Finland:Europe's most homogenous society
Robert G. Kaiser:
Finland is Europe's most homogenous society, a nation of mostly blond ethnic Finns whose declining birthrate creates the classic 21st-century European dilemma: a fast-growing population of senior citizens whose promised benefits under a generous welfare state will soon be unaffordable.
To compensate for fewer Finnish births, the country could encourage foreigners to immigrate, a subject much discussed here. But like most of Europe, "Finland is allergic to immigration," in the words of Manuel Castells, the renowned Spanish-born sociologist who lives in the United States.
Castells, a professor at the University of Southern California and a student of Finland since the mid-1990s, chided Finns at a seminar in Helsinki last week. "Either you make more babies," he told them, "or you make immigrants."
But that is easier said than done, as Castells quickly acknowledged. Finnish women, enjoying careers and other fruits of the relative gender equality here, "are on strike," he said, when it comes to bearing children in large numbers. As a result, Finland is "a small country with an endangered culture."
Altogether, immigrants constitute barely 2 percent of Finland's population of 5.2 million. There were 108,346 foreign-born residents at the end of 2004, according to government statistics. Of those, fewer than 25,000 were born in non-white countries whose residents would look conspicuous on the streets of Helsinki. Russians, Estonians and Swedes together represent more than 46,000 people.
Finland's Secret
Finland's schools, maybe the best in the world, overrun by visitors
Many foreign students remain in Finland illegally
In large Finnish cities, foreigners may soon outnumber Swedish-speaking Finns
Murder trial of father of slain Kurdish woman begins in Sweden on Tuesday
Immigrants comprise up to one fifth of customers of youth emergency shelters
Foreigners figure high in rape statistics
posted by Adam Lawson @ 11:46 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Here you see one of the dangers of the pay as you go retirement welfare systems relied on by so many countries (including of course social security in the US) -- you will be told you have to demographically destroy your society if you don't want to be poor when you are old. This is a false dichotomy, as so many other popular 'debates' are these days -- e.g. the only way to solve some social discrepancies is to allow same sex marriage.
Anyway, this is certainly one reason it's imperative social security in the US be reformed, despite the looming problem of retiring baby-boomers -- if almost everyone were able to rely on their individual accounts, built up over a lifetime, this whole discussion would be moot.
Watching the European soccer championships for women, it was in a way refreshing to see the all white teams from Denmark and Finland.
Also, I cannot resist commenting on the one link:
"Finland's schools, maybe the best in the world, overrun by visitors"
Of course the reason the schools are deemed good is that measured student outcomes are good. But this is almost certainly mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of students are white. Which means the schools don't have to deal with nearly as many non-whites as other places in Europe are plagued with. Of course in Europe non-whites living someplace like Finland are typically muslim and African immigrants, whose average intelligence is definitely lower, and in addition who are most likely not at all fluent or perhaps not even competent in the native language.
So mostly it is bad students who make bad schools, at least as judged by measured student outcomes.
The mainstream media is incredibly and consistently dishonest about this.
All of those school districts who've sent people to see why Finland's schools are so good could've saved themselves a lot of money.
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