepreneur who expands a business, an employee who earns a promotion or a family that saves becomes more independent. A free society should value that.

The largest shoulders are not an inexhaustible resource for the state. Loading them ever more heavily without broadening the economic base ultimately puts the protection of the weakest at risk.

A country that breaks the largest shoulders does not make the weakest stronger. It eventually brings everyone down.