Antti, we may not see eye to eye on a lot of things, but your insights on this and on a lot of other things are quite refreshing.

Wait, the state pays because the deadbeat father can, but doesn’t want to support his own kids? Great.

Redistribution of wealth in Finland is just perfect.

Well what about those poor people just over our borders? It’s okay just to ignore them so Eija can get her three degrees and her ex-husband can paint all day long and take government-sponsored vacations?

For Swizerland I cant really say anything – other that its strenghts lie in somewhere different than Finland’s.

I know that France and pals are quite annoying. But I feel that being part of EU still brings good things, that outweight the bad.

Erja H. live in middle Finalnd in a smaller town. She is employed by the city and would otherwise she would be unemployed. Her salary is partly subsidized with money from our taxes. She doesn’t earn too much, but she enjoys the quality of her life.

She is working as farm aid to give the farmer family an opportunity to have some holidays away from the farm. The farm is heavily subsidized with our tax money because Finland agreed on less agricultural subsidies and money saved for other services will be utilized for agriculture subsidies instead of lowering taxes. That’s ok because Finns would be starving without the superior Finnish agriculture products (they have to be superior, or why would anybody pay double the price for a Finnish tomato compared to a Durch one).

Since Kaisa’s salary is low, she gets a housing subsidy from the Kela, which is also paid from our tax money.

Erja is running a local knitting club, for which she receives state funding (which is paid from our tax money), she can’t move away from the little village, even though she has graduated in Egyptology, Paleontology and Herbology (free education paid with our taxes) and might find a job elsewhere.

Another reason form not moving away are her 3 children. She wants their natural father to be close to them, even though this is not known officially. She gets the alimentary from KELA (our tax money) because the father is an artist and she doesn’t want to take his money.

Because she is so poor, KELA pays her a week of holiday in a summer cottage somewhere in Finland (paid with our tax money)

I think everybody should do that. There will always a few Finnish people, who think they can get rich here and live their lifes in this illusion.

It has nothing to do with the welfare state. A hospital, which are found all over the world, welfare state or not, saved my life. Your logic is like saying that the American military saved prisonrs at Guantanamo Bay because they feed them three times a day.

But could we say the Finnish welfare saved your life indeed? I guess an untreated appendix problem might be lethal.

MM

I went to Diacor first, they couldn’t do it. Nokia was footing the bill, so trust me, I wanted Diacor to do it.

In fact, in addition to our low self-esteem which caused parts of our majority to opt for EU membership so that we could finally be “Europeans” and other nonsensical arguments, one of the core reasons behind the decision was the unconscious manouevering behind the scenes by officials. No, this is no conspiracy theory, just think about it yourself. For your typical Finnish bureaucrat with a low self-esteem suddenly all the doors were opened for interesting posts abroad just in case Finland joined this club. It really takes a spine in these situations to resist the temptation and see things more clearly, and differantiate between the goof for the nation and your own personal benefits.

In one of my previous jobs, I was also involved in EU affairs and noticed my antagonism kind of decreased due to meeting with these issues on a regular basis and starting to think about them as a normal part of my life. In cases like that, you lose the perspective and slowly start getting blind.

As for the benefits, no catastrophe would ever have happened if we hadn’t joined. There was real scaremongering in Norway as well and yes, they’re doing very well. And before anyone puts afore here the oil argument, I can also point out that Switzerland and Iceland have neither and are also doing well – well, Iceland until it all ends up as it did in Finland in the early 90s. Also remember the scaremongering what would happen in Sweden if the “stupid citizens” voted against the Euro. Now, the non-Euro users among the older EU15, UK, Sweden and Denmark are doing better than Euro users, once again contrary to taistoite-like propaganda of the Euro freaks.

Finally, caring about our neighbours has no connection to being an EU member. Finland gave lots of money for example to the Balts before we joined the EU, after we joined but the Balts still weren’t in and is now indirectly contributing again after we’re both in. The so-called neighbouring area cooperation (read: giving money to Russians) goes on although Russia has no realistic chances of becoming an EU member for a long time.

Ireland surely is a success story partly because of long-term EU funding. I don’t deny that. On the other hand, just pouring money in doesn’t always help. Think about the former GDR and the amount of money the Wessis and EU have invested there.

MM

It would be cool if neighbors were doing better.

How much has Finland won thanks to common currency and EU membership? Jobs, comissions, projects… Not to mention the additional political power of actually being INVOLVED with something and not just covering at the corner and whispering “dont hit me”.

We talk here about reasonable amounts, among others, for health care, education, security, culture (not zillions for Opera etc.) and there’s nothing wrong with that. How much is used for what and so on is no absolute truth and that’s what we must discuss ourselves.

Although I’m anti-EU and would like Finland to never have joined the union and would rather see us out of there, as long as we are members, it’s a reality that we must pay a membership fee (how much is however subject to discussion). If reasonable, there’s per se nothing wrong with using the membership I also pay unwillingly to support less-off parts of the EU. However, there’s no doubt that how the EU actually uses the money is seriously questionable. Take the examples I wrote above. Neither does it make any sense to recycle Finnish taxpayer money back to Finland through Brussels to end up in zillions of useless projects which are one of the reasons for educated youngish Finns ending up in living in funding cycles to get a living.

I don’t simply know how many people there are out there who’d really think redistribution is OK within Finland but not OK within the EU. The world’s not that black and white. Both within Finland and the EU money is used for good ends and wasted in uselessness.

MM

My past companies in the U.S. paid for full coverage, so I dunno.

It makes it harder to take your wide-eyed libertarianism quite so seriously though!

Why? I’ve paid alot in taxes, I’ll take any chance I can get to get some of that back.

It makes it harder to take your wide-eyed libertarianism quite so seriously though! Would your health insurance have gone up if you had been in the US? Do health plans have the equivalent of a “no claims bonus” like on your car?