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Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

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Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#571

Post by exDM69 »

hopia wrote: post #508
throwawayzRUU6f wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, good luck hauling small kids, furniture, gardening or construction materials by bike or public transportation. Most of the adults are not singles in their twenties or early thirties, living in a rented flat. Once you get a family or buy a house, owning a car is basically a must. And the price tag for it in Finland is very high. 1000e a year just for mandatory car tax, mandatory yearly checkup and liability insu…

Unfortunately, this is the reality on the ground. Finland is the least densely populated country in Europe, and one of the most arctic countries in the world. A lot of the people simply need a car to commute to work. Cars in Finland have not only a value-added tax (VAT) of 24% but also a separate car tax slapped on them. At the extreme cases this can result in over 100% additional tax to be paid on top of the retail…

Absolutely true for most of Finland. Not necessarily Helsinki. Espoo, Vantaa metro area is borderline.

One car household is still much more common than two cars per family.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#572

Post by lytefm »

Kliment wrote: post #400
waihtis wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that it's a super difficult language where you can't draw any help from any other languages you might now. Plus it's obscure and if you move out of Finland you'll likely never use it again. I can see why people don't want to invest huge amounts of time learning it unless they plan to stay for the rest of their lives.

I'm a non-native Finnish speaker. I learned the language in my teens. It's not a difficult language, at all. It is actually surprisingly simple. The problem is the obscurity - there is very little interest in Finnish as a second language, and the teaching community for it is small and hasn't developed the kind of resources that imperial languages that were taught to countless millions of people during the age of empi…

Having learned a tiny bit of Finnish myself, I totally agree with your points. And actually the „controversial” advices b), d) and f) combined with tips like a), c) and h) is very much what popular polyglots like Benny Lewis („fluent in 3 months“) teach for language learning in general if your goal is to actually speak the language.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#573

Post by BurningFrog »

hervature wrote: post #340
BurningFrog wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helsinki is the capital city and cultural center of a nation. The best of the best in Finland live, work, and perform there. For cities, as so many other things, it's not all about size.

For the great people of Oklahoma, the best of the best also live, work, and perform in OKC. OKC is also the capital (of Oklahoma). I won't touch culture because it's pretty pompous to assign culture to a single location. I'm sure the Sami people disagree with your location of the center of culture, I'm not comparing cities and I certainly am not implying OKC is the same as Helsinki. Merely pointing out that the OP's…

I'm sure OKC is a great city in many ways, but the best artists in Oklahoma usually move to LA or NYC, engineers and entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley, political leaders to DC, etc.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#574

Post by 0xfaded »

JacobSuperslav wrote: post #480
0xfaded wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from SF to the Nordics on a startup visa and feel obligated to temper expectations whenever I see these. - There are good schools and people, but don't expect the density of top people to be anything close to SF. Finding friends to talk shop with requires active engagement. - Every European country is trying to promote itself as startup friendly, and what you are seeing from a distance is being heavily curate…

I agree with everything you said, except that moving away from SF can only be ideological. To me there are some other advantages: 1. some of the cities here are walkable and cyclable. can't say the same about SF. 2. my kid goes to a free kindergarten and it's been fantastic 3. healthcare doesn't revolve around money, and again, great experience with the public sector, including my wife giving birth here. it's a breat…

Healthcare is a good point, especially since good insurance outside of an employer is either expensive or requires a significant other with a job with good benefits.

In the scheme of things though, once you've incorporated and put yourself on payroll, health insurance becomes just a cost of doing business. If you're the type that thinks purely think in terms of maximizing lifetime earnings, or even lifetime impact, free health care won't make a dent in that. If that happens to be your thinking and you can afford SF or the bay, you're better off staying where you can maximize your income and impact.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#575

Post by enra »

usr1106 wrote: post #396
djhn wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual data from OECD is available, so we don't have to rely on anecdotes. It is by far not "one of the weaker health care systems". https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/health-care-quali...

> one of the weaker health care systems Definitely not worldwide, maybe not even over whole Europe. I said of several European countries that I have experience of. That's a huge difference. Remember the old saying: Don't believe any statics that you have not manipulated yourself. Fact is that even OECD statistics about Finland is made by Finns. And Finns take a lot of pride in having their country look well internati…

> Then the first World Happiness Report win came 2 or 3 years ago, for the first time the reactions were mixed: Local social research could not really find any explanation. Happiness is certainly not noted in the country on a regular basis.

What I remember reading about this is that the researchers pointed out that there are cultural differences, so "happiness report" has to normalize for it. For example Americans often talk how happy or unhappy they are, or how much they "love" something, but Finns don't generally think this way or almost ever say "I'm happy (olen onnellinen)". There is also a certain cultural modesty, so in conversations you rarely make extreme statements like "I'm really happy" which could make you seem superior to others, you would rather say something like "things are good". I think what the happiness report concluded that while many people don't state or show extreme joyful happiness, many are more content or in peace with their life and have less anxiety.

That's my personal observation following my friends or family in Finland and comparing that to friends and family in California. See that people in US have more extreme need to achieve, work very long hours, compete and be better than others, be joyful constantly, but also have lot of fear and anxiety, especially when it comes to children. Many of my Finnish friends have both parents working and they have to do very little for the kids schooling. Kids go to the school by themselves and are expected to do their homework by themselves.

In US one of the parents have to be almost 100% homemaker and even then it's a lot to raise a family since you get very little help from the society. They also more have worries and anxiety of their own future and their children futures. Are they safe? If they get sick will do we afford healthcare? Can they get educated? Can they get a job and live good life? Can I retire when you need to? The competitiveness even seeks in to the very first years of the children's life where in Finland you don't even get grades and there are no standardized testing until you're 18.

In Finland, people might have similar fears or anxiety, but in lesser degree since most of those situations are covered by the society.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#576

Post by jlmorton »

geofft wrote: post #127
jlmorton wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an $8,500 annual maximum out-of-pocket per individual under ACA. That's a lot over several years, but it's not going to be retirement-destroying for most SV workers.

This is only true of Marketplace plans (which are, increasingly, very bad deals is you're not actively using your insurance - even back in 2015 when I was looking for Marketplace plans for myself, I could easily spend close to that amount on the premiums of plans that had high deductibles/coinsurance/etc. and it's not like the Marketplace has gotten more competitive since then), and I think it's only true of expenses…

The out of pocket maximum also applies to non-grandfathered group insurance plans. There were some plans allowed to be grandfathered, so the plans wouldn't terminate as non-compliant, but in practice the vast majority of plans terminate every year, and essentially everyone with health insurance now has an $8,500 per individual annual out of pocket maximum. I'm sure if you look at your own insurance, you'll find $8,500 or less.

It's true this cap only applies to in-network, approved care. But that's the same under any health plan, whether universal, or not. For instance, Sovaldi and Harvoni are curative for hepatitis C, but it costs $50,000 for a 12-week course of treatment in the UK. There are 210,000 people with hepatitis in the UK, but the NHS only furnishes 10,000 courses of treatment per year. If you're not approved, you can't get it from the NHS, but you're free to buy it yourself, of course.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#577

Post by Retric »

Retric wrote: post #509
D_Alex wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a little less than half of German losses where on the eastern front Where did you get this from? According to Wikipedia, and most other sources, 70-80% of German military casualties were on the Eastern Front. >The US footed a lot of the material costs needed for Europe and the USSR to stay in the fight... More than 80% of the aid to USSR was delivered after the Battle of Stalingrad was won by the USSR, and the outco…

If you’re thinking of losses as lives in the German army and you include non German forces added to the German army and you assume all deaths on the eastern front where with the USSR then you can get very high numbers for German deaths due to the USSR. On the other hand if you look at losses as the capacity to make war then things are different. As a land war the German navy for instance was largely uninvolved so you…

Just to add, the most extreme version of this was probably the thousands of miles worth of defenses Germany built along the coast which diverted a great deal of men and resources without meaningful associated deaths.

The French resistance was again almost completely useless in terms of killing German soldiers. However, they had a more meaningful impact on German military effectiveness as demonstrated by deployment of forces.

To be clear, I am in no way debating the casualty figures, but winning a war isn’t just about running out of people. Militaries trade off between different types of resources.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#578

Post by pc86 »

deanc wrote: post #190

Overall my experience in Helsinki has been hugely positive. I’ve been here now over a decade and have settled with work and family life. Work life balance is great, there’s a beautiful outdoors to enjoy all year, and the people are warm and kind, if not difficult to start with. All that said, there’s a lot of bullshit and hot air here in this thread: - public healthcare is great until you have something difficult to…

I'm an American and with all its faults (and there are many) I do think Americans overestimate how long it takes to get routine stuff done elsewhere, or non-acute things that pop up and need addressed. It's really nice being able to call a doctor's office on a Tuesday afternoon and get an appointment for Wednesday morning.

I will say though that my dentist is very busy, and unless you're on a waitlist for cancellations they are basically booked solid 6 months out with all the routine cleanings and checkups. If you're lucky you might be able to get in for non-emergent stuff within a month but most likely you're going to wait 2-3 months to get a call of "we can see you in 45 minutes if you can make it in, I need an answer now because there are 6 other people to call on the waitlist."

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#579

Post by eldaisfish »

lytefm wrote: post #561
eldaisfish wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've forgotten one major aspect of life so far north - the near absolute lack of sunlight in the winter which is about 5 months of the year. My first year in Finland, i got SAD - seasonal affective disorder - and it was horrible. No amount of money or learning Finnish can address that. Oh and there's yet another downside to an ethnically homogenous society like Finland - you'll never be more than a tolerated person…

SAD is definitely a thing. Certain Lamps and Vitamins do help, though - so does a walk during lunchtime. I'll always prefer fewer sun hours during Winter over regular > 25°c (77°F) during summer. I'm surprised about the second point though. Outside Helsinki, sure - but in HKI I've met enough non-white people who grew up there, speak Finnish and didn't feel like that at all. I felt like the language is more important…

Non-white immigration to Finland is relatively recent and has only been in small numbers so i think what you're referring to is just an anecdote. The immigration of Somali groups in particular has led to quite a lot of friction as detailed in this report

https://suomenkuvalehti.fi/jutut/kotimaa/sk-tutki-suomalaise...

See this page also - https://multiculturalmeanderings.com/tag/nordic-countries/

In particular,

>The 2020 OECD report about Finland criticizes that their education is unevenly distributed. In an interview with the HPR, Michaela Moua, a senior officer at the Office of the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman in Finland, recognizes racially motivated guidance in schools, especially in the Finnish as Second Language studies: “Black and Brown students are often advised to take these classes even if Finnish is their first language.”

>She adds that “this shows how it is still widely thought that one cannot be a person of color and Finnish at the same time.”

At the heart of the problem is that Finnish identity overlaps significantly with Finnish ethnicity. So yes, i think your anecdotes are the exception, not the norm.

Re: Helsinki Relocation Package: City as a Service

#580

Post by curun1r »

refurb wrote: post #486
curun1r wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DoD list item doesn't include the intelligence agencies, DHS, OCO, VA, defense share of debt servicing and other spending. A more honest number is $1.25 trillion [0]. [0] https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/05/making-sense-of-the-1-...

That's a bullshit number. You want to roll in the entire Department of Energy budget? You want to roll in the entire Department of Homeland Security budget? So airport security is now defense spending? You want to roll in the entire USAID budget? I mean, if you're going to do this, do it for other countries as well. Then the US spending won't seem all that out of line.

It's much, much closer to the real number.

The DoE budget is almost 3/4 defense related (25B/35B [0])

DHS is far more than TSA, which is only 16% of its budget.

I wouldn't have rolled the entire USAID budget in, but it's disingenuous to not include peacekeeping operations and military aid, which are a big part of it.

Regardless, even with adjustments you've pointed out, the number is well over $1t, which is almost double the disingenuous number that GP threw out.

[0] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2020/03/f72/doe-fy20...

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