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Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by AndyMcConachie on Friday January 31, 2020 @07:51AM (#22201207)
What is Finland's advantage? Norway I get, it's oil. But Finland is just a well managed country without significant natural resources. Most of its industry is not related to extraction of resources.
Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by KarlKemp on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:03AM (#22201283)
Considering their mentioning of immigration, I fear (Edit: I was right, see replies) they see the the nordics‘ advantage as being almost entirely white.

That would not just be boorish, but also wrong: both Sweden and Morway (the two I just checked) have around 17% foreign-born residents, with more than half of those from outside the EU.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by ramblerman on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:21AM (#22201412)
Race has nothing to do with it.

Rather the question is, does importing radically different cultures, and low skilled labor bear a cost on the welfare state.

This is a cost that is probably acceptable, and necessary, but we should keep an eye on the practical limits.

Norway has far more money to spend, and Finland has far lower foreign cultural migration, so they don't make fair examples.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by champagneben on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:24AM (#22201437)
The unemployment rate for native Swedes is less than 4%. The unemployment rate for foreign-born Swedes is at around 20%. Regarding Sweden, from Wikipedia: 'First generation immigrants, for example, constituted 60% of economic welfare recipients in 2016, 73% of all unemployed and 53% of those serving long prison sentences.'
Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by croissants on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:23AM (#22201429)
This isn't a clear-cut "advantage", but Finland is much more ethnically homogeneous than America. Over 90% of people in Finland are ethnically Finnish. Heck, 70% of Finns belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland [1]. It's not anywhere near as diverse (and fractious) as the USA.

The USA has historically chosen "more immigration, less social services" and Finland has chosen "less immigration, more social services". "More immigration, more social services" seems to be a hard sell. For whatever reason people generally seem turned off when a welfare state spends money on people who they feel aren't like them.

To me it is a problem of convincing voters to spend money, not lacking money to spend. Convincing voters seems easier in a homogeneous place (whatever it was immediately after WWII, there seems to be a strong "we are Finns" culture now).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland#Demographics

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by Mediterraneo10 on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:37AM (#22201523)
> Heck, 70% of Finns belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland

70% of Finns are merely on the rolls of the Lutheran Church, which really only means that parents had their child baptised as a popular traditional ritual, not as a sign of devout belief. I would suggest that Christianity never penetrated the Finnish psyche as deep as certain other European states. In most Finnish communities the church is not a center of community life but simply a building that stands as a museum (in many localities there is no active church at all). Also, with the rise of the welfare state, Finns immediately abandoned the notion that the Lutheran Church has any significant role to play in the lives of the less fortunate. Finland’s state churches themselves have happily handed over almost all of their charitable role to the state.

And in that portion of the country which was traditionally Orthodox, support for the welfare state doesn’t noticeably differ from the Lutheran part.

If you want to claim that Finns make their welfare state work because of ethnic homogenity, that ethnic homogenity would have to be located somewhere else than religion.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by Nasrudith on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:28AM (#22201464)
Finland has forests which isn't really much but is far more than just tundra.

I think their advantages are essentially fundamentally geographic but deeply counterintuitive. The Nordics counter intuively may have the "advantage" of a harsh climate which both aids defense and promotes "sincere" cooperation due to a force outside their control and long term planning and infastructure. Don't prepare for winter and it kills you.

Conceptuallly it is essentially an inverse resource curse where a disavantage has a positive impact. Of course there are other unspoken factors to their success. Like all nations the geographic distance to trading partners has influence on growth.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by hopia on Friday January 31, 2020 @09:56AM (#22202113)
I don't know why you're being downvoted, I believe you're on to something here.

The harsh climate has forced these countries to adapt, otherwise you'd simply perish in the past. Finland, having no conceivable natural resources like Norway, was forced to adapt by building a few thriving industries and excellent infrastructure to facilitate them.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by kiba on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:16AM (#22201378)
Having natural resources like oil means shit if you squander it like so many countries do.
Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by hopia on Friday January 31, 2020 @09:51AM (#22202066)
Advantage is a matter of perspective, but taxes are high and mostly spent on public services. Nothing is ultimately free after all.
Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by ramblerman on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:04AM (#22201297)
demographically Finland has about 2% of immigrants from outside of Europe. 0.3% have Arabic as their mother tongue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland

That's a huge difference with France/Belgium.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by HenryKissinger on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:01AM (#22201259)
The US has oil too. And far more than Norway.
Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by keanzu on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:05AM (#22201299)
Per capita Norway exported ~20x as much oil as the US in 2007.

  Norway        554.24 bbl/day per 1,000 people  
  United States  28.08 bbl/day per 1,000 people
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/P...
Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by sgift on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:16AM (#22201382)
If they did export more, how much of the money would go directly to the US government?

The main advantage of Norway seems to be that they didn't give away their resources for pittances to private companies, but exploit them directly.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by Hamuko on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:18AM (#22201400)
Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by socialdemocrat on Friday January 31, 2020 @09:09AM (#22201747)
You cannot compare tiny Norway to the whole of the US. You have to compare to individual states in the US. Many American states have more oil than Norway and has produced oil for much longer and at much lower cost.

Drilling a 4km deep oil well out in the north sea in rough weather is very different from drilling 20 meters on land in Texas.

If you look at various American oil states. They have managed their oil wealth far more poorly than Norway. No sovereign wealth fund. Public system often underfunded and in poor condition. Look at Oklahoma e.g.

Re:Housing is a human right: How Finland is eradicating home... by mlatu on Friday January 31, 2020 @08:44AM (#22201568)
Oil is not Oil.

There are as many "blends" of crude as there are oil fields (about 160 blends according to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crude_oil_products). Some are "thicker" than others and that results in different products you can get from the crude you refine. Also, each crude requires a different setting in your refinery, and it is very costly and lengthy to change that setup.

Refineries in the US are for the most part set to heavy crude.

Guess what kind of crude the US get's from fracking?

. . .

It's not heavy crude.