updated 9d ago
The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life
I sat on my couch back in the United States and read about the advantages of Finland I’d chosen to forsake. While my fellow-American inhabitants and I were increasingly stressed out, overworked, unhealthy, underpaid, insecure, and uncertain whether our children’s lives would be any better, back home in Finland the middle-class friends I’d left behi
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Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
the complex and mysterious fine print thrown at you from every direction by corporations that had somehow managed to evade even the bare minimum of sensible protections for consumers. Things didn’t improve when it came time to file my first tax return for Uncle Sam. I tried to research my tax situation on the Internal Revenue Service Web site, and
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Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
It was all part of a way of doing things in the United States that, as I would gradually realize, forced you to be constantly on guard, constantly worried that whatever amount of money you had or earned would never be enough,
from The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
Americans, and many others around the world, did not seem fully aware of how much better things could be.
from The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
that to leave Finland or any other Nordic country behind and settle in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century was to experience an extraordinary—and extraordinarily harsh—form of travel backward in time.
from The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
Near Finland in the rankings were usually some of Finland’s neighbors: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and on some measures Iceland—a group of countries
from The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
“If you want the American dream,” Miliband quipped at the conference, “go to Finland.”
from The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
Meanwhile, there was one global ranking in which Finland came in dead last: the Failed States Index. According to the Fund for Peace, Finland was the least fragile nation in the world.
from The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
Zach Weismann added 4mo ago
measured national well-being—education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness, and political environment—and compared a hundred nations on these metrics. The result came as something of an unpleasant surprise to the United States and other major powers that might have expected to be at the top. Newsweek declared that for a person starti
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Zach Weismann added 4mo ago