I was honored to show Ambassador Pekka Lintu of Finland around my home state of Vermont this week. We met with a large number of students and faculty at the University of Vermont, sat down with leaders of the business community, and hosted a town meeting in the evening in front of a standing-room-only crowd.
Why did I ask the Ambassador from Finland, Pekka Lintu, to come to Vermont to talk a little bit about his country? The answer is pretty simple. We as a state and nation should do our very best to learn as much as possible about the best kind of economic and social models that exist throughout the world and, where these models make sense, we should see how we can adopt them to this state and this country. This is especially true today when the United States faces so many difficult problems.
It is no secret to anyone in Vermont that the American economy today is in pretty serious trouble: that the middle class is shrinking, poverty is increasing and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider. It is also true that despite all the rhetoric about “family values,” the American worker now works the longest hours of anyone in a major country, and that many of our families are stressed out and exhausted.
It is no secret that our health care system is disintegrating, that 47 million Americans have no health insurance and, despite that, we spend twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation – 14 percent of our GDP.
It is no secret that the way we treat our children is nothing less than shameful; that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world; that our childcare system is totally inadequate; that too many of our kids drop out of school, and that the cost of college is increasingly unaffordable. And, in my view, one of the results of how we neglect many of our children is that we end up with more people behind bars, in jail, than any other country on earth. There is a correlation between the highest rate of childhood poverty and the highest rate of incarceration.
In talking about the United States and Finland, we should be very clear that these are two very, very different countries. Finland has a population of 5.2 million people. We are over 300 million. Finland has a very homogenous population. We are extremely diverse. Almost all of us have come from somewhere else in the not too distant past. Finland is the size of Montana. We stretch 3,000 miles from coast to coast, plus Alaska and Hawaii.
And yet, as we acknowledge the difference we should also acknowledge that we are all human beings with very much the same DNA, the same kind of intelligence and the same human needs.
In that context, we should ask how does it happen that in Finland they have virtually abolished childhood poverty, have free high-quality child care, free college and graduate school education and have, according to international reports, the best primary and secondary educational system in the world? Is there something that we can learn from that model?
In Finland, a high-quality national health care program exists which provides almost free health care for all – and ends up costing about half as much per capita as our system. In Finland, when students become doctors and nurses they leave school debt free – because there are no costs in going to school. Is there something that we can learn from that model?
In Finland, in the midst of having one of the most competitive economies in the world, 80 percent of workers there belong to unions and the benefits that workers receive there, such as unemployment compensation, dwarf what workers in this country receive. One statistic that I found particularly interesting is that in Finland workers receive 30 days paid vacation, plus ten national holidays.
Let us be clear. Finland is no utopia and it has its share of problems. Not so many years ago, in fact, Finland had a very severe economic downturn and its economy today is not immune to what happens in the rest of the world.
Having said that, there is no question that Finland, as well as other Scandinavian countries, have much to be proud of. When one thinks about the long march of human history, it is no small thing that countries now exist, like Finland, which operate under egalitarian principles, which have virtually abolished poverty, which provide almost-free, quality health care to all their people, and provide free, high-quality education from child care to graduate school. These are models, it seems to me, that we can learn from.
Bernie Sanders is the independent U.S. Senator from Vermont. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. He is a member of the Senate's Budget, Veterans, Environment, Energy, and H.E.L.P. (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) committees.
Barry Sanders is great and I could see him doing OK in Kansas--Dan Glickman was in Wichita for years. We have had other progressives. The problem with Kansas and most other states is getting on the ballot. The parties that control the state block everyone else by making very short periods for collecting signatures, etc.
Thank you for another example of how the avoidance of groupthink can point the way to solutions to intransigent problems. I realize that you must often feel like Sisyphus pushing a mountain up a sheer cliff, but please hang in there. All things, even mountains, even Washington's hardest heads, will wear down over time.
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John Sanchez Jr. (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 1266 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 12:43:19 PM
Not quite. I admit that it has been some years since I've been to Finland, but not enough that I believe it has become utopia.
While living in Sweden, I traveled to the Finnish interior city of Kuopio, to spend time with a Finnish girlfriend who I met while she was being educated at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
The trains were still smoke belching wood fed monsters due to the abundance of wood and financial constraints. My girlfriend lived in an apartment with her parents, adult brother and his live in girlfriend, in a generational rental arrangement. A common arrangement.
Crime, alcoholism and taxes are high. Divorce rates are also high. Finland suffers from a lack of resources...except for trees. The age demographics are such that the aging population has become a drain which challenges the continuation of the social welfare state.
All men are conscripted into the military. Education for residents is in fact free and supported by taxes. A social security type payment is provided to young people attending school or who are unemployed.
Costs of doing business are extremely high due to taxes. As electronics are produced at ever lower prices in Asia, concern runs high for companies such as Nokia, who are finding it more difficult to compete.
I will give Mr. Sanders a kudo for comparing the size and population of Finland with that of Montana, with the exception that the north of Finland (Lapland) lies above the Arctic circle. Comparisons of 5 million to 300 million people has its issues.
However, he should have also compared the average living standards and the circling economic woes that Finland faces. Utopia, it's not.
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Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 5:01:04 PM
To Mike Fokerth ... Lets Compare Finland to Alaska where you used to live! Alcoholism? Crime? Suicide? Divorce? There is more in Alaska than in Finland ....without health care, EDUCATION, top ten standard of living in the world. So Finns use wood and Alaskans use oil .. whats the difference? Lets have conscription here .. send those Bush Girls to IRAQ... OK? Please tell us how life in rural Mississippi with teenage pregnancy, domestic violence and poverty is better than Scandinavia!! At least they get a return on their taxes. Paul
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paulocurry (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 12 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 6:09:25 PM
Ending the ownership classes, the mega corporations and creating a more socially responsible form of capitalism, one that is responsive to the people, or their charters are revoked and their assets given to socially responsible companies is the way to go.
Creating a bottom to our society, one that no one ever need fear fall through. With health care, mental health care, education and robust social programs including child care.
We should be experiencing a "technology dividend" where people are working less, have more vacation time, and more time to spend with their families, participating in community and the political process.
Companies should be run democratically, with the upper management selected from the workers, not appointed by the ownership class. The top down hierarchies should be replaced with bottom up democratic management models, that are participatory.
Not run by the owners, the elite and the 1%.
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August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 458 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 9:07:18 PM
There is definitely a germ of an idea in the last poster's comments. Why shouldn't the licenses to use American in situ oil or lumber or minerals (ie all natural resources) not have inbedded in them the desired social benefits that companies utilizing people owned resources should give back for utilizing those resources?
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Archie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1273 comments)
on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 11:36:11 PM
I also recently read that a number of these Scandinavian countries faced a similar banking crisis in the early nineties..but unlike in Bush's Amurka, they solved it by taking out it of the hides of the CEO's and stockholders, instead of working peoples' taxes!
Now, that makes SENSE!
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Bia Winter (1 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 169 comments)
on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 6:55:43 AM
We chose our government exactly the way you that prescribe running our businesses. The people vote; they would vote for those who promised most and delivered least...just as we do now.
The unions selected their leaders in the same way, the leaders got fat, the workers got unemployment checks.
The human condition cannot be omitted from planing.
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Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments)
on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 9:32:19 AM
You totally missed my point. I was pointing out that Finland was not a utopian state, and you were quick to point out that Alaska wasn't either. I would disagree with you regarding Alaska, but we all have our opinions.
I see that you lived in Sweden, why didn't you stay, why suffer the ills of the U.S.?
Immigration is new to Finland you know? Until the late 1980s, more people wished to leave than enter. I suppose they just couldn't take any more of the fun and prosperity. Those who enter today tend to refugees and those escaping Russia and Estonia (56% of all immigration).
The U.S. has it's problems to be sure; my original point was that Finland also has theirs.
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Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 566 comments)
on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 11:24:41 AM
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