As a Finn this keeps me up at night. According to the World Bank data our GDP per capita was roughly equal to that of the US in 2008 (even slightly higher for

As a Finn this keeps me up at night. According to the World Bank data our GDP per capita was roughly equal to that of the US in 2008 (even slightly higher for a while) [0]. Since then the recession hit us a lot harder than the US and our economy still hasn't recovered. I don't have a good explanation on what happened and why we haven't been able to recover. The conventional answer is some mix of failed austerity based politics in the early 2010s, a bloated public sector, stiff labour markets and structural problems relating to an aging and shrinking population. On top of the facts mentioned above (or maybe because of them) there's a weird sense of fatalism in our society that I find deeply unnerving. We did a decent job of handling the pandemic, but apparently completely suppressing the pandemic was determined to be "impractical" for what ever reason I still can't fathom. Now we're postponing our state/municipality elections because of not being able to keep the virus in check. I'm feeling angry about my own country in a way I haven't before. We're still doing ok, but I'm frustrated that no one is really demanding that we do better. [0]: https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#place=country%2FFIN%2Ccountry%2FUSA&statsVar=Amount_EconomicActivity_GrossDomesticProduction_Nominal_PerCapita https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#place=country%2FFIN%2...