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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

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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland#Demographics

Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> 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.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

> 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.