Any Finns or foreigners living in Finland that are willing to share their opinion? I know it's hard to predict, but do you think the current economic difficulties are structural or just a temporary consequence of war?
Are you concerned by the geopolitical situation, with an aggressive neighbor possibly escalating sometime in the mid term?
For the most part I like it here. Occasionally I miss my uni years in Stockholm. Specifically I miss the positivity in Sweden.
I'm not concerned of the geopolitical situation at all. Or the economy, it will get better at some point.
If you're interested in stability and security I think public sector job in Finland fits that well.
>[D]o you think the current economic difficulties are structural or just a temporary consequence of war?
Definitely structural, but I am far from an expert, caveat emptor. The high unemployment rate even for highly educated workers in a country with such excellent English proficiency (== access to worldwide capital markets) is my main indicator. I really do think the heavy taxation structures at most levels of society here is driving out entrepreneurship in droves. This isn't the conclusion I was most hoping to reach before moving here; there's a world in which a robust safety net, paid for by such taxes, actually incentivizes entrepreneurship by cushioning the fall - but I just don't see the evidence for us living in that world, at least not here.
The good news is that that means Finland's current problems are largely self-imposed. Lightening up this tax regime for a few decades will probably lead to an economic miracle for the country. Finland has many other factors in its favor and I'd love to see that happen. (I probably won't stick around for it, simply because I'm starting to get sick of working 50,000€ jobs that currently pay >$150,000 in the US. But a few decades of above average economic growth can work wonders, if the country decides to go in that direction, and I may well end up coming back for my twilight years.)
>Are you concerned by the geopolitical situation, with an aggressive neighbor possibly escalating sometime in the mid term?
Not at the moment, but that's very much because of NATO. The war actually broke out just a few months after I moved here, and the period between then and the NATO acceptance was probably the most terrified I have ever been in my life.
War hits different when the aggressor actually shares a border with you. I don't think I realized quite how lucky the US was in that regard geographically until it actually happened. I had nightmares quite regularly during that time and it became a daily topic of conversation in my house with my then-fiancee, now-wife as to whether we should cut our losses now and move to the US, instead of waiting an unknown amount of time for my Irish passport to be granted to me.
If NATO dissolves we are packing our bags and getting on the next flight to Boston, or at least Oslo or Dublin or something. That's not really "Finland's fault", of course, if anything Finnish-Russian diplomacy has been the eighth wonder of the modern world for the past 70 years or so.
The economic issues are both structural and a consequence of a number of crises. Baby boomers didn't have enough kids, and it was already obvious decades ago that there would be economic trouble after they retire. The large-scale immigration everyone saw as the answer is now happening. A lot depends on how well the immigrants integrate into the society.
While Finland used to be known as a highly educated country, other developed countries went past it. Millennials and younger never reached the educational attainment of generation X. As a consequence, Finnish workforce is not as productive as it could be.
Finnish economy relies too much on manufacturing and too little on services, making it less competitive than, for example, Sweden. That became an issue after the windfall from Nokia disappeared.
Saint Petersburg is the only major city in the world from which Finland does not look like a peripheral area. When the relations with Russia are bad, the economy suffers. Putin has been gradually going from bad to worse for 20+ years, and there are no changes in sight.
Putin is a known quantity, and I'm not too worried of what he will do next after Ukraine. What happens after he dies is another story, especially if there is no clear successor. The Soviet coup attempt of 1991 was scarier than anything Putin has done, and what happens after Putin could be worse.