Opinion

Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise
Can high taxes be good for business? You bet. - NYT

A couple of paragraphs to wet the appetite:

In fact, a recent report by the chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management came to a surprising conclusion: The Nordic region is not only “just as business-friendly as the U.S.” but also better on key free-market indexes, including greater protection of private property, less impact on competition from government controls and more openness to trade and capital flows. According to the World Bank, doing business in Denmark and Norway is actually easier overall than it is in the United States.

Finland also has high levels of economic mobility across generations. A 2018 World Bank report revealed that children in Finland have a much better chance of escaping the economic class of their parents and pursuing their own success than do children in the United States.

 Proclivities wrote:
 
Interesting.

From the wikipage on suicides in Sweden which, once upon a time, garnered a fair bit of media attention in North America:

Sweden has a suicide rate which is below the OECD average.<1> During the 1960s, Sweden had one of the highest reported suicide rates among the most developed countries, but it declined as methods for measuring were standardized internationally.<2>

 aflanigan wrote: 
yeah but...

 Proclivities wrote: 
They really do have it all, don't they?

 miamizsun wrote: 
Finland is not technically part of Scandinavia.  They are apparently 35th in terms of suicide rates, below Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Japan - and several warm-weather nations.

 miamizsun wrote: 
Costa Rica and Panama are both on my watch list...

 helenofjoy wrote: 
i think a lot of the scandinavian countries score well on happiness surveys but have high suicide rates

go figure, but with suicide awareness rising i believe that rates would eventually decline

of course nothing is ever in a straight line

i haven't read much on their immigration policy except that it is somewhat strict and welfare handouts have been very generous

this may cause a sustainability issue

if i recall their economy is weaker than their neighbors (a service economy with not a lot of resources)

a better venue might be mexico or central or south america

dollars probably go farther and the weather might be easier on older bones  

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Wonder if they would accept an over 70 landscape painter as an immigrant. I'm ready.

Perhaps tired of winning, the United States falls in World Happiness rankings — again

Finnish clowns Loldiers of Odin mock anti-immigrant patrols by surrounding them in song
But the Soldiers of Odin didn't find it quite as funny

Spot the visitor from Finland:

 gambler wrote: 

Not even the possibility of listening to RP will drag us in there.  We'll take the laptop to Finland and pinch McD's wireless signal instead.

I heard RP playing in a Finnish Mickey D's. Don't ask why I was there.

"Little House on Prairie," adults-only version!

 

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland has rated the DVD release of the much-loved children's television series "Little House on the Prairie" suitable for adult viewing only.

To save money, Universal Pictures decided not to submit the series to state inspection, the company's Finland marketing manager Meri Suomela told Reuters on Wednesday.

Finnish authorities charge 2 euros ($2.57) per minute for assessing the correct age limit on films and television series. Distributors who forego this can only sell their shows with a sticker saying "Banned for under-18s."

"Long series can get quite expensive to check, and some use this exemption in the law to their advantage," said Matti Paloheimo, Director at the Finnish Board of Film Classification.

"Such unchecked material should not be shown to children publicly," he added.

Little House on the Prairie, which ran from 1974 to 1983, portrayed life in the U.S. West in the late 1800s and was based on the Laura Ingalls Wilder's children's book of the same name.

It remains popular in Finland, and is still shown weekly on Sunday mornings on state-owned broadcaster YLE.

(Reporting by Sakari Suoninen)

 

The Little House stories are known around the world. While chatting with a Thai woman in Bangkok a couple of years ago, her knowledge of the United States was obviously limited but when I said that I lived in Minnesota, she said, "Oh, yes! Walnut Grove, home of Laura Ingalls Wilder!"  Nellie Oleson might be a tart, but let's hope we never see a Thai adult version of Little House.