Finnish welfare state exploitation and the new meaning of ‘sisu’
After three and a half years in Finland I think I’ve finally realized the true meaning of [modern day] ‘sisu’: It’s when you work 60 hour weeks, often on weekends, for little pay, and most of your earnings eventually wind up in the hands of the state, every year they take more from your pockets, you live in a little apartment, drive a little rusty car, you can barely make ends meet, your family life and personal life suffers and you get “burned out” – Yet you still trudge on. THAT’s sisu. (yes, the meaning of sisu certainly has changed in recent years)
If you’re lazy, irresponsible, careless, incompetent, and don’t want to work – there’s no better place to be than Finland, cause if you act like that in the U.S….you’ll be out on your ass. In Finland, the state knows they can keep taking more and more from middle and upper income individuals/families, and they’ll keep working even harder. I have trouble understanding why Finns do it, the cheese at the end of the rope just isn’t big enough. It’s that Finnish sisu that keeps people moving and motivated. The recognition and social status is payment enough to keep Finland’s more productive citizens progressing (and trust you me, I am NOT one of those productive citizens). Here’s what I mean…
When job satisfaction is high, personnel generally do not mind hard work. In a study commissioned by the Ministry of Labour, University of Helsinki researcher Juha Antila interviewed 2,856 people in 2003 and 2004. The clear message of the responses was that the sense that a job has meaning is the highest priority. For a job to be seen as meaningful, a boss needs to have an understanding of his or her tasks, and the content of the work should be sensible. Having a positive view of a job is seen as more rewarding than a fat paycheck. [...]“People expect more of their jobs, and they work for more than just money”, Antila explains.
Now there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s great that people are more interested in a rewarding job rather than a nice paycheck – but they should have both! This is where the welfare state exploitation comes in, the state knows its citizens are naive enough to work hard no matter what. That’s exploitation. Those two Turkish chefs didn’t get their fair share and either do a lot of typical middle and upper income Finns.
I’ve never heard of so many people “burning out” until I moved to Finland – I’m sure it happens everywhere but it seems to be quite a phenomenon in Finland. Why don’t we hear about Americans getting getting burned out as much. Do Americans just hide these feelings better? Or do Americans just get the proper compensation they deserve? I try to think about how quickly I’d get burned out if I was working 60 hour weeks getting 30K/year versus 60K/year.
And maybe it’s just the IT industry in Finland but has anyone else noticed this salary threshold, whereby you make ‘x’ amount of money and you don’t have to do shit – But if you take that promotion you’re suddenly working 60 hour weeks plus weekends and getting an extra 50e per month after taxes. Crossing that threshold is a difficult, but necessary task for any ambitious person.
And please don’t take this post as some sort of pro-America thing. We’re comparing middle and higher income people in Finland vs. the U.S. How about we take that large group of lower-middle income Americans – The ones who make too much money to receive any state support, but too poor to afford any proper healthcare or much else. That is one group who are much more prosperous in Finland. I just don’t understand why we can’t as a society have this prosperity at all levels.
