However, compared with my current stay in Brussels, I noticed that the society in general hadn’t truly accepted me. Whereas those closest to me treat me like “one of them”, as soon as I was on my own people would be suspicious, or even downright hostile. Why? I guess because I look different. I have brown skin and dark eyes and hair, and my features are very non-descript (people usually can’t guess that I was born in Mexico, at times I’ve been told I’m Spanish, Portuguese, Arab, Turkish and even half-Finnish half-Thai).

Even though I’m currently abroad, I plan to eventually come back to Finland to raise our children there, and in time I would like to apply for citizenship out of gratitude. However, I sometimes have my doubts about whether all the effort to integrate is worth it, since I’m afraid I’ll always find somebody shouting at me “Vittun turkkilaien, mene kotiin!”

Meanwhile, mulilingual westerners who mean well and thought they should follow Richard Florida’s statement about Finland end up experiencing relentless harassment by average citizens and bureaucrats alike because they pocket more than the average Finn does. The language issue is a moot point, as Fred Fry said. Come to this Anglophile country and miss the job because you don’t speak Finnish. Learn Finnish and be told that you also need Swedish. Prata pÃ¥ svenska and you’ll become a national embarassment to every Finn who nearly flunked pakkoruotsi. Basically, no matter how positive and pro-active someone can be, the average Finn’s low self-esteem and interpretation of equality as meaning “sibling in misery” – to the point of sabotaging the success of others – is what eventually pisses every foreigner off to the point of swearing that the Soviets ought to have invaded these petty peasants when they had a chance.

Mara:

“But unlike in the UK, people in FI believe — against their own experience and published data, but along with the politically correct dogma — that trains are a reliable and economical way to travel. My personal bet is, that were the exact same service provided by a private provider and the same subsidies consumed by it, the public sentiment would be described as “outrage”.”

The thing about railways is that they are actually not a very profitable business anyway. In fact, in themselves they are a losing concern. A national railway grid is a big, cumbersome and necessarily integrated transport system. It ties down a lot of capital in railtracks, real estate, equiptment etc. etc., and you just can’t break it down to smaller components and expect them ALL to be profitable: even when the more profitable parts are used to support the system, it may need to be subsidized to stay financially afloat. In my opinion, in today’s world the railways should not be seen as a “business”, but as a organisation that supports the workings of the larger society and it’s economy.

If different lines, now, are run by different companies, most economies of scale and other benefits of the integrated system are lost and problems abound: to work in a reasonable manner, a railway system needs a central planning authority and mutually compatible systems like for example a standardized rolling stock. This is a natural monopoly if there really is such a thing.

This all has been common knowledge for, what, more than a century now. You would think that the private sector would be happy to let nationalized monopoly companies to run this kind of system that promises very little rewards for your troubles in itself, but is eminently usable for the larger economy for transporting goods in large quantities and mostly on time (if everything is done right).

The moves to privatize railways should be seen as what they are: ideological offensives by people why can not or will not accept the fact that some things CAN be run by the public sector for greater overall benefit (or at least for lesser problems) for the society. The privatization of British Rail is of course the prime example of how – God forbid! – in some cases the market liberal orthodoxy can also be wrong.

On the general EuropeMuslim theme, a couple of things I thought appropriate to share here:
Iranian newspaper calls for Holocaust cartoons
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11216508/

Jewish site also calls for anti-semetic cartoons, made by Jews:
http://www.boomka.org/

Gotta love this world. ^_^

-BM

But Phil actually uses both: libertarian in the American sense and liberal in the Finnish sense. I’ve understood he’s quite a liberal sort of a libertarian (not e.g. anarcho-capitalist). Liberal has so many senses in Finland and not even all people in the tiny Liberal Party stand for the same ideology (just like libertarian in America stands for many things).

Anna, for a person who tries to avoid conversations with libertarians you are surprisingly active on this blog site, which I would classify as one with a libertarian bend.

I have masochistic tendencies. Also, I’m trying to avoid doing any real work.

More to the point, I wasn’t actually sure whether this blog was libertarian or liberal (in the Finnish sense, not in the American leftie sense), so thanks for clearing that up.

I gather you are renting your dwelling in the UK. If you owned it, you probably would be interested to use some part of your higher-than-Finnish-average-purchasing-power to invest in a plumbing renovation job and some window insulation

Yes, that would be the plan. As soon as I’ve got rid of the mouse living in the basement.

I thought you meant overall standard of living, not standard of living for those who have the money.

The point about the statistics was that the current Finnish standard of living is lower than what we like to believe it is.

I think we had a misunderstanding there. I didn’t realise you meant the standard of living of the rich.

Whether one believes that the way up from there is through high taxation and transfers or rewarding individual effort, is a bit beside the point. As is the association of Risto E. J. Penttilä with the study and then refuting the statistics based on your dislike of Penttilä’s political views.

I was referring to the preface of the study when I made the association to the Penttilä category. As I said, it was highly revealing. The preface did state the necessity of liberating economies, tax reform (cuts) etc., so I did not just come up with it.

Finns do drive the oldest cars of all EU15 countries

Now there Finland does have a taxation problem.

Wouldn’t most people prefer to work in a job, that they know is paying a regular market wage, rather than work in a subsidized, low-status, temporary project job (that ends the moment the subsidy ends)?

Ah, this one. No, I don’t think people would like work in a job paying a regular market wage, if that means that the wage is lower than they otherwise would have (or did you assume legislation on a minimum wage?). What people then should do of course is another thing, but almost all political theories would prefer them to agree.

On the health care front, the state declared that the municipalities have to provide a “guaranteed access to care” within 6 months of first patient contact.

As you mention in your comment, how health care is actually organised and provided depends slightly on the municipality. There are regions in Finland where the population is ageing faster than national average, and where the health sector is just not equipped to handle the growing demand for specialist treatment.

Also there is a grave distortion in the financing of it (unless it’s been changed now but I doubt it), as special care (erikoissairaanhoito, I’m having difficulties translating that) financing comes from municipal (flat) tax, and not state (progressive) tax, to put it simply. The financing of it is mostly a jungle as anyone who has ever been involved would know.

As for private hospitals, it is my understanding that some of the problems HUS is facing in Helsinki nowadays come in the form of patients requiring expensive operations sent to them from the private sector, as the care they require is unprofitable to offer.

As for the railways…have you been to the UK? Took a train? It’s quite normal for a train to be appallingly late here of course, no-one has the energy to make a fuss about it. Of course it’s also horribly expensive, even if you should happen to get a discount (you actually have to pay for the discount railcard). So, also, you take a train after work from London, intending to go home to, say, Wolsey, and the train stops at the station but the doors won’t open. So yeah, you end up in Oxford. No biggie, won’t make the headlines. And my all time favourite, the disappearing trains. You’re in Birmingham, waiting for a train from Edinburgh (would have had to depart hours before) and first they inform you it’s delayed by ten minutes, ten minutes later it’s delayed by twenty, and after half an hour they let you know the service has been cancelled. And this is not something that happens only every couple of months.

So, uhmm, yes, trains in Finland are occasionally late. At times it is indeed because of the weather. More often it is (I’ve heard) because there are talks going on between the employer and the employees, so the employees “do things by the book”.

And yes, the state subsidises VR, but the problem with not subsidising would mainly be the fact that only 2-3 routes in Finland are actually profitable. (Commuter trains in the Helsinki area, Helsinki-Turku and Helsinki-Oulu.)

Oo, update, I now have a dead mouse in the basement. Better go take care of it.

There are several parts of your post that warrant comments, but as I’m supposed to be adding to the GDP right now, I’ll just have to skip them and concentrate on the railway issue.

As for the railways, the Finnish newspapers are frequently reporting delays in rail service

Based on my recent experience of the UK rail service, I can say that trains not running on time is newsworthy in Finland. In the UK, quite the opposite is true. (As a matter of fact, on the London underground, they take the time to inform you of the exceptional situation of good service on all lines…)

We decided to pay a little visit to London a little while ago, and being a poor sod, I opted for Ryanair. Now, Ryanair (as well as the other cheap airlines I’ve tried) offers very good value for money, so here we have an example of the free market working like a charm.

The only problem is that it lands on Stansted at the other end. Oh well, one only needs to dig deep into ones pockets and fork out a modest 25£ per person for a return ticket on the Stansted “Express”. At this price, I envisioned an ultra-modern “bullet train” that would whisk us to central London in no time at 200 km/h.

The beat-up POS that was the Stansted “Express” certainly made the old Soviet-style Sm2 VR local trains look like ultra-modern bullet trains. I’m not even mentioning the newer Sm4 trains. Pictures here (PDF). The trip to London went fine, if we don’t take into account waiting for a wonderful free-market cab that didn’t accept credit cards in rather chilly weather for about an hour. (Getting a regulated cab that always takes plastic – often a Mercedes – for half the price in Helsinki on a Saturday night around midnight would take about 10 minutes and frequently you get one immediately)

Now, the return trip was something different altogether. For some reason, the Stansted “Express” decided to stop on just about every stop along the way, picking up more and more passengers. On every stop, the loudspeakers would inform us that the train only stopped on Stansted airport. Go figure. Perhaps the driver was a libertarian.

As it happens, the “Express” was about 20 minutes late. This cost us our tax-free shopping (which should grieve libertarians) and we were quite close to missing the flight altogether, which is a no-no when flying cheap airlines. I think I won’t take the Stansted “Express” another time.

The London-Stansted trip is almost exactly equal to the trip between Helsinki and Hyvinkää. The price of a single one-way ticket on the “Express” is £15, whereas a one-way ticket to Hyvinkää is €8.90 (£6.10). Furthermore, while trains might indeed occasionally be late in Finland, I’ve yet to encounter a driver mistaking an R train for a P train. After this experience, I no longer wonder about the life-threatening nature of travelling on UK trains. Cheers, Maggie.

To sum it up, I’m not ecstatic about the privatisation of railways.

Anna, for a person who tries to avoid conversations with libertarians you are surprisingly active on this blog site, which I would classify as one with a libertarian bend. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate your overcoming your distaste and continuing the communication. I enjoy reading your posts even if I disagree with you. ☺

And pardon the labeling, but you sound like a postmodern-era professional nomad, so I gather you are renting your dwelling in the UK. If you owned it, you probably would be interested to use some part of your higher-than-Finnish-average-purchasing-power to invest in a plumbing renovation job and some window insulation (the two traditional gripes that I know of British rental housing). If you have to pay for water and heat separately, it might be worth your while to see what insulation you can do on your own expense, even to a rental unit. Besides, your landlord would probably write a glowing reference for your next landlord in Italy.

About libertarians and their cruise missiles in garage:

I wouldn’t describe libertarians as “persons wanting the right to keep cruise missiles in their garage”. To my understanding, libertarians often support the “night watchman” role for the state. A state with tasks limited to those that clearly benefit everybody, but cannot be taken care of by a dispersed decision process. Tasks like providing state security (including administering cruise missiles), or enforcing the legal system by a state monopoly of violence. Libertarians, to my understanding, clearly support regulation of those necessary state monopolies. And if it so happened that the state could not efficiently regulate the state monopolies, libertarians would vouch for power balancing rights to the citizens to protect themselves against the out-of-control state monopoly.

For instance, the US constitution granted its citizens the right to bear arms because there was a clear understanding that the state (the former British one and the upcoming American one) could exercise “taxation without representation”, i.e. extortion. Since the new state could not provide protection against this threat, the next best alternative was to write a constitution that gave the citizens the right to provide that security for themselves. Later on, the interest groups — like all interest groups in all democracies — found it worthwhile to lobby for the continuation of that right, and have succeeded so far.

The libertarian “list of optimal state tasks” depends on the available technology, and naturally changes through time. In present day politics, I would not expect to find many libertarians to support the idea that the state could detain a person in prison for an undetermined time without charge, but at the same time I would not expect most libertarians to support pure anarchism. Your ideas of libertarians are obviously different.

About data bias and the impact of lower standard of living on immigration:

The statistics in the Swedish study are official state statistics of PPP-adjusted GDP. It didn’t occur to me to suspect that info. But of course states could lie to their citizens about national productivity. Soviet Union did, and China might be doing it right now, so why not Sweden, Finland and USA? ☺

The point about the statistics was that the current Finnish standard of living is lower than what we like to believe it is. Whether one believes that the way up from there is through high taxation and transfers or rewarding individual effort, is a bit beside the point. As is the association of Risto E. J. Penttilä with the study and then refuting the statistics based on your dislike of Penttilä’s political views.

I still maintain that the standard of living -statistics gives a good explanation to the disparity between the mental image of Finland as an attractive country for immigration, and the stark immigration statistics, which you yourself so eloquently cited. People quite often prefer a higher standard of living to a lower one, whether “people want always a new mercedes” or not. But since you mentioned cars, Finns do drive the oldest cars of all EU15 countries.

As also TomiA noted, the attractiveness of Finland for “non-creative class” is fairly good, about the EU15 average in terms of purchasing power. The problem for this group of people is that a sizable part of their jobs is on exodus to countries outside EU15. Those jobs include both industrial jobs and services, to the extent service outputs can be digitalized.

The ones that are to survive here are those that are more productive than the current average. So Finland’s hope rests even more squarely on attracting jobs that the state taxes so moderately, that it doesn’t kill them or drive them out of the country. And as part of the effort, yes, I do see tax reductions necessary.

Because otherwise we’ll be paying even more all kinds of employment subsidies and distorting the labor market even further. Wouldn’t most people prefer to work in a job, that they know is paying a regular market wage, rather than work in a subsidized, low-status, temporary project job (that ends the moment the subsidy ends)? I find it disturbing that people with professional or university degrees have to work in increasing numbers in these “support jobs”.

About Finnish public service experiences:

Maybe you have been away from Finland for so long that you have not experienced the current reality of Finnish public services. On the health care front, the state declared that the municipalities have to provide a “guaranteed access to care” within 6 months of first patient contact. In a caricature of implementation the guaranteed response turned out to be a phone call between the health provider and the patient within 6 months from the moment of contact. The outcome of the call was that the system now recognizes the patient’s need for care, and the patient will hear from them later on.

Some municipalities have transferred people in queues for hip or knee operations into physiotherapy, explaining that the better muscular condition will help them to recuperate after the operation. But after a while the patient finds out that his health has been officially re-evaluated to require the operation, but not immediately. And so the patient is back to square one in the queue for the operation. All the time everybody agrees that the patient clearly needs the operation, but the system can postpone it by few years, while the patient lives a very limited life. This “queue shuffle” with its variants seems to be a smash hit among the public admins. And private hospitals, which have no shortage of patients.

As for the railways, the Finnish newspapers are frequently reporting delays in rail service and the state railway company is giving explanations like “the temperature was -15 C, brakes could not handle that cold, could not run the trains”, “it was snowing, the track transmission could not handle snow, could not run the trains”, or in the summer: “weather was hot, the air con could not handle it, could not run the trains”. At the same time the state is pouring subsidies into the system (track admin, operator, and supplier of rolling stock) by hundreds of millions of euros every year.

But unlike in the UK, people in FI believe — against their own experience and published data, but along with the politically correct dogma — that trains are a reliable and economical way to travel. My personal bet is, that were the exact same service provided by a private provider and the same subsidies consumed by it, the public sentiment would be described as “outrage”.

Placing cultures geographically the way you do is pretty pointless but let’s say it’s worth while. In my opinion Finnish culture is first of all western. We have this “Scandinavian” idea of trusting the state to do what’s in our common interest, furthermore we have a strong “third sector”(that all is what you call “communal” perhaps). Sweden is, I suppose, the best example of such a mentality. Then we have this “eastern” tendency of not trusting “herroja” (it means masters or something like it) be they in Helsinki or Brussels (“individual culture” as you call it). And how else could it be in a national state that during most of its history has been ruled by “foreigners”. Then again, as I wrote, this is pretty pointless. In a established democracy things don’t just happen because of this or that arbitrary reason, let alone obscure “cultural trait”.

As for the myth – as you call it – of Finland being a rich country, well, Finland is a rich country but not among the very richest. Countries like Ireland, Norway, Denmark and the US are celearly richer. But perhaps Finland should not be compared to this top five or so but to what Finland used to be? Should we compare the third world Finland some 50 years ago to modern Finland which after all is among the 20 richest countries in the world? How did that happen? And how come the economy has been growin faster than the average for the past 50 years or so?

And yes, talking to libertarins, or any utopians, is frustrating.

I need to come clean.

First is was all about the oil, and I will now work every day to suck more and more out of Iraq.

Second, the USA is NOT the leader of the free world. rather we are the only folks out there with no real army and can’t even take over Iraq in good time (30 days was way to long folks).

Third, the USA caused Global Warming all by itself, and I pledge to send our old VP (Al Gore) out to say “He told you so”.

and the big one (5) fith – the USA economy sucks, and all those folks from China to UAE who are buying into the USA, I will pledge to quit growing our GDP at over 3% rates.

The other myth, a myth about “Finland as a rich Nordic country” is clarified by a study by Frederik Bergström and Robert Gidehag, “EU versus USA”

I try not to get too deep into conversations with libertarians, since I have noted it almost inevitably leads to absurdity (like debating whether everyone who wants to should really be allowed to keep cruise missiles in their garage or not). Libertarians tend to be very selective with their data and quite normative with their research. Now this is probably true of me as well, but I can’t really critisise my own views now can I By the look of that, the two gentlemen responsible for the study would I guess be of the Risto E J Penttilä calibre. The preface is quite revealing there actually, European economies need to be liberated (no doubt from the social democratic model), there needs to be reform (no doubt they mean tax cuts), people want always a new mercedes, the EU has let us down (it’s not really news that libertarians are bitter about the fact the EU has not developed into an all powerful supranational structure that would rule over its member states in economic matters as it was a self conscious entity of some sort; it is rather funny since the extreme left wing would be bitter about the fact that in their view the EU has developed just into that). So yeah, I’d say that study is a highly politically motivated one, but hey, if you have the same premises, then there’s no problem.

I know that listing these facts rises the inevitable counter argument about excellent public services. But I’m not so sure that the public services are really that much worse elsewhere.

Well, actually…ok, I’ve lived in the UK way too long now, and I’ve mostly had it with this country (I want to go somewhere warm next, maybe Italy). But in terms of services Finland does work better than this chaotic overly bureaucratic badly organised sad excuse for a public sector they have here. It’s all thanks to the indeciveness of course, let’s privatise the railways, let’s not, well, maybe just a bit, oops it’s not working, let’s pump some money into those firms so they won’t go bankrupt. And the railways are just the famous example.

I find it immensely funny that Labour is introducing legislation on ID cards as an anti-terrorist act. And of course most people are just appalled, how is it the government’s business to know who they are. I would find this all even more funny if I had never paid a £800 bill by sweeping my card without having to show any kind of identification to anyone.

I would say the standard of living is lower here. Yes, people have new shiny cars, but they live in absolute dumps by Finnish standards. You know you’ve spent too much time in Britain when you start thinking that having to adjust the temperature and pressure of your shower for ten minutes every morning is the way it should be.

The sender’s name /mail /website still doesn’t work.

Finland wants to be allways the “best pupil” of EU.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard this goverment will try it will never succeed.
After all, how can you expect any governments immigration program to succeed when we hate even our own Finnish, filthy rich capitalist bast…errr…neightbours ?
(And they equally or even more hate us, the working class that make those pigs rich!)
Does anybody REALLY think that we (the working class…not those rich, sons of bitches!) welcomes arms open and kissing masses of immigrants when we have enough problems with our own lives ???
Phil, I tell you this.
It’s HELL to live in the most capitalistic EU country !
It’s HELL to live in the country where an average political person IQ is equal to shrimp.
Just look what kind of persons we have…You will find ex-miss, singer, runner, etc…all that kind of folk.
Are they looking for ways to have more money for themselves? More than is reasonable for they job ? Yes!
Are they professional, experts or otherwise talented for their current jobs ? You must be kidding..!
Are they looking for ways to improve common mans life ? Yeah, right…Keep on dreaming!

Another thing:
I have never, NEVER , had an answer to why this goverment must allways search as far away as possible third world country for its helping programs.
Doesn’t we have enough poor and starving people closer to us ?
How about that we first start from our own citizens first and THEN worry about other people ?
If you do that backway around you can be sure as hell that some of us (especially the younger ones) will turn to pure, full of hate racists!

These are my thoughts, by the fine tradition of western democracy and freedom of speech.

P.S:
And Phil, if you sensorhip my rant you will burn in hell for all eternity!
I mean it.
But seriously, I still like your blog …