Sublime

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.

Americans, and many others around the world, did not seem fully aware of how much better things could be.

Near Finland in the rankings were usually some of Finland’s neighbors: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and on some measures Iceland—a group of countries

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,

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

You can enjoy the fun of beating the system that exists to take your money and live a middle-class lifestyle on a quarter of the usual numbers.