TheOneFromFinland's Profile

I don't know why google reader decided to recommend this page to me (I usually read political, science & technology news), but I'll just have to give my view on this.

I'm a finn and a father of an 18 month old girl. We had that package and it has been a nice addition, but the best part of being a parent in Finland is definitely the vacations.

Maternal leave is 4 months, during which the mother gets (IIRC) 80% of her pay from the government. After that the mother of the father can stay at home on parental allowance (some of these are really hard to translate!), which is 60% of the pay for 6 months.

If the father uses at least one month of the parental allowance and stays home with the child, he is granted one more month with 60% of his pay.

After that ends, the care-leave starts. Basically it is money that the town pays to the parent for not bringing the child to burden the public daycare system. It is paid as long as at least one child is under 3 years. Depends on the town, but in our town it is 260€/month. Add to that the child benefit (108€/month) and you'll get 368€/month.

You can switch twice with your spouse who stays at home and who goes to work. You'll have to announce it two months beforehand to your employer, who doesn't have any other choice than to agree.

For the employer laying off, demoting or otherwise harassing someone who is on/is going to/is returning from one of these leaves is like playing with matches, with almost certain legal mess and almost no chance to win.

Basic health services work relatively well, with yearly cost capped at 200€. This means that when my wife had our baby, we paid only 200€ for the procedure, for the three days my wife spent at the hospital, and for the ten days our daughter was at the intensive care unit.

But there is a serious downside to all this. Taxes are extremely high. Finland is a country of five million residents. We have 900 000 people below the powerty line and the number has been increasing since the early 90's. Unemployment is very high. Prices are one of the highest in the world and our puchasing power is one of the lowest in the EU.

Because of high taxes and relatively high unemployment benefits, low income jobs are not worth the trouble. What makes the situation even worse is that the taxes are so high that the employer has to pay the government three euros for each euro he pays to the employee.

So if an employee has to have 1200€/month to pay his rent and food, he has to be able to produce 4800€/month worth of services/goods to be worth hiring. Many can not and therefore are not.

And about the "death panels" I hear you talking (I watch The Daily Show), they really do exist here. An elderly person, who has paid high taxes for his entire life, is routinely denied specialized care if he is deemed "not worth the effort". Thanks to high taxes, he doesn't have the money to get treatment from the private sector.

In elderly care centers seniors are left to starve if they are too old, demented or weak to eat themselves. Because of lack of staff the nurses don't have the time to feed them. Horrible conditions leave the patients so stressed that the nurses have to keep them drugged-up and asleep. When I'm old I'd rather die than go into one of those institutions.

Socialism works if you have unlimited money. We don't, that's why socialism is failing in Finland. You really need to try something else.