On the welfare system, I believe this is why Finland isn’t too shy about accepting immigrants and refugees into the country. We have to pay taxes, too, which means that the system didn’t pay for our childhoods, but we’ll be paying for our own (and possibly someone else’s) retirement.

Finland is looking into “export education,” where Finnish professors would be relocated to foreign cities for a limited time to train, for example, radiographers, medical technicians, IT professionals, and so on, in exchange for money from the hosting institution. Another variety of export education would bring students from abroad to learn in Finland for anywhere from 2 weeks to a year. This is rather dangerous, in my opinion; in theory, the money would be used to fund the Finnish education system. However, how long will it be before Finnish education institutions decide to start charging tuition fees from non-EU foreign students (mostly immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, therefore putting an already disadvantaged group at more of a disadvantage in the Finnish economy)? And then, when they see profit from that, how long before they start charging EU students? And because EU regulations require Finnish institutions to treat EU students exactly as they would Finnish students, that would mean charging Finnish students for their education, too, thus undoing everything previous generations have worked for, regarding public access to higher education.

It’s a scary direction. If you give someone a buck, he wants five.

I will be the first to admit the quality problems in Finnish higher education, however. The politics of higher education tend to lead to these quality problems, and many of the lecturers are sub-par and undermotivated. Some of them aren’t even qualified to teach, but have some or other masters degree. The Finnish polytechnic system, in particular, needs to be reviewed; having a masters degree doesn’t mean you can or should teach.

Also, something in the Finnish culture has led to a less intensive approach to education. Information is learned by memorization, concept mastery comes second, and only if the student is very, very lucky are they expected to apply and practice what they learn. The result of this is a passive, uncreative populace who are shocked when one of their peers demonstrates basic creativity or critical thought. It’s not the emphasis on education that’s failing the Finnish people, it’s the way they’re being educated. A student must, must, must be engaged with the lesson in order to truly understand what they’re being taught, or it won’t stick. Even maths, even engineering, even pure sciences require some level of creativity, or all you get are human textbooks. Fix this by working with Finnish teachers in primary and secondary level institutions, and by hiring real professors for higher education. NOT. RESEARCHERS.

stop hiring researchers. they don’t want to teach, they want to research.

I had investmets in USA. According to the standing law each country could withdraw full tax of capital income, and refund this after the tax declaration been filed according to mutual tax agreement.
I filed in the tax declaration within the same week. I received a check from IRS within 4 weeks.
I asked about the refund from our tax office after 8 months. After 2 years I received an answer that my reclaim has not yet been considerd. And it never was.

I have a document where our tax officials do ground their tax decision on secret facts.
Official decision in black and white.

As an entrepenuer I have been strugglin with public procurements, without any result however.
8 years and one ECJ case and one reasoned opinion and three formal notices , has been the result, without any practical achievments.
It all started when we were obliged to send our tenders to our competitor, regarding government procurements. Common practice in Finland.
If You read the case C194/04 , You will notice that the government of Finland actually commited perjury in front of ECJ.

The European Central Bank did notice in their suvey , in 2003 that the effeciency of the public sector of Finland was second to worst among all OECD countries.

Since then has the productivity in our public sector decreased further with 10%

All this has increased my interest in to the stability of this wellfare state. The more I study the more I am astonished.

We are very eager to give an impression that the debt level an deficit is low in Finland, I do not agree. Finland received an extemption in to the rules of ESA95 . We can calculate our private social security funds as a part of the public sector. Without this extemption we could not achieve the stability pact criterias. This has led to an interesting statistical end result . Between years 2001 and 2008 we filed an surplus on 41,6 billions euros together, according the Eurostat statistics.
However our national debt did increase during these years from 59,1 billions to 63 billions.

Finland is hidding debt and manupulating statistics,there is no doubt about this.

Here is ashort example of the common procedure.

Municipal Ikaalinen had difficulties to close the books of 2009. This municipal sold its drain net work to Ikaalisten Vesi Oy, a water and waste water corporation owned by municipal Ikaalinen .
Ikaalisten vesi Oy did not have the sum of 1,25 million so it had to borrow this from the Municiplas Funding center , Kuntarhoitus which is owned by the municiplas.

Lets now assume that this particular sum is the which is paid as pension insurance to KeVa, which is the municipal pension fund. Now as the surplus of pension funds is calculated in the national account as surplus and subtracted from government deficit, this sum is now subtracted from the government deficit. Orginally 1 million deficit has now turned to become 1 million surplus.
The debt for the water treatment corporation is not calculated as apart of the national debt.
But when KeVa , this pension fund , buyes a bond from Kuntarahoitus , this funding organization, it will not be calculated as a part of the nationa debt , it will be subtracted. All debt from pension funds to public bodies are subtracted from the national debt as a part of internal debt.
Ikaalisten municipal has practically 1 million les funds, and has not increased investments .
In´the national registers this will lead to a situationwhere the national debt is decreased and the surplus increased.
Helsinki city did this same procedure in 2010 with a sum of 950 millions.
All together it is estimated that municipals have reorganized their assets with a sum of 20 billions.

Our wellfare state does not exist. we only pretend to be a wellfare state with lended money.

Best regards Torsti Forsman
P.S
I have endless examles equal to this regarding national accounts.

“Says who? Preservation depends on whether people value something enough or not to preserve it? Preservation of anything per se is nonsense.”

This was in response to the suggestion that artists of old didn’t need academic education to produce their art (which itself was mere hair-splitting; historically artists certainly did apprenticeships etc which universities etc have now replaced, but that’s beside the point) and I only pointed out that old things deemed worth preserving also need expertise to preserve them.

As to your claim that preservation in itself is nonsense I can only disagree with puzzlement; to me it is clear that simply because something has fallen out of use and/or fashion, it still might be a good idea to preserve a sample for later generations so that they can learn what was before them, take inspiration and maybe even learn not to repeat the old mistakes. I think that museums and archives should continue to preserve eg. all historical religious texts because.

But again, I suspect that without a price tag You’re not interested.

“Art is a service just like any other. People vary in how much they value it. I love music, for example, so I pay for it more than I pay for seeing abstract paintings. If no one values music, it will disappear.
[…]
“I despise the stupid mindless TV shows we’re fed with, pop music etc.”

Might that not have anything to do with culture being driven by the bottom line, ie. reducing culture to the lowest common denominator for maximising your audience and therefore the profit?

“By the bureaucrat, state,”

Hath not a bureaucrat eyes; hath not a bureaucrat hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer that a You are? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? If you poison them, do we not die?
(with apologies…)

Once you class bureaucrats as the enemy of the people in order to justify smaller state, rationality ends. Luckily this attitude hasn’t and isn’t taking hold in the Nordic nations who seem to be a pretty happy and healthy bunch.

Says who? Preservation depends on whether people value something enough or not to preserve it? Preservation of anything per se is nonsense.

I suspect, though, that on this website art might not deemed worthy of preservation unless someone is willing to do it on their own dime.

Art is a service just like any other. People vary in how much they value it. I love music, for example, so I pay for it more than I pay for seeing abstract paintings. If no one values music, it will disappear.

Once the decision is made that not only history…

By the bureaucrat, state, of course, and not through the market place.

I despise the stupid mindless TV shows we’re fed with, pop music etc. but I would never stooped so low as to dictate to others that my passion has the moral high ground and therefore deserves subsidies.

However, is it incorrect to say that these occupations are not valued or needed in the market place and therefore the only job these graduates can get is in public sector, perhaps creating even more of the same graduates in perpetuity?

This is because the government Mafia runs the healthcare and it is them who have to pay for your treatment if you get ran over by a car while cycling drunk or without a helmet – they take your responsibility and freedom away. This is precisely what will happen in USA if they won’t reverse their course – people will be banned from eating hamburgers, forced to exercise etc. Just wait for the Mafia-run or approved monopoly fitness centres.

Read about the Broken window fallacy.

Ha, as if there is any other valid reason to study something other than it being fun/interesting. Anyone who makes a decision about their education based on possible future income is already a failure in life.

Oh, wait, I forgot about all those people studying economics. Yeah, big remuneration potential there — for politically-connected Keynesians, anyway. Ha. Maybe the thousands of people who come to mises.org to learn legitimate economic theory aren’t actually interested or think it’s fun but rather believe that it’ll get them a good-paying job. Ha, again.

Compare that with any other nation on earth. Is Finland socialist? Maybe, maybe not. One thing you can say, they sure know how to produce and sell stuff to the world.

In 2009 the economy crashed, along with most of the nations of Europe. With an export-led economy you need trading partners. When they’re broke, you’re broke too.

The author says “The increasing deficits and national debts are not the result of a shortage of tax revenues.” But obviously they are a result of precisely that. In 2009, GNP fell by an unprecedented 7.8%. Tax revenues haven’t been curtailed? I think they have.
http://stat.fi/ajk/tiedotteet/2010/tiedote_003_2010-03-01_en.html

Finland will pull out of its tailspin as soon as its customers start buying again. It knows how to produce more competitively then just about any nation anywhere.

What we really need is a scientific way to test the actual difference
between a state-run system and a free one. So I propose that one
country in the world be designated as a free country where people
can be actually free to spend their money as they please on
education and health care. Then we can compare results directly.

Oops! Fatal flaw. People aren’t allowed to be free. Anywhere.

Never mind. : (

Next year, we Finns go to the polling stations to elect a new parliament. I hope the outcome of the election will reflect this important and new-found realization.

If you spend any time studying the internal workings of political parties and the way that elections are planned, executed and counted, you will find that there is virtually no chance of any positive change resulting from your next election. To put it simply, the statists have a million tricks and if those tricks are ever stymied, they will invent a million more.

One of the reasons for this is that the people who are preyed upon by government, by definition, have real jobs and real responsibilities. They are too busy to sit around thinking of how to organize politically and win an election. But the government parasites have literally nothing better to do than to sit around all day making schemes to steal the wealth of the gainfully employed.If by some chance you ever succeed in electing a government which campaigned on a platform of fiscal responsibility, you will very quickly have the wool pulled from your eyes. The leaders of that party will be revealed as liars and hypocrites, or you will find that they are the dupes and puppets of back-room political manipulators. Or even if they are sincerely devoted to fiscal reform, they will be neutralized if not destroyed by political, legal and even terroristic action taken by the government parasites who cannot imagine how they would make a living in the real world.

And what if your fiscally responsible (sounding) candidates are not elected? Then your vote for them, your participation in the system, will be interpreted by the statists as a concession to the principle that “winner takes all”. They will say, “If you had won you would have fired us from our government jobs, but we won so please give us your paycheck.”

I can’t say what is the best method for you to peacefully remove this unbearable weight of government parasites from your back, but I’m pretty sure that trying to vote the scoundrels out of office will have no effect. After all, voting is how you got into this mess.

For example, far from the problem being too many Colleges, the US has a third more proportionate to population and twice as many if one includes higher vocational schools. Despite alarmist news articles, the costs if one shops around are low to nothing. Perhaps a better argument is that Finland is actually underserved by the absence of more private schools, and the costs are higher than they should be?

It certainly seems Finland could do with a massive tax rate cut and review of how tax cases are handled at the least.