Passing by,

The politicians are “dragging their feet” concerning

- car tax
- land tax
- construction permit reform
- alcohol monopoly
- gambling monopoly
- immigration reform

because each of these issues serves the politicians’ own interests best when the situation stays at its current state.

Why would the politician give up on the lucrative control of money flows, when the median voter still believes that the current Finland is the best possible one? You can read from this blog’s discussions how vehemently quite many people support the basic belief that this socialist inefficiency is the price an individual has to pay for a rule of law and relative safety.

The politicians’ interest concerning these issues is to make the median voter believe that each politician is doing everything possible to look after the voter’s interest, while in reality keeping the situation basically unchanged or worsening to the voter.

The current non-socialist government, ostensibly pro-market, seems determined to:
- increase taxes collected from cars and driving, but not really caring if the measures clean the air
- limit the competition between local governments and therefore
bolster further the construction regulation leading to
- higher priced cost of housing and
- increases in tax on real estate
- hike the alcohol taxes and therefore bolster the state monopoly
- fight the EU attempts to break the state gambling monopoly
- deport the few uninformed immigrants / refugees attempting to join our economy. With the exeception that they have a pre-arranged job before arriving to the country, like the Thai berry pickers or Indian IT experts. The gastarbeiter-idea is very alive and well.

But again, it is nices to keep the basic belief that the politbyro is there to serve us, not to suck us.

No, if you had your “smart” glasses on, you would have read the exact opposite.

Unlike you, I don’t have a mercantilistic/protectionistic view of the global marketplace. We’re all for sale here and it’s up to us to make the best of it.

With that money in our account, it’s no wonder we go on a spending spree…

Life in Finland is astonishingly uncomplicated, very safe, and everyone is trusted by default. Try to order k€20 worth of building materials by phone in any country; let me suggest: Germany. Here you get it delivered and billed with no other questions asked except for the address. Oral agreements are honoured – I first felt that very scary, but later we had our summer house built that way.

i am not claiming that Finland is a paradise, and we have experienced some problems here. Nevertheless, this is a damn good little country.

We have now ex-state company “Neste oil” being put in the same bag…:
The Finnish Competition Authority says Neste Oil must change fuel distribution agreements with service stations. An investigation shows most of the deals are against current legislation governing competition.

What i like is that they investigate when the harm is already done (i.e Same as the US did in Microsoft vs Netscape…)

Can one explain to me why is that politicians are dragging their feet concerning :
– Car tax
– Land tax
– Construction Permit reform
– Alcohol monopoly
– Gambling monopoly
– Immigration reform

The finnish economy could have been good if the fondation was rock solid but it’s not since this government is far too much controling it trying to inject or withdrew liquidity through various TAX or financial tricks…It’s on the way of improving but its progress could be badly hurt if not done fast..as time is running out.

The economy as it is today is surrounded by risks :
– China/India overheating
– Households over endebted
– Stocks (funds – finnish funds) being funded by wall of liquidity created artificially (yen carry trade, credit derivative etc…)
– mass retirement : not as people say, lots of money will be inherited…untrue.. lots of money needed to take care and fund the retiree
– Ridiculous Car tax (;->), cartels (S-K- Markets, Kone, etc…)

It is true that the finish economy “belongs to foreigner”…or “stolen”…in fact, if you remove direct foreign investment in Finland you get a total collapse of the economy as any way other economies will do too.

“Communist money”….i heard that russians are slowly buying the best lands in Finland…they are flush of money… i think they could if they wanted to, buy all the interesting assets in Finland except Nokia which has already been sold to US i think.

Not only does the Finland face its own subprime crisis, it could be far worse than in the U.S.

With higher interest rates yet to have their full effect, mortgage arrears are likely to rise further, while unsecured bad debt might start to rise again too