But the rest of that sentence was:

> with the lowest salaries comparatively—and yet similarly high cost of living and extremely high taxes.

i.e. why would you pick it over the others, you don't make your choice of economic migration to be fairest to the potential destinations, 'the other Nordic countries set the bar very high' just means 'the other Nordic countries are better choices'.

Immigrants usually move for specific reasons. The choice is more often between moving to Finland and not moving to Finland than between moving to Finland and moving to Sweden.

I specifically said economic migration, which is by definition about improving standard of living rather than having a particular draw to a specific country.

Of course other factors may narrow it down - 'I like Nordic countries', or particularly 'somewhere in the EU', but not typically 'Finland or bust'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_migration

People usually mean low-skilled immigrants when they talk about economic migration. High-skilled immigrants are more likely to choose a particular company or even a specific job opportunity than a specific country. They don't move to a country because they want to live there but because many of the best opportunities for a person with their particular skills and networks happen to be there. They don't choose between country A and country B when they don't have any particular reason to move, but between taking a specific opportunity in country A and not taking the opportunity.

It really depends on where the immigrant in question is coming from. I definitely shopped for countries back in the day.