[cloud8]

Suomessa sataa paljon lunta myös.

[Revolting cat!]

But it's so damn cold there and the language is related to (?!) Hungarian!

[wideawake]

A poverty-stricken land of poorly educated loggers and farmers on the edge of the Arctic Circle, few paid it any attention.

Finland in 1955 was neither poverty-stricken nor were its people poorly educated.

The author is an idiot.

[uscit]

What they need is a few million third-world immigrants. Let's see how high they rank then.

[Red Badger]

"If you are Finnish, you've won the lottery."

If you are Finnish, you are finished.............

[aft_lizard]

As more and more Islamists invade Europe even Finlands system will come under duress. Besides that its alot easier to maintain a nanny state in a country with a population smaller than 6 million people.

[M203M4]

What kind of debt are they carrying?

[Mr. Mojo]

It's quite easy to maintain social order in small, homogeneous populations that don't mind being taxed up the yin-yang.

[Eurotwit]

bookmark

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Linus Torvalds is a Fin.

This makes Finland the epicenter of the Open Source movement.

[wickedpinto]

I pride myself on my ability to say this in as many languages as possible. I hope it is taken as the joke that it is.

btw, correct the spelling. "tulle issukille"

[monday]

Socialism never works in the long run. The more extreme forms last the shortest amount of time, less extreme forms last longer but collapse eventually. The problem is human nature. Communism has never figured out how to change human nature.

It would be immensely more frightening if it did. Imagine a world filled with state programed robots. Finlanders seem mostly content to be state programed robots for now, but there is no such thing as utopia. As the article noted, there are already cracks beginning to show.

[tomjohn77]

I think all the Nordic countries placed in top 10 when it came to competitiveness.

[elbucko]

It helps, of course, that Finland's population of 5.3 million is largely homogenous, with a 6 percent Swedish minority and no significant immigration.

Yes it does. Consider this:

The US Census Dept. estimates for 2004 are 9,937,739 for Los Angeles County and 35,893,799 for the State of California.

To even imply that Finland's social and political model is do-able in the "melting pot" of the USA is ludicrous.

[Nonstatist]

the early 1990s that saw GDP fall 13 percent in three years and unemployment climb to 17.9 percent.

The public health system in Helsinki is overcrowded with older Finns. "You wait a long time to see a doctor, and then you don't see him for very long," . Pensions have risen by only three percent in real terms since 1993 - ten times more slowly than wages. Many jobs lost in the crisis have not been replaced, and unemployment stands at 8.6 percent.

Doesent sound that great to me.

[facedown]

And once Nokia gets knocked over, the whole house of cards will come falling down.

[socal_parrot]

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
It's the country for me.

You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan.
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I want to be,
Eating breakfast or dinner,
Or snack lunch in the hall.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
Finland has it all.

You're so sadly neglected,
And often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
Finland has it all.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
The country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland,
Finland has it all.

[Meldrim]

"And when they retire they can look forward to generous pensions that amount, for the average Finn, to 60 percent of their last salary."

Kotlikoff. "The Coming Generational Storm". Sorry, the "generous pension" myth is just that; it is not actuarially sound. The government(s) won't be providing generous pensions in anything other than inflated currency.