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Finland tried to end homelessness. What can we learn from its runaway success โ and recent failures?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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They do pay tax in Finland, it's much harder to evade than somewhere like the US or UK. And the tax rates are pretty high.
It's easy to think that the government having more money can solve everything, but there's still a limited and shrinking pool of labour available. Money doesn't make young people materialize out of thin air.
If you look at the average age graph for Finland, you'll notice that 70 years ago it was very young (tons of children who don't work) and now it's pretty old (tons of retirees who don't work). In the middle there, it was a very strong economy with a strong workforce.
The only way around this is to start importing young people from 3rd world countries while they can still afford to allow their people to emigrate - as their own populations start aging, they may have to start restricting it. That's unpopular because it drives people's wages down, but if your labour pool is shrinking faster than the amount of people who need to be supported by the labour pool, you need to expand the labour pool somehow. Unless you want to start killing off old people or raise the retirement age to 75 eventually.
I disagree with immigration being the only solution. I think it is more effective in the long term, to raise birth rates to net replacement level (2.1 child per all parents) so that the demograph eventually becomes akin to a rectangle with pyramid top, rather than an onion or pyramid.
That means:
Besides that it also is necessary that education remains free for all levels and that the oligarchy gets properly taxed.
Also, if they do pay tax, then why are there still billionnaires in Finland? I think Finland must move further to the left.
Lower birthrates are good, and people with failed hope for the future aren't that excited to reproduce anyway
That's true, but productivity is also part of the equation. A shrinking quota of young people does not mean that the economy can't be sustainable, when the outpot of a worker grows.
That is why "just money" can actually go a very long way in solving "all the problems".
I don't think I can even imagine what a society that has an average age of 25 even looks like.
Roughly like Lemmy and Discord.