University of Helsinki To Lay Off a Thousand People (yle.fi)

jones_supa writes: University of Helsinki, the place where Linus Torvalds got his degree as well, will reduce staff by 980 people, with 570 being laid off by the end of 2017. In addition, the university will reorganize and incorporate certain divisions including continuing education. Professors, teachers and researchers are criticizing the cuts, which coincide with the university's administrative and educational overhaul. The staff cuts reflect the government's drastic funding cuts to education, which plays one part in the effort of trying to help the difficult economic situation of today's Finland. The university estimates that of the 980 positions, terminations during this coming spring will account for 570 positions. Of the employees to be made redundant, 75 are teaching and research staff and 495 other staff. The rest of the cuts will be spread over the coming years.

Comments

Lay off my People

[turkeydance]

with the layoffs.

how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

I get it that Torvalds went to school there etc, but this isn't any different than any other school that hundreds of other developers have gone to that have had staff cuts. Those don't make /.

Why is this here at all?

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Mods, this is not -1 material. AC has a point that if Linus wasn't a grad of this school, then this story wouldn't have been posted here on /.

2) Finland's economic woes, which has led to UH's belt-tightening, are directly tied to the falling exports of mobile phones by Nokia. This is a topic which would be relevant to /. because it would lead to an anti-Microsoft rantfest worthy of say 100-180ish posts.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[tlambert]

2) Finland's economic woes, which has led to UH's belt-tightening, are directly tied to the falling exports of mobile phones by Nokia.

Nokia taking a dirt nap is because Nokia *isn't*/*wasn't* a technology company.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[tlambert]

Even if they had not sold themselves to Microsoft in order to save themselves from bankruptcy, Nokia was not "just about to pull a unicorn out of its butt".

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Stephen "I'm-totally-not-a-Microsoft-stooge" Elop (or is that Flop?) took over, Nokia still had around 60% share of the cell phone market and was still over half a billion handsets a year even though they were starting to lose ground to the premium smartphone. After Elop came in and fired Nokia's engineers and killed off all platforms except Microsofts shitty windows phone, Nokia was the walking dead. Now, there's a lot of analysis out there about whether Elop was a trojan that Microsoft used to devalue Nokia before it bought the company, but virtually all analysis point to the decision to jettison Symbian and the other technological platforms Nokia was working on and switch to Windows Phones exclusively to take on a market already dominated by Samsung Android and Apple's iPhone as the catastrophic blow to Nokia. That's was a Microsoft decision.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[tlambert]

As you note: Nokia was on a downward spiral, and the fact of a declining-but-then-60% market share would allow them some time to save themselves, but they apparently were not interested in doing do, content with their "But we have 60% of the market!".

Microsoft taking their carcass, and, for wont of better words, turning them into a Men-In-Black style "Edgar Suit" and wearing the corpse didn't help, but it certainly didn't give Nokia the "But we have 60% of the market!" cancer in the first place.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[umghhh]

Limiting the number of platforms was probably necessary - costs of keeping them all were just crippling the company. Going for MS was probably the biggest mistake but this was just an effect of not keeping a narrow but SW strong base for their mobiles software. In other words: they fucked up already before and MS was just a last nail into their coffin.
Speaking of which: Nokia is still producing quite some infrastructure projects and selling them to operators worldwide so talking about their death is bit premature. They lost on phones - so did another Nordic company in Sweden.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[jones_supa]

Cuz Microsoft killed it.

Not really. I would say that Microsoft failed to save Nokia. Nokia was in deep trouble already when the Microsoft deal was made.

What actually killed Nokia was sticking with the Symbian operating system for too long. It was extremely buggy, laggy, ugly and a pain for developers.

Just dig up an old Series 40 or Series 60 phone, or watch some videos of them in YouTube. You will be reminded how crusty the user experience was. It was easy for Google and Apple to realize that all this could be done better. Nokia had Maemo and MeeGo in the skunkworks as well, but they didn't go big with them.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they wanted just one platform, it had to be android to be viable. In those days - and today. Optionally, they could have kept whatever other platforms that made them some money - be it symbian or windows.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[hey!]

Cuz consumer technology changed rapidly and they got their timing and direction wrong.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Kiuas]

I get it that Torvalds went to school there etc, but this isn't any different than any other school that hundreds of other developers have gone to that have had staff cuts.

You clearly do not understand the context or the background to this, so allow me to explain why this is relevant. Firstly, the university of Helsinki is THE university here. Sure, we have a few other major ones and they're decent, but we're a nation of 5,4 million people, the university of Helsinki is the bedrock and pinnacle of our much praised educational system. Gutting it means they're making a huge dent in the higher education of the entire country. Secondly, the cuts are nationwide, they're cutting across the board from higher education, the university of Helsinki is just getting the hardest hit as it is the biggest.

But most importantly, this is about much more than the simple cuts themselves. This is about politicians fucking us over in every way imaginable and betraying their own principles on which they ran for the parliament in a record time. We had elections last year, and one of the biggest promises made by the winning centre-right coalition was that no matter how tough cuts they'd have to make, they'd stay off the education. Our current prime minister and minister of treasury even posed in twitter pictures with students with cards saying 'no cuts'.

35 days. It took 35 days from the elections to them start suggesting cuts. Then they introduced tuition fees for exchange students coming from outside the Union. Now, this raised concern since the worry was that once the concept of tuition fees has been introduced, the next step would be to start suggesting everyone should pay them. This is a major deal as universities have always been free to attend to for those who have the grades to get in. Without free universities, we likely wouldn't have risen from a fairly backwater nation that suffered a civil war and the 2nd world war to a first world post-industrialized welfare state in less than a century. Without free higher education it's likely we would never have produced people such as Torvalds, companies such as Nokia and Rovio etc. Free higher education is at the very core of what this nation is supposed to be built on, which is why it is in our constitution:

Section 16 - Educational rights

Everyone has the right to basic education free of charge. Provisions on the duty to receive education are laid down
by an Act.

The public authorities shall, as provided in more detail by an Act, guarantee for everyone equal opportunity to
receive other educational services in accordance with their ability and special needs, as well as the opportunity to
develop themselves without being prevented by economic hardship.
The freedom of science, the arts and higher education is guaranteed.

When they announced the cuts they promised they would never expand the tuition fees. Yet, unsurprisingly, one MP just proposed that today: the introduction of nationwide tuition fees and simultaneous cutting of student benefits. At the same time they cut the amount of corporate taxes MORE than they cut universities (the total combined cuts to education are about 600 million euros). They're literally trying to wipe their ass on the constitution that we have, pissing on a fundamental cornerstone of well being in our country, and lying through their teeth while doing so. They say they have to do these cuts to save the economy. But destroying the basis for all intellectual capital in this country is not going to do anything else than destroy the economy in the long term. But they do not seem to care. And to make matters worse, the universities appear to have given up any sort of resistance to this and are allowing this all top happen with very little protest.

In my life so far, never have I been so angry and sad at the same time, nor have I EVER felt this betrayed and fucked over by our elected representatives. They're a fucking national disgrac

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[oh_my_080980980]

Microsoft killed Nokia. Microsoft eliminated a competitor so Microsoft could move into a very distant 3rd position behind Google and Apple. Microsoft had no plans to save Nokia and delaying release of new products by Nokia and limiting releases to Windows only killed off demand. Piss off.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a university, not a school.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Europeans figuring out their farmers don't care about chattle either. Welcome friend. Next stop...the world isn't free. If you want an education, figure out how to pay for it. Maybe lots of loans for that basket weaving class.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Zorpheus]

Microsoft closed down the non-smartphone business though. Nokia was still the market leader in this sector.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Hognoxious]

Speaking of which: Nokia is still producing quite some infrastructure projects and selling them to operators worldwide so talking about their death is bit premature.

I thought that was a separate division that wasn't part of the sale?

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Kiuas]

the world isn't free. If you want an education, figure out how to pay for it. Maybe lots of loans for that basket weaving class.

Wow, americans straw manning universal education/health care arguments by the age old 'nothings free' -argument. How surprising.

We are already paying for it, dumb ass. We've just decided that it should be collectively and publicly funded because one needs not to look very far to understand that limiting education chances based on the income of the person/their family is not a solution.

I want my fellow citizens to be able to get higher education and health care and other base necessities of modern day life regardless of whether or not they were born to a rich family. And I want people to continue to graduate without student debt weighing them down so they can actually spend the money they make and thus help the economy. This system works, and has worked in here and across Europe for decades. it's never been free, but it's still cheaper, per person, than any of the privatized university models.

I'm paying for my past education and the education of the coming generations by paying across the board higher taxes than most people in say, the US- And I'm completely alright with that, as are most of the people here, so shut the fuck up.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[jones_supa]

Well, we can speculate that. However, without the Microsoft deal Nokia would have suffered an even worse faith. Looking at the grim situation of the company, it was a reasonable option to choose.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[jones_supa]

That's a good point of course. Nokia's dumbphone business was still quite feasible, but making dumbphones didn't suit Microsoft's business profile.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Bing Tsher E]

Perhaps the cuts are being made to improve education. I notice that a significant number of the positions being eliminated are non-teaching. Sometimes thick layers of administrative bloat have to be sloughed off to improve an entity. It would certainly improve education in the US to prune administrative staff at many schools.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[cryptolemur]

From what I'm reading here, Finland's economy is tanking, necessitating these cuts...

Not really, Finland's economy is tanking because we're in the Eurozone, because our exporters decided to compete by cutting costs instead of raising quality, but mainly because of five years of continuous shrinking of national economy due to these cuts.
Just yesterday our minister of finance said that it was not a choice by necessity but by political ideology. The Finnish government is basically doing to Finland what EU did to Greece. I don't know what we did to earn such hatred from them, though.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[vel-ex-tech]

Thanks for the larger picture! I wish I lived in a civilized country like you do. People in the USA, at least in flyover country, are so scared shitless that one of "those people" might get a benefit and do nothing productive with it that they impoverish themselves.

My observation has been that there are two major ways that the TANSTAAFL => "waste your time flipping burgers so you don't starve instead of finding a cure for cancer on my dime" attitude impoverishes the USA. First, we have a bazillion different, often redundant ways of delivering education and health care from charity to welfare (the welfare system is egregiously fragmented). Just think of all the bureaucracy involved to make sure that the "wrong person" doesn't get a benefit. What a waste.

The other way is in the way I phrased the attitude about TANSTAAFL. I know I'd rate do something that would actually improve the world (even if a tiny bit) instead of the current make-work job I have.* Somebody I know basically is living on welfare. She used to waste time programming computers to shuffle data around for bureaucrats, but apparently gaslighting asshole managers don't think women should be programmers. So, she's getting ready to publish her art and music as a video game. Will it be good? I don't know, and I'm not a big fan of the genre. The point is that soon the world will have an original creation they can buy for the price of a Starbuck's coffee, and if it becomes popular, she will probably become a millionaire. Surely one would want more millionaires, right?

(Don't take that question the wrong way.)

Unfortunately not in before the reply about underwater basket weaving by somebody who hates art and music and sees no need for anything that doesn't have an immediate, practical application.

It's completely insane. I will grant this. TANSTAAFL, but please, raise my taxes and let a nation with a GDP of 14 trillion dollars end homelessness and poverty by gutting the mountains of bureaucracy that exist just to make sure the "wrong person" doesn't get a benefit and that people asking for help "really need" that benefit. I'm ok with the occasional deadbeat. The cost of the occasional deadbeat is a rounding error. I'm not ok with living in a nation that would rather impoverish itself over the minuscule number of people who actually are deadbeats.

This will become more apparent as various places begin implementing a universal basic income as a cost saving measure. Then again, it should have been apparent for education and healthcare to the USA long ago. The USA would rather impoverish itself and become a 3rd world shithole just so that the "wrong person" won't get to eat lunch.

* I'm not any good at art or music, so instead I would join up with Engineers without Borders. Your choice: would you rather have me waste time keeping a chair warm doing make-work bullshit and posting to /., or would you rather I were out there with thousands of others trying to build up the rest of the world so things like Daesh won't arise again?

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[JazzLad]

There's probably someone I am unaware of (maybe several), but for whom has making a deal like this with Microsoft gone well (other than Microsoft, of course).

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you posting from a Wildlife preserve in Oregon by any chance? You certainly sound like you are.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[CptPicard]

In other words, this is exactly what I expected it to be -- butthurt lefties trying to raise up negative sentiments abroad, even when the UH really doesn't mean anything to your average slashdot reader. The "ooh, look at how we are perceived abroad now!" tactic is typical. In reality, nobody cares, but just might end up with the notion that something awful is happening in Finland.

I am a UH CS dept alumnus just like Torvalds is, but if something's got to give in our current economic situation, something's got to give. As I see it, we already over-educate very average Master's degree holders at mostly average universities. Not everyone actually needs an academic education that tends to last until the person's 30s (we've got very slow students as well). I find that despite having gone to that particular school, I am mostly self-educated in most things, even though I've got the degree diploma. So it is more important to teach people how to teach themselves, than to formally over-educate them.

To make our universities better, we actually might look into raising the bar a bit and doing less but better.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Grishnakh]

The thing that killed Nokia was the rise of the smartphone, which they totally missed the boat on. That was their first mistake, sticking with crappy Symbian when everyone really wanted an iOS/Android phone.

Their next mistake was trying to jump on the smartphone bandwagon by tying their fortunes to Microsoft. No one wanted a Windows phone, and they still don't.

What they should have done is gone with Android, the sooner the better. Obviously, iOS wasn't an option since Apple controls all that, but Android was the obvious choice. They probably avoided it because they didn't want to be a "me too" Android player, but being a strong Android player is better than selling a tiny number of Windows phones. They could have phased out their Symbian phones while increasing their Android investment, and then maybe simultaneously worked on their own OS, sorta like Blackberry, attempting to be Android compatible (for the apps) while using the same hardware.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Grishnakh]

No, he's almost certainly not. He's probably a very typical American. About 50% of America's population supports the people holed up in that wildlife preserve.

That should be a worrying thought.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

They must be Republicans. They hate you and want you to die. To die.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't take another 3 years of this, and I mean it, we cannot.

I can't say that this government is any worse than the previous one that achieved ... well, nothing. A couple of tax raises and that's about it, during its four years of rule? You can't get a functional goverment with a mishmash of six parties from both economic left and right, no moderate parties in sight.

I'm mostly dismayed by the fact that the National Coalition had pre-election promises of forgoing the austerity line but those promises sure did not materialise.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[KGIII]

I seen to recall that not only did Microsoft get their tech and a bunch of patents but that, somehow, they were able to write down the loss as more than what they'd actually paid for the company. I also am sort of remembering that Nokia can re-enter the market sometime soon and that they had/have a really strange deal with Microsoft that has some oddities in licensing the tech, name, and that sort of thing. So, we may see them again but probably under a different name (for their phones) and probably not with Windows on them.

Oddly, I have a Windows phone and actually bought it on purpose - I wasn't drunk or high or anything. Well, I might have been a little high or something but I don't remember being so. I guess I can put 10 on it but I have yet to do so. I really don't use my phone for anything much other than texting, emailing, browsing, and making phone calls. It works quite well for what I use it for. It is not a Nokia.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[KGIII]

Hmm... Welcome to the United States. :/ We've been gutting our educational system, middle class, and liberties for years. I'd say you'll get used to it but you probably won't. It will be typical and accepted by the generation that follows your generation.

Oh, I'd type a novella explaining how important it is to make changes and (maybe) even how to work on making those changes but I'm going to skip it. Nobody ever listens and the next generation will just call you a Luddite anyhow. Just wait until they start encroaching on your personal freedoms and you have your fellow citizens telling you that you don't need those rights and that having those rights is dangerous, a throwback, or enabling unlawful actors. Hell, they might even accuse you of aiding and abetting those unlawful actors - just for wanting your liberties, enumerated rights, and honesty.

No, you never really get used to it and typing out a novella won't help you any. There's likely a subset of your country that agrees with these cuts. They'll be vocal if you work against them or aren't seen as joining them. It gets worse. I assume, given history, that it's cyclical. The pendulum appears to swing both directions but it is often REALLY bad when the pendulum swings wildly. No, a novella won't help.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[CptPicard]

The Swedish People's Party did achieve more than they ever wished possible though, with the compulsory Swedish-education starting at sixth grade and having essentially their own programme written as "national language strategy" of the government, with all the loaded language and whatnot.

But that's what they're good at -- providing a convenient extra 10 seats, especially when everyone seemed to want to be in government so that the True Finns wouldn't.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

They did most of that in the previous 30 years they kept a 'reserved seat' in the government. The 2011-2015 term was just fine adjustments.

It's pretty easy to get into the government when all you've got is one or two simple demands that do not go against any other party's programme.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[beastofburdon]

At least 90% of the administration jobs in US colleges are detrimental to education. In some places there are almost as many administrators as there are teachers, maybe more. Anyone who understands anything about corporations knows this is a terrible situation. I personally have no idea of the administrator situation there though.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one "strong" Android player - Samsung. Everyone else is marginal to losing money. Nokia going Android would likely have not been a slam dunk success, and whilst you can argue that their collapse might have been on a different trajectory than the course they took, but it's still may not have ended well.

Their best hope would have been to have survived to today, and Google take them over as their phone hardware division.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Grishnakh]

There's one strong Android player today. But there could have been two strong players, one of them being Nokia, had they tried entering that market. All those other Android players didn't have the reputation and cachet that Nokia had. Everyone always raved about the hardware quality on Nokias, even with their Lumias running Windows Phone, they just didn't like the software. No, it might not have been a slam-dunk success, it might not have ended well, but those are suppositions. I think it would have turned out a lot better than how it really did with WP. Nokia had a brand cachet that no one smartphone maker had, not even Samsung, which would have been incredibly valuable in western nations, especially Europe. But they didn't offer Android so everyone dumped them and went to various Asian phone makers (Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony) because those companies gave them what they wanted.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the world isn't free. But the payoff from investing in education for everybody is enormous and fairly obvious. So obvious that there are few countries in the world that have any semblance of an effective economy that don't have taxpayer-funded education to some level. It's hugely beneficial to everybody.

You can argue whether extending that to university level is appropriate. That is a valid argument to have. I personally don't think it should be "free" (paid for). I think it should cost something, albeit at the kind of low rates that a student could afford by working for the summer when school is out.

Perhaps it is a better strategy to let students take out huge loans on their future in order to fund their education, and then slowly pay them back as a debt slave for a couple of decades. I doubt it. The main profiteers there are the banks. Alternatively we could give some funding from taxpayers that eventually comes back as tax revenue when the the former students have a career and better job than they would have otherwise. They can then pay for the next generation to have the same benefits. This system worked fine in the 1960s and 1970s, and the people in power benefited enormously from that system. Now that many of them are retiring they suddenly want everyone to pay for it all themselves? I think it's cheap and short-sighted.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Alien among you]

No, he's almost certainly not. He's probably a very typical American. About 50% of America's population supports the people holed up in that wildlife preserve.

That should be a worrying thought.

Yes, because 5% ~ 50%

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Grishnakh]

In case you haven't noticed, Republicans have about half of the vote.

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Captain Splendid]

Actually, it's more like 45%, same with the Dems. The trick is getting someone at the top of the ticket who can reel in that last 5~6%.

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia didn't had a market in US. It lost it to iPhone - at the same time Nokia had most of rest of the world. I'm pi$$ed off because of two reasons:
1. Microsoft was dead as phone business(and were declining in others) and they proved that they were incompetent in this field. Elop wasn't trojan, but he was best way of selling off business to Microsoft and getting away with $$$. To me it looks like crime from bank business in neighbouring southern countries, when owner is stealing money and losses of theft is covered by taxpayers...
2. Nokia had already what Android gained with advance of Samsung(or I rather say - Nokia's grave made way for Samsung) - Symbian + native code(C and Qt implementation). It had students in India - they most probably were pissed off(just as I was), when Symbian(which wasn't easy to learn) was killed off...

Re:how is this relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

There were not so many independent developers around, who would meddle with Symbian. I tried - even created something, but it was a pain and frustrating. I assume, that because you are reproducing myths and don't have anything new to add, you neither worked for Nokia, neither tried to do anything with Symbian. And Symbian wasn't a problem, because it was being replaced with Qt, which had documentation. Plain symbian wasn't appealing to independent developers, because there was virtually no documentation.

Best decision, that Nokia did was buying Qt. Look on Symbian 60 + Qt videos on youtube - they were pinnacle of art of mobile app development. I created my first Qt app in a week - it could run on Symbian, Windows and Linux(and there was chance to compile it for Apple). It was mindblowing achievement. Compared to that nothing has come near in following years and because of that Android was HUGE step back... because all the shiny Android code editors were out much later. Not to mention, that Java is also ugly and has plenty of bugs... lol

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[Grishnakh]

Yep, that's pretty accurate. That ~10% of swing voters makes all the difference in the Presidential race.

psiphon for pc

[Anonymous Coward]

nice

Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they need money to pay for all those refugees. Population replacement is not cheap!

Re:Refugees

[p51d007]

THAT was my thought exactly! I'm surprised all of Europe isn't bankrupt from the influx of "refugees". Should have sent them all the oil rich Saudi, Omen, Qatar, but they sent them all over Europe to spread that ISIS crap. They are demanding free this and free that.

Re:Refugees

[tnk1]

Actually, Syria has a lot of Russian and Soviet weaponry. So does Iraq.

Strictly speaking, we didn't cause ISIS, we entered the country in a war, and then left it before we should have, but ISIS was created and abetted by those who have funded it and given it support.

Certainly the occupation of Iraq and the Syrian Civil War have given ISIS an opportunity to prosper, but you needed people willing to be ISIS for that to happen. It doesn't just happen automatically when you invade a country or when you leave it. We could have left in complete disorder and there didn't have to be an ISIS at the end of it. Let's put blame where blame belongs. The US and Soviet/Russian governments provided opportunities for ISIS, but ISIS is nothing without sympathizers in those countries and in the greater Muslim world who support them.

Re:Refugees

[roman_mir]

Actually I think Europe should load all of those refugees onto barges and bring them to the USA because it is America that created this entire mess starting looong loooong time ago, at the very least in 1953 when it deposed a democratically elected president in Iran and replaced him with a fucking religious king.

Then it was Afghanistan and a bunch of other situations where USA meddled with the world by feeding snakes that eventually always got out of control.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

The only ones who caused this situation are the governments who kill their citizens without regard or remorse. The major weapons suppliers in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran are the Russians and Chinese. But no matter where the weapons come from it actually requires someone pulling the trigger and they are given a free pass. The leaders of these countries also know they can do anything they want because no matter what they do the US will always be blamed. And if the refugees had put more effort into fighting for a better country there might not be a refugee problem to begin with. There are already 1000's being killed so taking up arms and fighting back can't be any worse.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* are you intentionally this obtuse? You realize these conflicts go back so far that they pre-date the existence of the United States as a country, right?

Re: Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

From Helsinki to bs about killing governments own people. That's a bit of distance. Or may be not; monopolizing violence is what governments all about, be that Syria or Finland .

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize a number of problems in the middle east are because you "thoughtful" "progressives" made it obvious Jews are not welcome. We moved them to the middle east, where Moses originally settled them when they escaped slavery in Egypt, so you didn't have to bother with them and now you are constantly complaining about the problems that causes. Maybe if the EU wasn't so fucking anti-Semitic they would have felt welcome there instead of fearing being killed by the millions again. Most of the US actions in the middle east has been to help those people that you think are so much trash you don't care if they get wiped off the face of the earth.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, before that Liberal Progressive Atheist Adolf Hitler took power, nobody in Europe was upset about Zionism at all, and nobody in the Middle East had ever complained about the Jews.

It's really unfair to blame the USA, as the USA was just trying to protect everybody from themselves, and has always been a benevolent and merciful influence, that's why everybody in the Americas thinks that Americans are so great!

America itself, never tried to export its problems, mind you, or slaughter any other peoples.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

How convenient an argument is this?
Talk about callus excuses.
Do you feel totally absolved of all responsibility yet?
Did you tie yellow ribbons?
Did you get a vengeance hard on for 9-11?
Think about what our world would be like right now if we spent all this money on education and infrastructure.
We have been feeding weapons into the middle east for years as an extension of the cold war and the more we put in the more flood in from other countries.
"It was Ok to go to war in the first place, it was OK to play out our conflicts in other countries, and the only problem was we didn't war enough."
Same old shit, we pay through the nose to kill people we don't know for little or no gain.
War is not an investment, and your style of thinking and continued support of war mongers makes you responsible for the deaths of men, women, and children.
You can dress it up anyway you like.
If it was up to me I would move you there and see how glib you are.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

"If it was up to me I would move you there and see how glib you are."

Reply to This

I could do without the hyperbole but man I wish I had that power.
One would have a whole different set of beliefs if they saw it through the eyes of those suffer them.
Maybe just glimpses of the real situation, even for a few seconds.
Interrupt them mid-pontification and transport their mind inside a child watching their parents die right in front of them from a drone strike, and then right back in the room where they make arguments for doing it.
Or make it so when they see images of refugees and victims of war they all have the faces their friends and family.
I think it would certainly make people less cavalier about human suffering.

Re:Refugees

[Applehu Akbar]

"How about we don't destabilize countries?"

How about they stop hijacking planes and blowing up our cities first?

"Whose weapons do you think displaced all those refugees?""

To displace them now, you Europeans are going to need lots more 9mm ammo. Put some of those laid-off people to work making it.

Re:Refugees

[Jack Griffin]

but they sent them all over Europe to spread that ISIS crap.

Because ISIS communicates only by physically being next the person they wish to communicate with...

Re:Refugees

[jtayon]

Well it has also be proven that money invested in university turns into less knowledge and GPB contribution than primary school. Early education has a default, it helps all the kids, not only the spoiled brats that can pay for university.

We have a "university" bubble and it doesn't seems to make the society any smarter. At least if /. is full of "educated" people.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

What should happen is that we need to force the US to take at least half the refugees - given that it was Bush and his Quest For Revenge Upon Saddam that started destabilizing the region. The entire "Oooh, Saddam tried to bomb my father" thing that Bush Jr. needed to revenge is one of the fscking root causes of the current troubles.

The US should pay up for the damage it has done to the region, and to Europe who now has to pick up the pieces that the US went to destroy. Like a bloody elephant in a china shop.

Re: Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's not up to you, shitboy, so wipe the snot off your face and get out of the way before I wipe my ass with your skin.

Re: Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we simply exterminate those populations - they obviously can't be civilized - and replace them with better behaved people?

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Before speaking one more word, try to find some facts first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant#Supporters

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Strictly speaking, we didn't cause ISIS, we entered the country in a war, and then left it before we should have, but ISIS was created and abetted by those who have funded it and given it support.

Strictly speaking we didn't cause the fire. Sure we removed the fire department and we struck the match, but if they had only rebuilt their houses to remove all wood, there wouldn't have been any fire.

So it's really not our fault...

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

... Jews ... We moved them to the middle east, where Moses originally settled them when they escaped slavery in Egypt

Whoa buddy, whoa. The Israelites of 4000 years ago aren't the same people as the Jews of today. Lots of things happened inbetween (e.g. forced migrations and forced conversions). And I bet Moses would turn in his grave if he knew what they made out of religion. I can appreciate it that today's jews want to maintain the connection (cause it's nice to have some sort of automatic "chosen people" trump card) but it just ain't so.

That is not to say I have any comment to make about the troubles in the place they were moved to, nor the troubles in the places were they have not completely moved out of and are assuming all sorts of "opinion maker" roles leading their host nations on the path of "diversity" and inevitable extinction. (I guess that's OK since it's all just goyim.)

Re:Refugees

[jandersen]

I, as a Dane - well, ex-Dane now - feel deeply saddened by the continuing trend in Scandinavia towards this narrow-minded duck-pondism (read The Ugly Duckling if you don't know what that means). We used to be the bleeding edge in liberal-mindedness and tolerance, and now we become ever more xenophobic and try to blame 'the others', 'the foreigners' for what is basically down to poor management and lack of foresight by consecutive governments.

Firstly, the myth that immigration costs us too much: in the short term, yes, it can be a burden to integrate newcomers into society, no one's denying it. In the long term, though, these people become strong contributors to society, at least if we allow them. So, what we spend on integration is actually an investment that pays off - and their contribution will help us maintain care for the elderly, which we can't really do, if we rely only on our current populations. The thing is, the people who up their sticks and move abroad in search of a better future are by and large the best people: the ones who are bright enough and have ambitions - we should welcome them, because they will help us make our society better.

Secondly, cutting funding to education is possibly the most idiotic thing we can possibly do; in Scandinavia, it is only really Sweden that has any significant, natural resources, I believe, the rest of us have to rely on being good in the knowledge industry. Less education means less competitiveness in the future; meanwhile emerging economies like China, India etc produce ever more, very highly qualified academics. We should invest massively in education to keep up, and preferably at the front of the race, but we don't. We just blame the poor people, who are forced to flee their homes. If we continue like this, then there will come a time, perhaps in a decade or two, when Scandinavia is back to being the stale backwater it used to be centuries ago, and China or India will be THE place to be.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

> How about they stop hijacking planes and blowing up our cities first?

Do you realize that 19 out of the 20 onboard hijackers in the 2011/Sept/11 attacks were subjects of the saudi arabian monarchy?

(Saudi Arabia is a close military and economy ally of the USA, they supply infinite amounts of oil. In exchange they are allowed to performs beheadings and lashings in public and to ban womenfolk from driving cars. They can fly Boeing 767's into the WTC and Iraq gets punished instead... Today they are bombing the Yemen with american assistance. Oil is so valuable that USA would even tolerate if the saudis took every firstborn blonde texas girl for harem use and cut out their clitorises to deny guilty pleasure.)

Re:Refugees

[LordWabbit2]

Bullshit, you have been arming the "moderate" rebels for years, who either defect to ISIS or hand the weapons over to ISIS. Gaddaffi used to be your ally until you turned on him and bombed the living shit out of his country. How water treatment plants and power stations are military targets I still haven't figured out. America's democracy is a joke, no matter who you vote in, all you are changing is the puppet in front of the camera's. Why the hell did you invade Iraq when the "mastermind" behind 9/11 was in Afghanistan? Oil.

Strictly speaking we didn't cause the fire.

Yes you did, with your meddling in their politics, funding and arming "freedom fighters" which is a small disgruntled minority you can find in ANY country to further your own political and financial agenda's. Drone strikes have created more radical extremists then anything else you have done. If I was at a wedding and you dropped a bomb on it because my nephew Yusuf once dialled a wrong number and is now linked to a terrorist group I would be pretty fucking radical after that.

Sure we removed the fire department and we struck the match

So why the fuck did you even do THAT? Their biggest issue has always been America meddling in their affairs, the problem is your economy is driven by war, you keep bloody starting them (although you suck at ending them - and I don't agree with that list either, you lost the Korean war). America has been around about 236 years, and for 214 years of that you have been at war. Around 90% of the time.

So it's really not our fault...

Yes, yes it is.


I also love how any critical posts of the USA get modded into oblivion. See you on -1 side.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

> not only the spoiled brats that can pay for university.

That makes no sense at all in a discussion about Finland or pretty much any European country as you don't pay for university there.
If your "proof" similarly confused the US to be the whole world then I don't think it means much. That US universities represent a generally overpriced for in some areas high-end eduction approach is kind of a known thing.

Re: Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually ISIL's growth is tied more to to Arab Spring than anything else, and remember we strongly supported Arab Spring.

Re:Refugees

[swb]

yes, it can be a burden to integrate newcomers into society, no one's denying it. In the long term, though, these people become strong contributors to society, at least if we allow them.

I think that's the rub, though, and in particular with Muslim immigrants. They hang onto a religiously-driven cultural conservatism and reject the more liberal cultural values of their host country, self-sorting into ghettos. There's an expectation the country to which they have immigrated needs to change its norms and laws to accommodate their religious and cultural preferences. They see the host country's lack of willingness to change for their sake as discrimination. This leads to unemployment, poverty and lately, a tendency to be attracted to radicalization.

Your process would work more like you expect with immigrants who were either willing to abandon their cultural and religious practices that were incompatible with their host country or already had a culture and values similar to the host country. Even then I recognize that it's not easy, but at least you obtain a relatively rapid integration that results in the economic gains.

But even then what you're arguing for is that Scandinavia needs and wants is economic expansion via labor pool expansion, not that there's something missing from it socially and culturally that the contributions of conservative Islam. By and large those qualities tend to result in conflict and social schisms which are counter-productive to economic growth and social stability.

Re:Refugees

[AmiMoJo]

If you provide fertile soil, plant the seeds and nurture them then technically you didn't "create" the fruit, but most people would hold you largely responsible for it.

We broke those countries and left them in a state where an organization like ISIS could come into existence. We must accept responsibility.

Re: Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom doesn't come easy.

I won't argue with you, because whether you are right or not, I don't care. Neither do many others, so we will just keep doing what we're doing. You don't have the strength to stop the USA.

Re:Refugees

[AmiMoJo]

The cost of the refugee crisis is orders of magnitude lower than what is needed to keep funding universities as they were previously. It's also an acute problem, where as university funding is every year.

The cause of this is the desire to run a budget surplus. That generally excludes short term costs like dealing with refugees. It's pointless saying "we will lay off 1000 people this year because some refugees arrived, and then once they are settled in a few years we can just hire them again". Governments borrow money to cover that sort of thing, and then pay it back later because their base expenditure is in surplus... Or at least, that's what they want.

This is basic economics. You have to realize that governments are not run like households.

Re: Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Quadaffi was never an ally. Never. He stopped paying terrorists after we killed his son, by that isn't an ally.

Re:Refugees

[Applehu Akbar]

In fact, the vey first conflict that the US got involved in after the Revolution itself was against the Barbary pirates. We tried buying them off, and when that didn't work we wiped them out, giving rise eventually to that "Shores of Tripoli" reference in the Marine Hymn.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

ISIS predates the Iraqi invasion. You'd know this if you were interested in history beyond using it as a club to beat your political opponents with.

Re:Refugees

[alfredo]

Those refugees had to have money to get out of their country, so the poor and uneducated are stuck because they can't bribe/pay for safe passage. These people will work hard to prove they are worthy/grateful to the host country.

Germany is accepting refugees because they need young workers to make up for their aging population. With Finland cutting education, they may need these young educated workers.

Re:Refugees

[swb]

Yeah, they are just not like us, with their murky skin and garlic-breath, is that what you are saying? Why would they have to abandon their identity? That is an absurd and shameful thing to demand, and it is designed solely to ensure that muslims understand that you think they are somehow lower than you. We in the West would hardly feel it was reasonable to have to abandon our culture and identity in a similar situation. You are simply being mean and rather despicable.

No, it's their wholesale repression of women, genital mutilation, honor killings, repression of homosexuals, lack of belief in separation of church and state, the use of amputation and execution for the punishment of religious crimes.

On those subjects, you're absolutely right -- anyone who believes women are second class citizens, essentially property, I do believe is lower than me. Those are medieval beliefs.

I also value the separation of religion and state and believe that religion has NO role in the operation of the state, and I hold anyone who would believe that fantasy beliefs in a mystical being should play a role in governance to be lower than me, especially when said beliefs are to be backed with the killing authority of the state. Again, this is a medieval mindset, a primitive outlook on par with gladiatorial contests, crucifixion and human sacrifice which has NO PLACE in the modern world.

Those are the beliefs and attitudes I expect to be abandoned when adopting citizenship in the modern, liberal west.

Re:Refugees

[alfredo]

ISIS provided what the government and the private sector couldn't provide, a paying job. That's what the Iraqi insurgents did when Bremer disbanded the military and fired anyone with ties to the Baath party. He didn't even make allowances for those who had to join to get their jobs. He then prohibited Iraqis from starting businesses that might compete with American businesses. They went so far as to importing foreign workers and materials for reconstruction. 70% unemployment was the result

Another big mistake was not disarming the military before disbanding them. They also forgot to secure the ammo dumps. Many of the IED's were made up of what was culled from these storage compounds.

The decision to withdraw was made in 2008 under a SOFA agreement with Iraq. Obama tried to amend the SOFA to keep a security force there, but Maliki would not agree to legal protections for US soldiers. So we withdrew under the conditions of the 2008 SOFA.

Re:Refugees

[alfredo]

We used the shock doctrine on them and then failed miserably when we attempted to convert Iraq into a Capitalist paradise. We failed to include the Iraqis into this plan. ISIS is a paying job, something we refused to provide.

Re:Refugees

[AmiMoJo]

I think that's the rub, though, and in particular with Muslim immigrants. They hang onto a religiously-driven cultural conservatism and reject the more liberal cultural values of their host country, self-sorting into ghettos.

We need to be less accommodating and start forcing some of our ideals on everyone. Like the French require schools to be totally secular, and ban the wearing of full face veils in public. We force everyone to obey our laws, and we just need to take it a step further and agree on some basic cultural ideas that we will require people to subscribe to.

We are far too accommodating in the UK. For example, we allow halal meat and male genital mutilation. Time to make it clear that while we will be accommodating, there are limits and previously they were too loose.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was more like

1) tried paying them off
2) when that didn't work went over and kicked their asses
3) worked for a few years
4) one of the states decided it wanted to do it again
5) came over and kicked their asses again

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

If you provide fertile soil, plant the seeds and nurture them then technically you didn't "create" the fruit, but most people would hold you largely responsible for it.

We broke those countries and left them in a state where an organization like ISIS could come into existence. We must accept responsibility.

I used to agree with you until reading more history. The area now known as Iraq has been in turmoil for most of the last 500 years - the Ottomans, British, Germans, Persians, etc. have all been involved in the area. Once it was found containing huge oil reserves, it has been even more a cluster.

The US certainly destabilized things, but it was being held together by duct tape already.

Re:Refugees

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

If their universities are anything like US ones, almost all the double-digit growth and cost was in non-teaching positions, and I don't mean janitors.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

...anyone who believes women are second class citizens, essentially property, I do believe is lower than me.

In some ways, your mindset is not entire modern either. You have just moved on from genital-based discrimination to belief-based discrimination. In our liberal world, there must be room for conservative beliefs, which have to be addressed through education, norm-setting, and evidence (created through experimentation). Otherwise, we'll try just to kill those who kill others, and feel justified. I also think we need to differentiate between government policy and individual preference.

The western world also needs to get better about our treatment of prisoners. What would you rather have: life imprisonment with 23 hours in solitary confinement, or lose a limb? We also routinely mutilate the genitals of males without their consent and find all kinds of weird science to justify it. And we still execute people.

That said, I agree that we do need to start asking immigrants to swear on their holy book or honor that they accept the values of this country such as no discrimination based on gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Believing someone is lower than you because they don't share your belief structure is also a medieval/dark age belief.
Also lumping all possible ills together as being present in all muslim refugees is exactly Xenophobia.
Besides your list of horrible things muslims engage in is extremely close to the evangelical christian groups in the US and around the world. No one is decrying their lack of integration into mainstream X.

Your opposition to religious people holding public office puts you at odds with a large percentage of the US population. Particularly Texas. Do you call for the removal of these groups as well? Where is your screaming about their horrible behavior? What is it about refugees specifically that you find offensive while you are not bothered by the religious right as it calls for it's equivalent of Sharia law?

Perhaps you decry both equally but I would think you would mention that in your list of complaints then. Immigration is historically a net positive for all countries involved. Always has been. The fact that refugee groups contain criminals makes it no different than any other existing group and to use the actions of a minority to stereotype a majority is exactly the true meaning of bigotry.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my understanding Norway has significant oil resources.

Re:Refugees

[iampiti]

Politicians here are too scared to be called xenophobes and racists and thus they don't do much to prevent immigration.
We're getting a huge influx of uneducated people from cultures very different from ours. This is obviously gonna have a very negative effect on Europe but, as I said, political correctness trumps common sense here.
Some countries are taking whatever posessions they have from the refugees and they're being criticised by some people, even when such a measure will only take a few hundred euros at most while we're investing thousands on them.
We're digging our own tomb :(

Re:Refugees

[slew]

I also value the separation of religion and state and believe that religion has NO role in the operation of the state, and I hold anyone who would believe that fantasy beliefs in a mystical being should play a role in governance to be lower than me, especially when said beliefs are to be backed with the killing authority of the state. Again, this is a medieval mindset, a primitive outlook on par with gladiatorial contests, crucifixion and human sacrifice which has NO PLACE in the modern world.

You may have to revise what you call the "modern, liberal west". Considering the continuing existence of "church taxes" in many European countries might imply that citizens in places like like Finland, Denmark and Sweden are not part of your modern world and are to quote you "lower than you".

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Those refugees had to have money to get out of their country, so the poor and uneducated are stuck because they can't bribe/pay for safe passage.

You have very little imagination on what people will do to attempt to get passage out of an active war zone. Sometimes you do what you have to do and you aren't proud of it. Monetary consideration is often irrelevant in these situations and of course the passage is not always safe.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the parent's "fantasy beliefs in a mystical being" covers even those crazy evangelical christian groups in the US.

Re:Refugees

[wyHunter]

Last I noticed it was the French and Germans who wanted Gaddaffi gone and it was our spineless president who went along with them. How can these western leaders - of the US, France, Germany, Britain - not realize that when you remove a strongman leader you create a vacuum that ... someone ... will fill?

Re:Refugees

[wyHunter]

You could just as easily argue that the UK and France as mandatory powers after WWI did this as well.

Re:Refugees

[wyHunter]

It isn't just valuable to the USA - it's just as valuable to any industrialized country.

Re:Refugees

[wyHunter]

I think it's Europeans who created WWI and WWII that set in motion the things we are seeing today. So no thanks, you can keep 'em.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. We don't tolerate racism, homophobia or sexism, why ought we think better of it when espoused by Muslims?

Re: Refugees

[Hognoxious]

There was a hope that if they could shake off the existing dictator, it'd all be sunshine, roses, and democracy.

Instead it just created a vacancy to be filled by somebody as bad - or worse.

Re:Refugees

[roman_mir]

I think that USA was actively working with the Nazis, turning them into a much stronger machine than they would be otherwise.

Re:Refugees

[quantaman]

Actually, Syria has a lot of Russian and Soviet weaponry. So does Iraq.

Strictly speaking, we didn't cause ISIS, we entered the country in a war, and then left it before we should have, but ISIS was created and abetted by those who have funded it and given it support.

Certainly the occupation of Iraq and the Syrian Civil War have given ISIS an opportunity to prosper, but you needed people willing to be ISIS for that to happen. It doesn't just happen automatically when you invade a country or when you leave it. We could have left in complete disorder and there didn't have to be an ISIS at the end of it. Let's put blame where blame belongs. The US and Soviet/Russian governments provided opportunities for ISIS, but ISIS is nothing without sympathizers in those countries and in the greater Muslim world who support them.

Fine.

What about the blame for the creation of those ISIS sympathizers? Doesn't the US deserve some responsibility for its policy of supporting brutal dictators who play nice with US interests. Or the US's role in the creation of Israel and it's enabling of Israel's current policy of occupation and land seizure?

The fanatical hatred that's emerged in segments of the Muslim world didn't come from nothing.

Re:Refugees

[HornWumpus]

Students vote with their dollars. They want club med on campus and get it.

Re:Refugees

[swb]

I think the church taxes in many European countries are one of the surprisingly illiberal things many people don't know about supposedly liberal Europe.

The only one I've read much about is the one in Germany and my understanding is unless you self-identify as a member of an eligible church community, you don't have to pay it.

A quick glance at the Wikipedia entry for church taxes makes it seem more or less only a function of self-identified religious community membership, with some variation (ie, in Italy you pay the tax anyway, although you can designate the Italian State as your beneficiary).

I think it's a bizarre system overall and I would protest its very existence -- even if I didn't have to pay it -- if I was a citizen of one of those countries as I do not believe that the state should be involved in the business of religion at all, and yes, I would think less of anyone who believed that the state had an obligation to fund religion at all.

The bottom line, though, is that for most Europeans their state-sponsored religious funding is little different in practice from a voluntary tithe other than the state acting as a middle man. It is, by and large, not a mandatory system that forces anyone to support a specific religion or an official state religion.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why that even needs to be explained, but sadly, it does. And you did it well. Now brace yourself for the accusations of being a narrow-minded xenophobic Islamophobic racist.

Re:Refugees

[KGIII]

Umm... You know, this problem stems from the colonization and resulting arbitrarily drawn lines by the League of Nations, right? The US had no part in any of that - including, declining multiple requests to participate in the League of Nations. The colonization, abuses, and then setting up lines where no previous lines had existed and giving people authority where they should have none is what caused this. The meddling by the US hasn't helped it but it sure as hell isn't the cause.

History is longer than just 15 years. It's fun to blame the US and all - and I'm certainly not saying the US has helped as much as they like to think they have. However, blaming this on the US is rather silly. The situation is there because of colonization and border creation - and the ensuing power structures that were doomed to failure. The fault lies with the people committing the atrocities, however.

Blaming the US is borderline mentally retarded and shows a complete lack of knowledge of history. The blame doesn't belong with the colonizers and border makers. They made the situation exist but the blame still lies with the folks committing the atrocities. But, I guess it's easier than fighting the people committing the atrocities so blame away. The US is surely used to it now.

Re:Refugees

[KGIII]

Heh... Funny you should say that.

Umm... I just *did* make that argument. Well, not argument, statements of facts. What's funny is everyone wants to blame the US when they could be blaming themselves. More importantly, rather than blame either one of those two groups, how about blaming the guilty parties - blame the folks who are committing the atrocities. Imagine that? Assigning blame where it belongs. Sadly, that's actually a foreign concept and ludicrous. We can't, you know, blame the people chopping off heads.

Oh, I understand why they're not blaming them. Blaming them would mean they'd have to do something about it and might get their heads chopped off. They're quite understandably afraid of that. It might also mean accepting some accountability for their forefathers and cleaning up their mistakes. It's much easier (and safer!) to just blame America.

Re:Refugees

[KGIII]

Texas has its own oil, its own electrical infrastructure (really), a bunch of bases with military equipment, and is the size of many other nations. They're also REALLY particular about their young women, blond or not. No, "we" might let them have the Californian girls but probably not Texans. That might make them finally revolt and, contrary to popular opinion, that would probably be a bad thing.

Have you ever SEEN Texas? Have you ever seen an angry Texan? Do you not have history books and newspapers in your neighborhood? This is Texas, they don't even mind a "good killin,' now and then." They also seem hell bent on killing anyone who kills one of them. While that might seem significant, it means we'd have to round up all the blonds in Texas (just the natural blonds are going to be a handful), disarm THEM, disarm their brothers, fathers, and boyfriends, and then somehow make it out without killing ANY of them - because if we kill one, it's gonna escalate and we'll have to kill them all.

It's Texas. They don't actually issue you a firearm at birth. Nope. They issue you two, 'cause you got two hands. They probably give 'em a whole box of bullets, funded by the State, for every birthday.

Put it this way, Texas likes killing people so much that they've actually convinced people to make them (and sell to them) deadly chemicals. Why? I'm not really sure. They weren't going to but then, I presume, they sent Chuck Norris over to have a talk with 'em and he's a Texas Ranger.

You know that slogan, "Don't mess with Texas?" It often has a picture of an Angry Texan and a couple of revolvers? Yeah, that's actually from an anti-littering campaign. Dude, I don't generally go to Texas but I'm assuming they'll KILL YOU for littering. If you want to send the Texas blonds to the Middle East, you're gonna have to round 'em up yourself. I'm not only not helping you do it, I'm not even going to come save your ass when they "catch hold" of you.

No, son... When you get old enough, you realize there are certain things you shouldn't fuck with. One of those things is a hornet's nest. Another one is Texans. I'll remind you again, they LIKE killing. They LAUGH at you if you propose that they stop doing it. Hell, they get offended if you suggest that they stop killing. And you want to go take their blond women? I can only assume you're still a child. Good luck with that. Texas has oil. They're gonna be really, really mad if you try to take their blond women.

Hell, they might be mad if you take their Black (Colored) or Hispanic (Chino) women. No, they're gonna be mad. Why? One word for you, son. Texas.

Re:Refugees

[gay358]

You said that: "The cost of the refugee crisis is orders of magnitude lower than what is needed to keep funding universities as they were previously." It is actually the other way around. The university budget cuts are somewhat more than 100 million euros a year, but much less than the 1000 millions that is budgeted for the asylum seeker crisis. And it is likely that the budgeted 1000 millions won't cover all costs of asylum seekers and during following years the cost of asylum seeker crisis is going to rise rapidly as the number of these "immigrants" staying in this country is going to rise rapidly.

And these immigrants very likely don't cause just temporary problem. For example, in Norway it has been estimated that the lifetime cost of humanitarian immigrant to the country is somewhere between 500000-1000000 euros. Even though some of them will after many years find a job, the total net effect is still quite negative.

And we know from previous persons from these areas that even after many years, the unemployment percentage is extremely high compared to native population. And the education average education level for these "immigrants" is quite low. For example, great majority of persons from Somalia and Afghanistan are even illiterate. And only small percentage persons from Iraq have education that would be useful here.

And our economy is already in quite bad shape, unemployment rates high and we don't have free jobs waiting for these people. If this flood of asylum seekers (most of which are just economic immigrants) continues much longer, we will simply run out of money. We can continue some time with loaned money, but at some point nobody will want to loan money to us. And I don't think it is wise to run this country into chaos and collapse by letting these people come without any end in sight. We are tiny country and we cannot save the billions of poor people who ruin their own countries with backward religion and culture and would like to export it to other countries as well by making far too many babies compared to their capability to take care of them.

Re:Refugees

[gay358]

It won't take long that countries start going bankruptcy or at least stop having welfare system, with social security, healthcare and education. As Milton Friedman said, welfare state is incompatible with open borders. And on top of that, we will have very high level of crime and probably more and more terrorist attacks by ISIS.

Re: Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. Drones are not what causes most of death. Sunni vs Shiite sectarian violence fueled by tribalism and extremely willful ignorance is why that region is a disaster. Who fault is that?

Re:Refugees

[jandersen]

Aww, I scored a -1 Flamebait. That's cute in a way.

I wonder why, though. Was it the one where I was ironic about people in Scandinavia routinely referring to especialy Muslim immigrants as 'swarthy' and other niceties? Or was it because I suggested that people ought to have a bit more confidence in themselves - immigrants are not going to overrun the country, 'breeding like rats' and ransacking our culture just like that. They come, among other things, because they have heard about the way we live, the tolerance and freedom, and they like it. If we really believe our own culture is so good, should we not believe that newcomers would want to learn it and become part of it? You are only up in arms because you are scared - and that is largely because you lack confidence in your own values.

Revising my comments above, I can't see why they should be modded down - I wouldn't have done it myself, even if I disagreed. I think it is the kind of things people do when they can't think of a counter argument; IOW, when they know I'm right.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to, say, Catholic immigrants from Poland coming to UK? Or Jewish and Italian immigrants that came to the States in the past?

And those are demographics that typically do not have issues with integrating in western cultures.

Some may be criminals, sure, but most are fairly good people

And here you missed the point of what was said. You even quoted it but yet it escaped your mind. The point wasnt whether the people are good or not but rather whether their culture is compatible as-is, and its not. The point you made earlier about the immigrants coming to the states, the difference between them and muslims is that they did make changes to assimilate into the host country. They did not need to remove their entire cultural identity but they did have to adopt some of their host's identity. Here is a protip for you, if the immigrants come here and demand everything change to suit them and then go on about how evil their new host country is, they're not there to integrate or assimilate into society.

 

Of course we shouldn't just throw open the doors and let them in just like that; but we can much better than we do at the moment. We could, for example, emphasize that a permit to settle is a contract - we let them in and help them get started, and in return they have to make serious efforts to integrate well into society. There is no need to abandon your culture - living in London I know that, at least; I wade knee-deep in mosques, Hindu temples, Buddhist temples, synagogues, etc, not to mention a large number of Christian churches. They don't seem to be plotting to kill me.

Then you're obviously not looking for any of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2nlIfn8tNA

There is always some jack ass that seems to ignore the numerous evidence out there that prove the assertions wrong. Just because every muslim you met seems at the very least ok doesnt mean that they're the majority representation of their culture, just like the bad people in a culture do not represent the entire culture. If things were just so black and white, it would be easy to have this conversation. The truth is that there are so many diverse factors involved in this discussion that simplifying it to "you're racist" is really showing how ignorant you are on this topic.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it doesn't matter. The real problem is going from a monocultural society to a multicultural society. Despite the propaganda monocultural societies, especially those which have a shared basis of responsibility and civility, result in better outcomes. Violence is lower. People behave more honestly (they do not cheat or overcharge.) They are more polite.
Introduce the "other" and all social values degrade. On both sides.
It is generally a lose/lose situation.

Re:Refugees

[wyHunter]

Isn't it amazing?

Re:Refugees

[wyHunter]

Facts please. Not disbelieving, but just wanting more detail. Of course Britain's former king was also famously a German sympathizer.

Re:Refugees

[Anonymous Coward]

in the short term, yes, it can be a burden to integrate newcomers into society, no one's denying it. In the long term, though, these people become strong contributors to society
----------------
In theory that should be the case, but it is something to do with welfare state - NOTE, that radicalization occurs in new generations, where older immigrants are parents, and I can imagine their shock, because if you have come to Europe to live better life and with the same intentions raise children in safety, there is nowhere else to go... they are f!cked and you are as well.

Secondly, cutting funding to education is possibly the most idiotic thing
-----------------
I, for one can see some good outcome from this: Smart females do not want to multiply. That's one small solution for dying out Europe... though, IMO world, including Europe is overpopulated and something must be done to get rid of pests.

Cutting funding on education plays no role if education has no value. Free education can produce a lot of crap as well. Also free education for some reason produces some sh!tty degrading movements, like sex hating that can't be called feminists, because there is nothing from femina - don't know about other countries, but first feminists in my country were poets and were devoted to partners and they had voting riights right from the independence, because it was unimaginable not to grant them equal rights. So, if these things, that degrade academical standarts go away, you should be ok... though I have some inner feeling, that it is not the case.

We just blame the poor people, who are forced to flee their homes. ...China or India will be THE place to be.
--------------
What a massive brainf... wash
When jews fled Germany, they were forced. Some of modern refugees are forced. For some reason India and China does not have the same sentiments as Scandinavia towards refugees. China even produces refugees - tibetians, uygurs, etc. I'm wondering for some time what is going on with you people out there in Scandinavia, because you are including so many conflicting statements...
Interestingly, that before WW2 there was no help for ANY refugee - it was widely understood, that refugee come with their valuables and pay for themselves - and since only richest and educated could afford to become refugees, they were addition to economics of countries. Others, like circassians that Russian empire forced from their lands in 19th century had to sold their daughters in Osman empire to survive there... Roman empire, just like modern US was melting pot of conquered nations - they moved immigrants around(as slaves, but they could become citizens) and forced upon them their laws.

We are living in INTERESTING TIMES(according to chinese it is a curse to wish for enemies), where refugees are people WITH RIGHTS, but no responsibilities.

Modern refugees are product of US dominance, because US is immigrant country. It is worth to rethink all what EU is doing to catch up with US, if you are not impressed by mericans. Though it is kinda funny, that you are going to THINK only now... and wonder, that future might be unfair to you.

The thing is, the people who up their sticks and move abroad in search of a better future are by and large the best people: the ones who are bright enough and have ambitions - we should welcome them, because they will help us make our society better.
----------
No. You are wrong. Here is why. I've emigrated and I MIGHT bring back knowledge(how things are better organized there) back to MY COUNTRY, to IMPROVE MY COUNTRY when I will come back(just like japanese did around WW2)... and that is only going to happen, if I'll be a part of revolution, that would overthrow governments and change system, because Sweden is not the only country that is doing sepuku and brainwashing their own citizens.
Besides - what about THEIR SOCIETY? They don't deserve better society? Also - it should be defined, what is better... for them and for you? Maybe they have some thou

This would n'er happen to a government-run college

[mi]

University of Helsinki will reduce staff by 980 people, with 570 being laid off by the end of 2017

This would never happen to an institution owned by the benevolent government of a nice, progressive country with constitutional protections for earning a living wage. Oh, wait...

What, no AI?

[ickleberry]

Usually these articles are accompanied by a positive statement about how these 980 people will be replaced by bots and cashless society

Re:What, no AI?

[Jack Griffin]

And 3D Printing!

Re:What, no AI?

[GNious]

This is Finland - even the 3D printed robots think it's too dang cold!

Re:What, no AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having seen Univ. of Helsinki first hand, I can tell you they don't need replacement. There is a lot of administration currently. To the point where they nolonger serve the 'payload' employees. Just streamlining the administration will probably increase the throughput of the researchers & teachers, if only because now they can be crammed only 3 in a office, not 4.

Who are they cutting?

[russotto]

Let me guess:
Cutting professors, teachers, and researchers
Jobs safe or increasing: administrators

Re:Who are they cutting?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFS says:

75 are teaching and research staff and 495 other staff.

So a few are teachers and researchers, but MOST are useless administration and "overhead".

Could be a lot worse. Could be a little better, but it's almost the opposite of your claim that most of those being cut are the people actually serving the direct function of the university.

Re:Who are they cutting?

[I'm New Around Here]

Sounds like the other 495 are the groundskeepers, librarians, technicians, and support staff, not administrative staff.

Re:Who are they cutting?

[goarilla]

So a few are teachers and researchers, but MOST are useless administration and "overhead". Could be a lot worse. Could be a little better, but it's almost the opposite of your claim that most of those being cut are the people actually serving the direct function of the university.

As a member of a different university's "other staff" let me tell you what these jobs usually are:
Secretaries, Logistics, IT, Equipment operators, Cleaning, Security. You know the jobs with the lower wages.
They are cutting where there isn't much to cut nowadays (post 2008/2011), but where it's still easy to cut (tenure is a bitch).

Re:Who are they cutting?

[Anonymous Coward]

What difference does it make? Most of those people will just sit there twiddling their thumbs for 30 years until it's time to retire on a secure government pension.

Finland must be in really deep shit if they're actually cutting government spending even if it means some thumb-twiddlers will be upset!

Re:Who are they cutting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tenured faculty are among the few university employees that generate revenue by attracting students and bringing research money into the university. At least in STEM fields, the research overhead generated by a given tenured faculty member substantially exceeds he/her salary and pays, at least in part, the wages of the "other staff." Also, the reputation of faculty-body attracts students who pay tuition. So cutting revenue producers (i.e. tenured faculty) would be a bad move for a financially strapped university. In fact, universities should be doing whatever it takes to keep these "job creators" from going somewhere else!

So tenure - not such a bitch.

Re:Who are they cutting?

[bluefoxlucid]

Sounds like an argument about who everyone on the forum thinks is useless, meanwhile obviously we're getting rid of jobs we don't need filled. It's like everyone wants to halt economic progresss and go back to a wealthless shithole like the USSR, where there's barely enough productivity to get everyone food.

We make progress by reducing the amount of labor per good made. That means every person's time produces more stuff, meaning there's more stuff per person. That's why hunter-gatherers had loincloths and spent all damn day trying to find food while agrarian societies built rocket ships and put people on the moon. Steel used to be expensive--mining, refining, forming--and then we invented industrial mining machines, puddling process, blast furnace, steel rolling (this made rail production 1/10 as labor-intensive), and mechanical drop forging, and all kinds of metal stuff like cars became things the common man could afford since, amazingly, we don't have to pay 10,000 other common men's wages to buy one of these things.

Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[Dr. Spork]

It sounds like most of the cuts don't affect the people who are fulfilling the core mission of the university, the ones who teach, do research and advise the students. US universities have hired so many administrators that they need more administrators just to keep track of all the administratoring they do. When there are budget cuts, it's administrators who draw up the cost-cutting plans, so it turns out as one would expect. At least in the US, universities can just keep raising tuition. In Finland that is impossible.

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it was mostly "administrator" positions being cut, but a few (75) were actual teaching and researching positions.

For the middle-men, nobody will shed a tear...

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[goarilla]

As someone working as support staff in a European university I have the exact opposite experience.
It's the professors that cut up their portion of the budget and they have been starving anything they could before even thinking of touching their own, their research or their assistants.
As a result we have more tenured professors now than we had 7 years ago but a lot less support personnel.
At the same time government (who provides the majority of our funds) is pushing us to provide more "flexible education" and do more international collaboration with less resources overall.

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the way academia is supposed to be. We don't need support. We need people to get out of our way when we try to do new things! Admin is quite literally, a cancer.

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[AmiMoJo]

The cuts do affect core staff. If they need equipment setting up, they will have to waste their own valuable time doing it instead of doing actual teaching. They will have to take over administration of their classes, instead of doing actual teaching. Support staff and administrators serve an important function sometimes.

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like most of the cuts don't affect the people who are fulfilling the core mission of the university, the ones who teach, do research and advise the students. US universities have hired so many administrators that they need more administrators just to keep track of all the administratoring they do. When there are budget cuts, it's administrators who draw up the cost-cutting plans, so it turns out as one would expect. At least in the US, universities can just keep raising tuition. In Finland that is impossible.

Administrators only cutting other administrators? Hahahahaha. Only actually useful people ever get the boot.

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's like my university, when the layoffs come it's never the excessive top level administration that gets the boot. It's the peons that do the actual work and support the students that get canned. Administrators get "promoted" to made up bullshit titled positions when they have outlived their usefulness, or are allowed to retire and given a bonus to leave early.

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[goarilla]

I'm not talking about bureaucracy. I hate the ever increasing rubber stamping and form filling too.
But do you really want to drill holes, change lightbulbs, buy equipment, configure computers and network and clean your offices yourselfs ?
We free you up from that so you can try those new things !

Re:Clearing off administrator-barnicles?

[bluefoxlucid]

That's not a problem if we invented new machines that take 5 minutes to set up instead of 5 hours.

Free money

[Anonymous Coward]

"The staff cuts reflect the government's drastic funding cuts to education, which plays one part in the effort of trying to help the difficult economic situation of today's Finland."

Probably a great time to implement some bat shit crazy plans like free income for everyone whether they feel like working or not.

Re: Free money

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's not like anyone will need an education when they get free money.

What does this have to do with Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I care and why is this crap cluttering up Slashdot?

But what about the Basic Income?!??

[Anonymous Coward]

A few months ago we were told that Finland is doing so well that everybody is going to get a basic income...

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/15/10/31/2125226/finland-begins-to-shape-basic-income-proposal

Re:But what about the Basic Income?!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me correct you:
A few months ago we were told that Finland's pre-existing welfare system could be overhauled into a guaranteed basic income, and save money in the process.

The welfare costs are already there. Guaranteed basic income reduces the administrative costs by removing the need for the government to investigate and decide whether or not you deserve the money; thus either allowing the government to save money or increase the overall welfare payout to citizens without increasing any taxes.

Re:But what about the Basic Income?!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, its still all talk. Not a single actual fuck has been done to achieve basic income yet. To me it feels like they used it only as an campaigning tool.

Re:But what about the Basic Income?!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Imagine the amount of control they will be able to assert on people 100% dependent on them.

Re:But what about the Basic Income?!??

[Anonymous Coward]

It never was anything more than preliminary research in basic income. Nothing more has been done, since i don't think the research is even finished yet. The foreign news just made it a bigger news than it was.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[sectokia]

Unlike most western countries, at least they understand that these non productive jobs are part of the problem. They need to cut these jobs and cut the taxes used top pay for them. This will allow for extra demand and new jobs in productive fields that service that demand. NZ dis the same thing long ago, with gigantic cuts. Make work jobs like park rangers were cut from 20,000 to literally single digit numbers. They have had a massive economic turn around.

Citizens come last

[zapadnik]

In 2015 Finland accepted 15,000 more asylum seekers at a cost of EU 15,000 per head. That works out to EU 225 million *more* in 2015 due to some legitimate asylum seekers mixed in with a lot of opportunistic economic migrants:
http://sputniknews.com/europe/...

Imagine if a portion of that money had gone to existing citizens instead - and the asylum seekers kept closer to their point of origin while receiving the other portion for their care - it's cheaper to help them closer to their point of origin, like in a neighboring country.

Too bad the politicians and bureaucrats in the West always consider their own citizens and tax payers last when deciding where to spend money taken from those very same tax payers.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if a portion of that money had gone to existing citizens instead - and the asylum seekers kept closer to their point of origin while receiving the other portion for their care - it's cheaper to help them closer to their point of origin, like in a neighboring country.

Watch out, or the "progressives" will start calling you a Nazi, or Hitler, or xenophobic, or whatever other hackneyed, overused, erroneous label they use these days in an attempt to terrorize good people into complying with the agenda of the globalists.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

Reality is that so called "progressives", "liberals" and the like are the loud minority, usually not married or already divorced.

They are THE minority, because they are preaching against the common sense and against all of the logics.

Re:Citizens come last

[PopeRatzo]

[sputniknews.com]

Who's that?

Sputnik is an international multimedia service launched on 10 November 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, an agency wholly owned and operated by the Russian government, which was created by a Decree of the President of Russia on December 9, 2013.[2] Sputnik replaces the RIA Novosti news agency on an international stage (which remains active in Russia)[3] and Voice of Russia. According to its chief Dmitry Kiselyov Sputnik intends to counter the "aggressive propaganda that is now being fed to the world".[4]

So, Vladimir Putin, who's used ultra-nationalist sentiment to stir up shit in other former Soviet satellite nations in order to give cover to an invasion, has his personal news agency telling us how much trouble Finland is in because of "refugees".

Damn, there's nothing new under the sun, is there? Next we'll be hearing how the Jews are defiling the morals of women in towns all across Belarus.

Re:Citizens come last

[AHuxley]

re "and the asylum seekers kept closer to their point of origin while receiving the other portion for their care - it's cheaper to help them closer to their point of origin, like in a neighboring country."
Yes they get to keep their own language, medical care, education, traditions, faiths going and are ready for the very short trip back home when hostilities cease.
A common climate and then the NGO"s can help with rebuilding that nation in need in a very direct way.
No funds are then just wasted on very expensive long term per person support payments in distant countries for years.
Distant nations can then look after their own massive internal unemployment issues with more further education and try and get their own workers back to work or younger generations into work.

Re:Citizens come last

[zapadnik]

Did you have better figures than 15,000 new people in 2015 at a cost of EU 15000 per head? Is there a better news source with this information?

Re:Citizens come last

[PopeRatzo]

Did you have better figures than 15,000 new people in 2015 at a cost of EU 15000 per head? Is there a better news source with this information?

That's my question to you.

Re:Citizens come last

[Jack Griffin]

Imagine if a portion of that money had gone to existing citizens instead - and the asylum seekers kept closer to their point of origin while receiving the other portion for their care - it's cheaper to help them closer to their point of origin, like in a neighboring country.

It's a little more complicated than that. The point of foreign aid is not just to feel good about helping others, it's a National Security prevention measure. You can let other humans rot, and all they will do is find a way to kill you and take your stuff. Or you can try and help them out of a hole and hopefully they'll leave you alone, or even better become prosperous enough to buy your products and boost your economy.
There is no cheap option, you either lots of money, or a lot more.

Re:Citizens come last

[zapadnik]

The 15 k x 15 k was the figure I put up. Now you have to put up a different figure and show why your source is superior. At the moment you don't appear to be going on anything except your own unexplained opinion - which is a worse source, not a better one.

Re:Citizens come last

[zapadnik]

I agree. But my point was that Governments care less about their own citizens then about 'virtue signalling' to foreigners. Here we have an article about native Finns being put out of work at a university, due to hard economic times, meanwhile the Finns are spending large amounts of money on importing foreigners, rather than helping them closer to home. This is madness.

Re:Citizens come last

[sumdumass]

So basically create a new Palestine and it will all work out better at least until we lose interest or their makeshift government become corrupt and waste the funds?

There are problems with all the scenarios.Even putting boots on the ground and removing the threat causing the refugees will have long term issues whether we are successful or not.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

Until one has enough evidence to support a theory beyond rational doubt, one has to suspend judgement about its validity.
Just because the scarcity of Your sources, and their objectivity has been called into question, doesn't mean that Your theory is wrong. It doesn't also mean that it is right. It just means that we have no reason to believe You are right on that topic.
And posting a different figure is not up to him. It is up to You to back Your theory with further data, until it is no longer reasonable to doubt it.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch out, or the "progressives" will start calling you a Nazi, or Hitler, or xenophobic, or whatever other hackneyed, overused, erroneous label they use these days in an attempt to terrorize good people into complying with the agenda of the globalists.

Well, I don't see much difference between calling all men rapists because one man is or calling all immigrants criminals just because one is.
The inability to distinguish between groups and individuals is one of the largest problems we have in the world. The current crisis in Syria is insignificant in comparison.
We would probably not even have that crisis if people could stop blaming groups for the actions of individuals.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you also post some statistics on the amount spent by the western countries on waging the syrian 'war'?

Would be nice to have some comparison

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds a good number. With that you can barely live in a rented single room with shared kitchen and bathroom while eating subsidized food. It is enough to pay for a mobile phone and cheap internet though.

Re:Citizens come last

[Jack Griffin]

I agree. But my point was that Governments care less about their own citizens then about 'virtue signalling' to foreigners. Here we have an article about native Finns being put out of work at a university, due to hard economic times, meanwhile the Finns are spending large amounts of money on importing foreigners, rather than helping them closer to home. This is madness.

I'm not sure what you should expect to happen here. The administration of a university shouldn't be micromanaged by the Prime Minister, so the two events shouldn't be connected. It's quite possible (who knows) that the school was massively bloated with staff and needed culling. I noticed most cuts are non-teaching roles, and a good chunk are organic redundancies (ie through staff retirements). It sounds a lot worse than it is.

Re: Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends. If you remove the refugees as well your problem is solved. Imagine that: no people, no problem. All those lands and resources just there to be taken by their rightful owner, we Europeans.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2015, 55,040 children were born in Finland. Their parents receive at least EUR 1,250 per year until the children are 17 years old. In total, parents received EUR 1,384 million in 2015 for adding unproductive humans to the Finnish society. That number does not include the cost of free schools, medical care, playgrounds, etc. It takes at least 22 years until a person begins to be productive.

Do you think that's a good investment? Yes? Is it because the children are white, and the refugees are brown?

Re:Citizens come last

[thegarbz]

So, Vladimir Putin, who's used ultra-nationalist sentiment to stir up shit in other former Soviet satellite nations in order to give cover to an invasion, has his personal news agency telling us how much trouble Finland is in because of "refugees".

You do realise there is this thing called "world news" or "international news" that pretty much every non-tabloid will cover at some point?

What are you saying, that his story is biased because it's not from a Finnish site? That the numbers are a made up lie? That asylum seekers don't actually exist because it was reported by Putin?

But you are right. The number are wrong.
From the Finnish government themselves: http://www.migri.fi/about_us/s...
2014: 3651
2015: 32476

That's 28825 new asylum seekers, not that 15000 that damn communist news agency will have you believe is a bad number.

Go troll somewhere else.

Re:Citizens come last

[AmiMoJo]

This is the situation in Syria and northern Iraq: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

Remind me where the economic migrants are coming from again.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing people like you have to learn that other people are human beings with thoughts and aspirations just like yourself, and that you cannot just tell hundreds of thousands of people what to do and how to life for the rest of their life because it's convenient to you. Another thing that you need to learn is that human rights and the Geneva Conventions are not just there for cherry picking, whenever they fit your views. If you are for them, you need to be for them under all circumstances, not just those that please you. If you are not for them, then you also need to be honest about it and revise your legal frameworks to allow torture, war crimes or deny refugees shelter. It's a question of being hypocritical or not.

After you have done this and done your homework, we can talk about the various false claims in your post.

Re: Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

You write as if it were a 0 sum game and there were not conscious decisions behind each cut.

The money saved from these cuts are being channeled to cut employment expenses companies have. The logic is, that then companies will be able to hire more employees and this will reduce unemployment, and as such resulting government expenses. What it does not take into consideration is that previous similar cuts did not increase hiring, the saved money was pretty much channeled to dividends that are high despite the bleak economic situation.

I'm not against lowering expenses for companies, but if the project has goals it would be good to measure past attempts into it. I would assume that channeling the money to small companies hiring their first employee would go further in achieving this goal, of course that would not serve the parties funding the political parties in the government.

I work for a profitable big software company. We hire employees when we need them, such as other similar companies. We also get millions from tekes for projects we would do anyway... Generally things are not as they seem.

Re: Citizens come last

[DigiShaman]

This is by design.

The native western population is in decline (because raising a family is expensive). The global elite are looking at importing future -dependent- voters so they can vote for the same assholes that keep them into indentured servitude in the first place. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Re:Citizens come last

[PopeRatzo]

"Asylum seekers" is not the same as refugees. A little over 7,000 decisions have been made regarding them being granted asylum.

From your own citation.

Re:Citizens come last

[thegarbz]

You're right, by your count refugee movements into Europe haven't increased at all by the last few years. So it's all good then due to the pedantic use of english right?

No one cares what refugees are, people care what attempted refugees are, i.e. the people flooding a country to attain asylum. Keep reading my link to find out how much it's costing and the effort (money) involved in determining if one of the 32000 become one of the 7000, which is what the point of the damn article was: people moving between nations causing a monetary cost to the government, regardless of how you want to label them.

Re:Citizens come last

[Blaskowicz]

There are already *millions* of syrian refugees, most of them in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan.

That's an absurdly high number, it makes a sizable fraction of the entire world's population and is the same amount of people as the population of Finland.
Lebanon is a tiny country with the same population as Finland and they have to make do with over one million refugee. So keeping them close to their point of origin is impossible, there's no immediate solution barring resorting to extermination camps. Bitching against a 225 million expense is rather quaint.

Imagine if most European countries decided to leave NATO?
Better to deal with the root of the problem.

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

In the court it is a proccecution business to show that someone is guilty

Re:Citizens come last

[Blaskowicz]

The war is going to last at least ten years, if some people sitting in some regional and western capitals don't try to change their course of action. What about you go spend ten years living in concentration camps, do you think that will do wonders for your "medical care" and your traditions? What about you give birth to your children and raise them in the camps?

Re:Citizens come last

[Anonymous Coward]

You stupic brick.
It is good becouse most of them are children of natural historic finns and they will grow up to be true finns, not some mongrels.
You need more finns not more mongrels.

Re:Citizens come last

[HornWumpus]

Your cited source has no credibility.

Re:Citizens come last

[HornWumpus]

The sunni/shia war is going to last far longer then 10 years and has already gone on for centuries.

The trick will be getting it back into stalemate without being too obvious about it.

Does the USA get to send some Mexicans and Central American refugees on to Europe as well?

The bottom line is no nation can tolerate uncontrolled immigration. You want the educated ones, not the criminals and fanatics.

I for one am glad the Eurotrash get to deal with it too. Was sick of hearing how bad we were for not welcoming every Salvadoran with free shit.

Re:Citizens come last

[gay358]

The budgeted costs for this year are already 1000 million and I wouldn't be surprised that even that wouldn't be enough, especially when you count family reunifications. And next your will probably cost much more as the number of persons that are here, keeps rising rapidly and they have very poor probability of getting work. And there is no need for extermination camps. Just not letting them into country is enough, Besides, the majority of them are just seeking better life standard and not even fleeing war. And fleeing war is not grounds for getting refugee status according to Geneva Convention on Refugees.

And in the end, somebody will have to fight ISIS and stop the spread of it to even wider and wider areas. Those who are fleeing war and leaving their women behind, might as well be the ones, who fight against ISIS. We could support the fight against ISIS with weapons, medical supplies etc.

Re:Citizens come last

[irrational_design]

You forgot "Bigot".

No way this is even possible

[93 Escort Wagon]

The staff cuts reflect the government's drastic funding cuts to education, which plays one part in the effort of trying to help the difficult economic situation of today's Finland.

I have it on good authority - years of reading Slashdot posts - that European countries are enlightened, problem-free utopias. Someone must've made a mistake and replaced "America" with "Finland" when writing this. Stupid editors missed it again!

Re:No way this is even possible

[Jack Griffin]

I have it on good authority - years of reading Slashdot posts - that European countries are enlightened, problem-free utopias.

You mustn't read so good. That's not your fault though, it's the relatively poor education system you have.

Re:No way this is even possible

[Big Hairy Ian]

Isn't Finland a former Soviet state? Certainly was in their thrall during the cold war

Re:No way this is even possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Euro-trash are, of course, really good at reading thanks to all of the graffiti on their national monuments and historic places,

Re:No way this is even possible

[Anonymous Coward]

*read so well

Re:No way this is even possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a soviet state. Part of Russia. Soviet Union didn't exist for 5 years since Finland became independent.

Re:No way this is even possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Your fault is lack of sarcasm detection.
Mine is idiot detection... (I wished for smart people detection)

If this is the middle class

[AHuxley]

What is happening at the lower ends of society?
Why is the EU allowing itself to be flooded with people with few or no skills that will need long term generational support if it cant even look after its own best and brightest?
If a nation is so 'poor' why accept more poor people in who will need funds from a government who cant their own fund higher education?
Time for some national interest and ensuring educational funding is placed above EU policy.
Finland was able to keep the Soviet Union out, time to look after its own funding again and stop wasting limited funds on the EU's rapid population growth projects.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ask George Soros why he wants national borders (and therefore, nations themselves) destroyed.

People who meddle in the affairs of foreign nations deserve no less than the death penalty.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the EU allowing itself to be flooded with people with few or no skills that will need long term generational support if it cant even look after its own best and brightest?

Same reason the US has for decades accepted many millions from Mexico with mostly very low tier skillsets. (Some exceptions, true enough, but the vast majority had little education or higher level skillsets).

Difference is, while EU has only been doing this a short time, US has been doing for decades. Which is OK, but the changing demographics are starting to be felt. The culture of the incomers is more anti-gay (christian), more likely to have large families, etc etc etc.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Currency speculators, just like most high financiers, are complete sociopaths. They don't have sympathy for anyone.

Re:If this is the middle class

[ChrisMaple]

Soros has publicly expressed joy for the damage he's done, and announced that he intends to destroy the US currency. He should swing.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Soros has publicly expressed joy for the damage he's done, and announced that he intends to destroy the US currency. He should swing.

Link (please no stupid conspiracy website)?

Re:If this is the middle class

[tsotha]

Why is the EU allowing itself to be flooded with people with few or no skills that will need long term generational support if it cant even look after its own best and brightest?

Because the people running the EU (I'm looking at you, Angela Merkel) have decided the solution to low birth rates is the mass importation of people from other countries. It's cultural suicide. I think they've pretty much realized the whole thing was a bad idea, but where to go from here? The immigrants aren't leaving.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, you know he is a Hungarian Jew who lived through the Nazi occupation and who effectively came to England as a refugee?

So? Hungarian Jews have the same chance of being born with sociopathic tendencies as everybody else.

perhaps given his upbringing he has some sympathy for their plight?

Or perhaps his early experiences filled him with hatred and brought his sociopathic tendencies to full fruition.

but rather there being some grand conspiracy

How does judging Soros to be an evil and despicable human being amount to a "conspiracy"? What he has done is out in the open, and so is his bragging about it.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Merge the lines defining the culture, merge! All these pull requests are aggravating but eventually manageable with the help of the community and solid constitution. What doesn't work is trying to separate the service stacks of the society while trying manage the interfaces between those. It's just too expensive, even with a separately developed middle culture.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

More homophobic does not means having less gays. In fact, there many gay muslins.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Jack Griffin]

Because the people running the EU (I'm looking at you, Angela Merkel) have decided the solution to low birth rates is the mass importation of people from other countries.

So what's your solution?

It's cultural suicide.

Interesting. In my experience the most multicultural cities in the word tend to be the most interesting and best to live in.
http://theculturetrip.com/nort...
I've be to all of these places except Sao Paolo, and all of them were excellent places (except maybe LA, which is more to do with the car oriented sprawl that is very tourist unfriendly)

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cultural suicide.

Interesting. In my experience the most multicultural cities in the word tend to be the most interesting and best to live in. http://theculturetrip.com/nort... I've be to all of these places except Sao Paolo, and all of them were excellent places (except maybe LA, which is more to do with the car oriented sprawl that is very tourist unfriendly)

You seem to be under the wrong impression that "cultural suicide" is the polar opposite of "multiculturalism". Having eateries with exotic food, foreign theater productions, carnivals, musicians, etc. and being "friendly" towards a foreign tourist is IMO a quite shallow view of the issue. A nation's unique culture has for centuries informed law, theology, scientific exploration, economy etc. (and yes, of course also the arts and cuisine). As the GP hinted, a demographic shift fundamentally changes that substrate. Whether that is good or bad is up for debate, but I think it is arguably better to continue to have diversity also in these areas. Once everything becomes a gray homogenized mass (ironically under the slogan of "diversity") no differences are tolerated any more, not between individuals and not between political states (when ethnicities will have long ceased to exist). Some would be world dictator's wet dream, but surely not mine.

Re:If this is the middle class

[monkeyxpress]

Currency speculators, just like most high financiers, are complete sociopaths. They don't have sympathy for anyone.

Oh but they have sympathy for themselves. My observation is that as they get older and realise that nobody will mourn for them when they die, they quickly go into ultra-humanitarian legacy mode.

Re:If this is the middle class

[houghi]

I do not care for cultural suicide. If anything we have learned from history is that mixing culture enriches it, not make it poorer.

Different cultures ADD to the current culture, they do not deduct from it. Just look at the different types of restaurants. The different types of sports and how they mingle nicely. Clothing is another one. Architecture, music, the list is endless.

Some will say that it will be bad for the language, but it isn't as long as you see language as a tool, not a political instrument (I live in Belgium, I know what I am talking about).

  I really love the mixture of the styles in food, clothing and such. So if mass importation of people is cultural suicide, please can we have more of them?

Re:If this is the middle class

[sociocapitalist]

Why is the EU allowing itself to be flooded with people with few or no skills that will need long term generational support if it cant even look after its own best and brightest?

Because the people running the EU (I'm looking at you, Angela Merkel) have decided the solution to low birth rates is the mass importation of people from other countries. It's cultural suicide. I think they've pretty much realized the whole thing was a bad idea, but where to go from here? The immigrants aren't leaving.

Sweden is sending some 80,000 back:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

Re:If this is the middle class

[hey!]

Why is the EU allowing itself to be flooded with people with few or no skills that will need long term generational support if it cant even look after its own best and brightest?

This has nothing to do with the economic situation in Finland. You're just using it as an excuse to bring up a pet issue.

Re:If this is the middle class

[thegarbz]

but where to go from here? The immigrants aren't leaving.

I for one am interested in what will happen this year now that the Netherlands have the EU presidency. They don't appear to be quite as welcoming as other nations which pretty much the first thing said was the biggest topic of 2016 will be to get asylum seeker population under control.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody ever deserves the death penalty. It is retarded and barbaric.

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Soros is doing what Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi "envisoned". Death to European national states. death to european white population as we know.

Through the ritual in December 1921, Kalergi joined the Masonic lodge "Humanitas" in Vienna in 1922.
In 1922, he co-founded the Pan-European Union (PEU) with Archduke Otto von Habsburg.
In 1923, he published a manifesto entitled Pan-Europa, each copy containing a membership form which invited the reader to become a member of the Pan-Europa movement. European freemason's lodges supported his movement, including the lodge Humanitas.
According to his autobiography, at the beginning of 1924 he came through Baron Louis de Rothschild in contact with Max Warburg who offered to finance his movement for the next 3 years giving him 60,000 gold marks.
In April 1924 Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the journal Paneuropa (1924–1938).
In 1925 he started publishing his main work, the Kampf um Paneuropa (The fight for Paneuropa, 1925–1928, three volumes).
In 1926, the first Congress of the Pan-European Union was held in Vienna and the 2,000 delegates elected Coudenhove-Kalergi as president of the Central Council a position he held until his death (1972) (According to a masonic yearbook he died of a stroke. His secretary, however, wrote about his suicide.)

His original vision was for a world divided into only five states: a United States of Europe that would link continental countries with French and Italian possessions in Africa; a Pan-American Union encompassing North and South Americas; the British Commonwealth circling the globe; the USSR spanning Eurasia; and a Pan-Asian Union whereby Japan and China would control most of the Pacific.

In his book Praktischer Idealismus (Practical Idealism), he wrote:
“ The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today's races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.”

“ Instead of destroying European Jewry, Europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. No wonder that this people, that escaped Ghetto-Prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of Europe. Therefore a gracious Providence provided Europe with a new race of nobility by the Grace of Spirit. This happened at the moment when Europe's feudal aristocracy became dilapidated, and thanks to Jewish emancipation.“

Re:If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody ever deserves the death penalty. It is retarded and barbaric.

As is locking a human in a small cage for decades. Rehabilitation or exile are the only non-barbarous options.

Re: If this is the middle class

[Anonymous Coward]

Sisu will prevail. Always.

ah-so, the point emerges

[Anonymous Coward]

>The country has lost what were its only significant export products for several years: the mobile phones of Nokia.

Thanks Microsoft.

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[tlambert]

>The country has lost what were its only significant export products for several years: the mobile phones of Nokia.

Thanks Microsoft.

It's totally not Microsoft's faults that no one wanted to buy the phones that Nokia wanted to be able to keep selling, but for which there was pretty much zero market.

If you disagree, you are welcome to go into the dumb-phone market with your own investors, and I happen to know a country where you could locate your company, with a reasonable expectations of being able to hire a bunch of unemployed dumb-phone engineers on the cheap...

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize Nokia was selling smartphones since 2002, long before Apple released its first iPhone in 2007, right?

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[tlambert]

You realize Nokia was selling smartphones since 2002, long before Apple released its first iPhone in 2007, right?

I realize they were marketing feature phones as if they were actually smart-phones in order to try and rehabilitate their primary product into a product that the market was willing to buy.

You realize a feature phone isn't a smart phone, and Nokia didn't start selling the Nseries until April of 2006, right? And that they were still predominantly a dum phone selling company, even after that point, right?

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize a feature phone isn't a smart phone, and Nokia didn't start selling the Nseries until April of 2006, right?

You realize they were selling the 7650 in 2002, with a 32 bit ARM9 CPU, able to run fullfledged applications like email programs and java based arbitrary applications, right?

Nokia was doing smartphones back before Apple even entered the business.

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[tsotha]

Nokia tried to adapt, but they were pretty much caught on the hop. The road is littered with companies like that, from RIM to Motorola.

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[tlambert]

You realize they were selling the 7650 in 2002, with a 32 bit ARM9 CPU, able to run fullfledged applications like email programs and java based arbitrary applications, right?

Nokia was doing smartphones back before Apple even entered the business.

The 7650 was retconned into being called a smart phone. It was not in fact a smart phone, even though it had a 600 Euro price tag, because the JNI's were not there for the Java "apps". You could write/play games, and not much else. 3.6M of memory is not a lot, especially if you are running a JVM, since they tend to be "forgetful" about giving memory back.

But nice try.

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[jszpilewski]

Every Nokia phone with Symbian OS had fully working TCP/IP stack and a few other things and definitely was more smart than Windows 3.1 era computers. Equally was smart enough to keep Microsoft with its Pocket PC phones/devices at bay. At least from 2004 you could install functional Opera HTML web browser and other apps like Internet messaging, IRC client, photo app with auto picture correction and of course games if you wanted. It is true that Java was an afterthought and most applications were written in C++. And yes, Symbian were very unhappy that few people knew about that because all those folks lacked that what Apple had.

That what helped Apple to stand out the crowd was much stronger marketing muscle (started to grow in the 8 bit computers era) and making no trade offs for crappy hardware like caring about running on systems with 4 MB of RAM. In long term it helped making them look like a quality and luxury brand. (Same applies to Apple vs Windows).

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[tlambert]

That what helped Apple to stand out the crowd was much stronger marketing muscle (started to grow in the 8 bit computers era) and making no trade offs for crappy hardware like caring about running on systems with 4 MB of RAM. In long term it helped making them look like a quality and luxury brand. (Same applies to Apple vs Windows).

No, what made Apple stand out is that the platform itself was very, very, very compelling.

People wanted to program for it badly enough that they were willing to jailbreak the devices using systemic exploits to do it, and then work on developing an SDK for it, to the point of reverse engineering the APIs for all the frameworks on the thing, and then making modifications to the scratch register usage in the compiler, because Apple did not use the standard (at the time) ARM ABI or calling conventions.

Jailbreaks initially came about so as to rewrite the baseband seczone and then put a new (valid) TEA signature on the thing, so as to remove the carrier lock, since Apple sold the things into a limited market, but people *EVERYWHERE* wanted an iPhone. It got so bad at one point that Apple limited the number of iPhones you were allowed to purchase, and entire shipments were hijacked at gunpoint.

That never happened with Nokia phones. Ever.

When Steve released the thing, the Application story was that "You'll use web apps. Period.". Steve was deathly allergic to the idea of building another Apple Newton, and wanted it to be a closed system.

Only the damn thing wouldn't stay closed, and when it surfaced that the boot ROM had the same buffer overflow flaw in the signature validation code that was in Samsung and Sony devices which used Samsung OEM'ed processors, it was "game over" for at least two years on spinning new silicon.

Seriously: No one ever bothered with the Nokia phones.

Even if there had been a capability baseline (all the Apple phones has the same sensor capabilities, the same screen aspect ratio, and, initially, the same screen resolution) so that you could write one piece of code for a Nokia phone, and it wouldn't be missing features and/or run like crap and/or have to scale everything into ugliness due to using whatever the cheapest bulk available LCD resolution and aspect ration the thing had when Nokia was pricing parts right before going to manufacture -- the damn things were not compelling enough that people *wanted* to develop for them.

The only people who developed for Nokia were the ones the phone company paid to put simple games on then through the phone company stores, or the ones that Nokia solicited themselves, or the *very few* vertical market applications which would fit on the things and remain useful.

Nokia phones were crap feature phones with a JVM "in case", and while you *could* write binary applications for them, it was a massive PITA, and they weren't portable between models, and Nokia didn't pre-release models to developers -- which is kind of what you have to do, if you are going to be shipping a bunch of hardware incompatible devices, and the apps would only run on the older devices no longer being built.

Sorry.

Build a compelling product that developers want to develop for, and they will *break into* the thing to do it, even if it means sending the device to someone in Korea who's willing to remove surface mount chips to get at the JTAG port, and then reattach the chips to the device in a reflow oven, because he happens to have one, because he's an engineer at Samsung who works on Samsung phones, and the things are more compelling than what his company has him working on most of the time.

*That's* why Nokia took the dirt nap.

Re:ah-so, the point emerges

[Blaskowicz]

What about Nokia Communicator 9000? It had a damn 386 in it. It was so far ago (1996) that its CPU/RAM specs would have made for a somewhat useful desktop PC (with the addition of a hard drive etc. of course)

You made good points in your latter post. The Apple phone was such a baseline and step up, it's like comparing Amiga 1000 / Amiga 500 to a hodgepodge of CP/M, TRS-80, Apple II and Spectrum machines etc., or comparing the netbooks to the pockets computer that ran BASIC or did agenda/contacts/notes only.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Anonymous Coward]

Organizational downsizing and layoffs are inevitable. The difference is that these people get to keep their national pensions, will receive at least 700EUR/mo in basic allowance even if they're not qualified for unemployment insurance, and if they are, as they are likely to be, up to 85% of their normal pay for up to a year while they try to find a replacement job. Then there is the normal array of services, should any of them run into real difficulty. It's much more manageable than what you'd get in a third world hellhole like Arkansas.

Troll smarter, not harder next time.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Anonymous Coward]

The Scandinavian countries are quite pragmatic when it comes to solving problems. Sweden did a turn towards the right in 2006 which served them very well. Finland will do something similar.

Closing the fire station

[unencode200x]

This sort of smells of the old political trick of announcing a fire station will close. It gets a lot of people together against the bad government closing the fire station which leads to a tax increase. Perhaps they're betting on people getting riled up and getting more public or private funding. If they were hurting that much financially the layoffs would happen sooner unless there are some legal reasons not to.

fine let's just replace it with loans at 7%-15%

[Joe_Dragon]

fine let's just replace it with loans at 7%-15% and no chapter 11 or 7.

Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[rsilvergun]

This is just a response to low oil prices. Finland sells a lot of oil. The correct response would be to borrow until the price of oil went back up (which baring a miracle it will when the Saudis give up trying to kill US Shale) then pay down the debt with the oil profits. But can't dip into those sweet, sweet profits just to keep the general public's standard of living up now can we?

Re:Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is just a response to low oil prices. Finland sells a lot of oil. "

wut

>Finland lacks domestic sources of fossil energy and must import substantial amounts of petroleum, natural gas, and other energy resources, including uranium for nuclear power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Finland

>Oil - exports: 0 bbl/day (2010 est.)
http://www.indexmundi.com/finland/oil_exports.html

Re:Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[henni16]

Finland sells a lot of oil?
You're probably confusing Finland and Norway...

Re:Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[Anonymous Coward]

Says someone who probably lives in his mother's basement. Nobody who is fiscally sound would make the statement you just did. Times are Tight. Cut back? Fuck no! Let's borrow and HOPE things get better. No need to adjust our spending for the current situation.

You farging liberal corksucker.

That's why so many countries are in the economic situation they are in. BORROW BORROW BORROW. i.e. I want my shit now, and I want some other fucker not yet even born to pay for it.

Re:Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finland != Norway

Re:Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they sell $5Billion worth of oil annually: http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/bu...

Re:Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[KGIII]

It's not their own oil but I seem to recall a company called Neste Oil has a bunch of refineries there. It was on NPR not that long ago. They don't have their own oil but they refine a whole bunch of it.

Umm... That's according to NPR and I'm a bit too lazy to Google. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that they do process billions of dollars worth of oil. I believe they do a lot of Norway's oil? My memory is really not that good so feel free to Google.

How much of an impact this has on the economy, I do not know nor will I speculate as I am unqualified. I just happen to recollect the name Neste and thus I remember the story. Err... It was the afternoon show with that old lady, I've forgotten her name. I still manage to listen to MPBN because they're on the 'net. It works out well enough even if I'm in Florida for the winter.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Anonymous Coward]

>Finland is already lagging well behind the eurozone economies that were in dire straits three years ago – with the sole exception of Greece.
>The public debt is projected to creep up to over 68 per cent of gross domestic product in 2017 as the public economy has operated on a deficit for six years.
>Erkki Liikanen, the Governor of the Bank of Finland, believes structural reforms and measures to improve the competitiveness of businesses [ruh-roh] are key to revitalising the economy

Finland! Just better than Greece!

Cool Story Bro, tell it again..

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally News for nerds....

Re:Cool Story Bro, tell it again..

[Applehu Akbar]

"Totally News for nerds...."

It would be if we were to 3-D print the free money.

Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia

Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[jdwolfe]

Let's lay off 1,000 Finnish Professors and Academic staff but let in millions of Muslim Syrian migrants that are going to immediately be placed in publicly funded houses and food provided by the Finnish Citizens. What's more important, the working class and Finnish educators or Muslim opportunists posing as Syrian refugees?

Re:Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes that is it, these 1,000 academics are so overpaid, that cutting their salaries will fund houses and food for millions of Syrians.

Re:Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[ooloorie]

Actually, the number of quota refugees for Finland is about 1000, and the number of actual refugees is about 15000. Yes, firing 1000 well paid university staff probably actually amounts to paying for a large fraction of Finland's share of the Syrian refugees.

Re:Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[GNious]

Yeah, Stupid Finland for not just letting people rot outside of its borders, but trying to do the humane thing, even while in an economic downturn where they (concurrently) have to lay off part of the workforce at a university.

Re:Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[Anonymous Coward]

As a human, I think that if you can cut only 1000 jobs to support millions of people, that's a fucking good deal. Anyway, at the current rate, it will take more than 30 years to get one million of asylum applicants (I'm not even considering the fact that they rejected half of the applications last year) in Finland.

Re:Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[thegarbz]

Actually that second number is much closer to 32476 for 2015. How many of those are identified as "genuine" asylum seekers and how many will be sent back will be interesting.

Re:Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[Anonymous Coward]

How did they get to Finland's border? Finland is not exactly next door to Syria. Did the boats make it all the way around France, past England, underneath Norway and Sweden, then up to Finland?

Re:Muslim Syiran Migrants Are More Important

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't rot. They will freeze, in spring, bears will eat the corpses and all will be well.

A basic income would fix that problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's taking you so long, Norway? You're the leader here.

Re:A basic income would fix that problem.

[ScentCone]

A basic income would fix that problem.

So true! When there isn't enough economic activity to generate the jobs that would make things like expensive university programs easy to afford, the best plan is definitely to spend more money you don't have (massive debt!) in order to just hand it out without any connection to productivity (inflation!). Excellent idea.

Re:A basic income would fix that problem.

[tsotha]

It's working out great for Venezuela and Zimbabwe!

Minor Note

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't read the actual YLE article, only 75 of the 570 people to be made redundant this spring are teachers and researchers.

From what I've heard from friends and family who have actually studied and worked at the University of Helsinki staffing is very heavy on management compared to actual teachers and researchers. I've had people who study and work there estimate that the ration between administration and people doing actual teaching and research is something like 3:1 which would fit pretty well with the layoffs being almost 8:1 in administration vs teaching & research. There's been talk about something having to be done about this since well before the financial crisis and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the financial crisis is the reason why it's been put off for this long.

So sucks for the people being laid off from cushy administrative positions, but these layoffs have been in the making for a lot longer than this.

Re:Minor Note

[gay358]

Actually, a lot of those persons who are not teachers or researchers are person who do laboratory work, research related programming etc. If there are not enough this kind of support persons for researchers, it will have serious consequences for research.

A Very Sad Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

University of Helsinki, my heart cries.

In the US we have witnessed the rise of the "Administrative University".

The Administrative University exists without classes, without research, without service to anyone or anything.

The Administrative University has a state appointed Board of Regents, a President (The Champion of the Board of Regents), Vice Presidents, Vice Vice Presidents, Superior Lawyers, Middle Layers, Submissive Layers, Patent Office Administrative Staff, Provosts, Vice Provosts, Deans.

The Administrative University exists to feed itself.

Teachers? NO.

Classes? NO.

Research? NO.

The Administrative University exists for itself and nothing else because it syphons money from the State and Federal Governments.

The Administrative University exists to uphold the lifestyles of the Board of Regents and Their Champion, The University President.

The Administrative Staff are the human shields to endure the slings and arrows of sexual lawsuits and felony complaints against The
Champion of the Board of Regents, The University President.

Example: The University of Alaska

Ha ha

Re:A Very Sad Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

The University of Alaska is your example? Alaska has a University?

Re:A Very Sad Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

My university in the lower 48 isn't quite to this point yet. But the Administration is working on it. They breed like rabbits.

"made redundant"

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt they'll be "made redundant", I'd rather guess they will be missed left and right.

It's just the Windows admins and helpdesk

[Anonymous Coward]

With Linux replacing the infrastructure servers, they're finding they need only one admin per 100 systems, not one admin per 10.

I've actually seen this sort of thing happen....

Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

As in Greece, Spain, Italy, etc etc., the inability of the economy to recover is the consequence of adopting a currency that is run to benefit Germany instead of your own country.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Anonymous Coward]

This particular university has a significant real-estate ownership and an autonomous position in the education system, which sets it a part from the other universities.

benevolent government of a nice, progressive country

Finland hasn't been a Sweden since the end of the 18th century. Although we try to be, sometimes so hard that it hurts.

Re: This would n'er happen to a government-run col

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap. We took out massive loans and now we have debt. Do you honestly think Rangers were paid that much?

let's become just like them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's raise taxes and put education entirely in government hands! Then we can be just like Finland! Are we "feeling the Bern" yet?

The Cost Of FREEDOM!

[Anonymous Coward]

As George Michael croons with his other gloryhole. If you want free, as in beer or otherwise, you will still pay with the lives of those lost.

Re:The Cost Of FREEDOM!

[grahamtriggs]

Do you have any idea of how expensive beer is in Finland?

Re:The Cost Of FREEDOM!

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who want to find out, Foodie lists the typical beer prices in Finland. :)

Re: The Cost Of FREEDOM!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheaper than Tokyo, then...

Re: The Cost Of FREEDOM!

[Aereus]

Prices on some of the lemon-flavored canned drinks was decent when I was there. At least as far as alcohol content vs. cost goes. 150yen for 350ml can with 10% alc isn't that bad. Imports though... yep. 240yen for 300ml is kinda ridiculous. And even the local dive bar was 500yen for "pint" draft where I was in Nagano.

Re: This would n'er happen to a government-run col

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not the ones in the green suits. But I've heard the one in the pink suit has done well for herself.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Mjlner]

This would never happen to an institution owned by the benevolent government of a nice, progressive country with constitutional protections for earning a living wage. Oh, wait...

The problem is that our government is far from benevolent. This is the most hard-line capitalistic government during the entire history of the Republic of Finland. This government has made it its mission to completely dismantle every remnant of the welfare state and turn Finland into a tax haven for the rich. The "difficult economic situation" is merely a pretext.

I'm veering off on an off-topic tangent, but the fact is that almost all economists, when asked by the press, have stated that the measures taken by the current government only worsen ad prolong the situation.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the use of "park rangers" as an example. If you want real examples of non-productive tax-payer funded jobs... you're looking at the millions of useless admin jobs/managerial posts in the civil services. Most of them women. Most of them flexible working/job sharing/endless maternity leave. All of this, in turn, propping up an HR industry that again multiplies up the costs and useless jobs.

Re: This would n'er happen to a government-run col

[cyber-vandal]

Their debt is still lower than many of the developed nations including the US.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[should_be_linear]

And then some "Fachidiot", closed somewhere in server room with no windows for 5 years, always points out that everything is connected with "refugees", someway or another.

Populistic blabbering

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what a shitload of ultra rightwing bullshit is propagated here! "A few legitimates mixed in among the opportunists" and "ISIS sending their suicide troops camouflaged as refugees". What a heap of stinking, populistic, braindamaged crap! I'd like to hear you talk if you'd been born on the OTHER side of the fence, where your land got raped by those who happened to be technologically superior and left to rot when they lost interest.

Re:Populistic blabbering

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah.
Do you know, that in neighbouring Sweden, there are now more than 55 "special areas" (as Sweden most prominent evening newspaper wrote) where there is a factual sharia law.
Police cant go there, rescue cervices that go there are stoned and so on. Natural swedes face beating, even death on spot, if they go there.
It is not some "right wing bullshit". The article that was printed in that newspaper, was impossible to print in Sweden before autumn-winter 2015, but now the sweden is deteriorated so much, that even the biggest media outlets are writing about it.

Re:Populistic blabbering

[TommyNelson]

A lot of what is said here *is* right wing "bullshit", so AC has a point. Its very easy to fall into, too, given that - as you say - criminal behaviour often emanates from non-national residents. Look at recent events in Cologne (Germany) where bands of middle eastern foreigners assaulted German women. What I find hard to understand is why this is not dealt with in a normal, law-abiding fashion. Sharia law in muslim ghettos is a no-no. Much more so if law enforcement personnel is getting attacked while they (lawfully) go about their jobs. Assaulting women is a no-no, too. So go send in the forces, apprehend the perps and process them duly. Its not as if they don't have enough practice with their national habituals... Just don't use that as an excuse to judge every person belonging to an ethnic minority in your country as being a criminal. That leads to hate speech and we all know what happens then.

Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant

[srijon]

It is wrong to assume refugees represent a pure cost. And you are talking about 0.1% of the GDP of Finland here. Do some research before spreading xenophobia. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Re:Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant

[Anonymous Coward]

Xenophobia?
Finns dond want and dont like the damn MAMUS or the immigrants (thats for you)
Damn immigrants even raped last year the prime ministers brothers young daughter. It was big news in finland.

Super-stealthy cruise missiles are Angry Birds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Essentially Finland sent Nokia Corp. to ritual slaughter, in exchange for a congressional permission to buy about 72 "AGM-158 JASSM" super stealthy cruise missiles from the USA. They were so afraid of hordes of russian tanks coming through the border that they decided to splash their only nest egg for "wunderwaffen", which loss quickly made the finnish high-tech economy baseless and the castle of cards collapsed leaving angry birds behind.

(Furthermore, nobody but "gravure erotica" publishers buy high-quality printing paper nowadays and demand is in a nosedive. Foresting and paper mills used to be a staple of the finnish economy for decades. Apparently even the giant luxury cruise ships are not so much desired any more, whose construction is weirdly a finno-italian duopoly.)

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[jones_supa]

The Scandinavian countries are quite pragmatic when it comes to solving problems. Sweden did a turn towards the right in 2006 which served them very well. Finland will do something similar.

See, Finland is not that pragmatic. That's the main problem actually. The country has failed to perform the necessary agile moves, the ones that neighboring countries like Sweden and Estonia have done. We Finns just stand with mouth open and mittens in our hands, stare into the horizon and say "Gee, I guess we could do something about the problems. But not right now. And there are many regulations preventing change anyway, and we cannot quickly change those regulations either." There is a lot of the classic 1970s conservative old world stiffness still present. However, right now a lot of confidence has been placed on PM Sipilä and his government, so we'll see.

I'm just sitting here

[reboot246]

laughing my ass off. Told ya so.

Re:I'm just sitting here

[Anonymous Coward]

Told us what and when?

Re:Refugees -outlawed a demographic, thus outlaws

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ba'ath party members were prohibited any political discourse post US invasion of Iraq in '03. The Ba'ath party in Iraq, while not the majority, were STILL a sizeable demographic. What you did was outlaw a sizeable demographic overnight. All power was handed over to Shi'ites and thus we had a sectarian war. This outlawing of ex-Ba'ath party members formed the basis for ISIL. Add to that, this demographic chose to ignore the Sykes/Picot dictate about where the borders are and the numbers swelled. The US invasion of '03 IS the major contributing factor of the formation of ISIL. Europe and the US are reaping what they sowed when they colonized the middle east.

where Linus Torvalds got his degree as well

[Anonymous Coward]

"As well" as what? What kind of sentence construction is that?

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[jones_supa]

Let me add that labour unions have a huge power in Finland and have become a major roadblock when the country has recently tried to rearrange things to make the labour market more dynamic. The labour unions have a strong grip on their current benefits which they have acquired over the years. It's like a ship is sinking but on board some guys don't want to throw their superfluous goods into the ocean to prevent the doom.

Re:how is this wisdom relevant to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

> I get it that Torvalds went to school there

The SSH / SFTP protocol was also invented there by a finnish university student, who worked part-time on a grant from the finnish F-Secure (ex Data Fellow) antivirus company.

Finland was an important part of the early, 1985-2005 era information revolution, e.g. ITT-Nokia and they went from logging trees and making rubber boots to building digital mobile phone consumer networks and thoroughly wired giant luxury cruise ships in just a few decades, despite the smallish size and tiny population of their country.

For example just 120 years ago the hungarians (who are linguistically related to the finns) decried Finland as a remote spot where "eskimos" survive on raw fish-fat. Nowadays 99% of the world population doesn't even know Hungary exists... but almost everybody has heard of Nokia and read that Finland consistently ranks among the Top 10 in OECD/UNESCO/UNICEF world rankings on education, knowledge-based economy, quality of life, social egality, etc.

Therefore the rise and ongoing free-fall of Finland's sci-tech and economy should be a topic of interest, because luck and success are fickle sweet-hearts and wise men aim to learn from the mistakes of others, rather than their own!

Easy to afford? You mean free?

[denzacar]

make things like expensive university programs

Ok... 95.9% free. AND you have to provide your own food, water, living quarters, underwear...

Re:Easy to afford? You mean free?

[ScentCone]

Ok... 95.9% free

You understand that that's completely untrue, right? Or are you that confused? Everyone there pays for it through large taxes - even the people who aren't consuming those services. Would you consider a new tax increase on everyone that is used to let the government buy everyone shoes to be a case you getting "free" shoes? Surely you're not that unable to see how it actually works, and how NOT "free" it actually is. "Free" means "Someone else is forced to pay for it."

What is this "We" you speak of?

[Anonymous Coward]

My country is Lithuania.

My country didn't bomb or fund anyone in the Middle East. We don't have bombers or rockets, and we don't have the funds.

My country did send troops to Afganistan, but what they did was province rebuilding mission. What they got out of it was a few potshots and lots of friendly folks thanking them.

Yet my country is supposed to take in ~1000 refugees, and these refugees need place to live, jobs to work, food to eat. The amount of monthly "wage for being a refugee" has already exceeded the pensions, and is already reaching minimum wage. Government calculations are not yet stopping, though. It's not clear whether or not they will keep living for free after they find jobs, but even our government couldn't be stupid enough to allow that. Nonetheless, money that could be going to people who need it (there are fucktons of families who live in poverty), will be going to refugees.

Oh wait, I said WHEN they find jobs? Not speaking the language? A sizable majority of country doesn't exactly speak english, so they what, gonna communicate with signs? Amount of jobs availiable isn't something to joke about either, and since refugees will probably be centered in one area (as was the plan a few months ago), it will mean LESS jobs for locals.

Tell me, teach me, EXPLAIN to me WHY should people who lived and worked their entire lives in that land, should take second seat when it comes to financial help? Family living in a fucked up house, several kids with only one parent working his/her ass off, that is fair? The amount of beggars in the streets is disturbing. What about a person working 40 hours a week in some shitty build site and at the same time serving in national defense force and STILL be unable to SURVIVE, yes, survive means get food and roof over his/hers head, on his wages alone - why is such person that is dedicated to HIS country, treated as second class, in favour of some middle eastern family that rocks out of airport in better clothes and phones than your average lithuanian?

And funny how it is americans and russians, the main supporters of any of the sides in most of the conflicts over the last half a century, are the ones who flail about screaming "MUH OPRESSED MINORITIES/REFUGEES" (depending on the agenda) when anyone even dares to say anything about them...

Well Looks Like This Professors Career..

[Anonymous Coward]

.......Is Totally Finnish!

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that our government is far from benevolent. This is the most hard-line capitalistic government during the entire history of the Republic of Finland. This government has made it its mission to completely dismantle every remnant of the welfare state and turn Finland into a tax haven for the rich.

How is that not benevolent? It sounds like something many countries could use.

Re: This would n'er happen to a government-run col

[MightyYar]

But they can't print their way out of debt like the US - they are in the Euro.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[cryptolemur]

For most parts, Finnish labour market is a about as dynamic as it is in Sweden, in some parts it's even more dynamic. This (manufactured) crisis is merely an excuse to try to lessen the power of the unions -- don't confuse dictated labour market with dynamic.

And, by the way, we here in the labour force call those "acquired benefits" actually "compensation for working".

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[alfredo]

They put all their eggs in the Nokia basket. It wasn't social programs that hurt them, it was the economic monoculture that took them down. Look at what is happening to Saudi Arabia and Russia, two countries that put everything into the oil industry. Neither country is benevolent or progressive.

Don't fret. You just suck at reading comprehension

[denzacar]

The 15 k x 15 k was the figure I put up.

I'm not saying you're illiterate... or a liar.
Just that your prejudices lead you to be afraid of brown people so much, that all you see are large numbers.
And then you multiply them until you get millions.

But let's take another look at that link of yours.

Earlier this week, the Migration Service of Finland said that all the reception centers in the country were overcrowded, and the authorities were urgently looking for new places to host migrants.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Over 15,000 refugees have arrived in Finland in 2015, local media reported Saturday, citing the country's migration service.

"During this year, more than 15,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Finland. If you look at the number of arrivals in recent days, it appears that 600 people arrive every day," Juha Simila, spokesman of the migration service, said, as cited by the Yle news portal.

According to Simila, Finland spends around 15,000 euros a year per asylum seeker living in a refugee reception center. The amount also includes wages of the center employees, the media reported.

Earlier this month, Finland agreed to take in 2,400 asylum seekers as part of the European Commission's initiative to relocate 120,000 refugees from southern EU member states.

According to Prime Minister Juha Sipila, Finland is likely to resettle asylum seekers to other countries of the European Union if the bloc creates a permanent and binding mechanism of redistribution of refugees.

So... to sum it up.

1 - It's 15k euros per year, per an asylum seeker, LIVING IN THE RECEPTION CENTER.
2 - That sum includes salaries of people working in those reception centers.
3 - 15000 people arrived in Finland, but ONLY 2400 would be taken by said reception centers.
Incidentally, Finland takes in 3-4000 asylum seekers yearly.
4 - Rest (that is 15000 - 2400 = 12600) will be sent on their merry way to other countries.
5 - Out of that money (those 15k euros) nearly all of it goes right back into Finnish economy.

Actual money that a single, living alone refugee gets is 314.91 euros if the reception center does not provide meal - or 92.3 euros per month if there are meals provided.
Incidentally, if you plan to study in Finland (free tuition) you must provide a proof of having a MINIMUM of 560 euros per month to your name.

I.e. Living costs in Finland are estimated to be 218.09 euros higher than what is provided per a refugee.
Actual living costs are closer to 900 euros per month, or 585.09 more than what they spend monthly on feeding and clothing (that's what those 92.3 euros are supposed to be) a single refugee.

Now... deduct those 314.91 euros from those 1250 euros (15k divided by 12 months) - and you will get the costs of heating, cleaning, electricity, water, and the salaries of the people working in those centers.

This may be good policy.

[Anonymous Coward]

An article says most of the ballooning cost of US education is "staff":

  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-college-tuition-costs-so-much.html

administrators and deciders deciding that what we need is more and better-paid administrators and deciders: it is tending toward Soviet Russia and surpassing it. so cheers to Finland for being capable of cutting positions other than actual teaching and research. I'm not sure the American education system is capable of arriving at that decision.

Re:This would n'er happen to a government-run coll

[Mjlner]

See, Finland is not that pragmatic. That's the main problem actually. The country has failed to perform the necessary agile moves, the ones that neighboring countries like Sweden and Estonia have done. We Finns just stand with mouth open and mittens in our hands, stare into the horizon and say "Gee, I guess we could do something about the problems. But not right now. And there are many regulations preventing change anyway, and we cannot quickly change those regulations either." There is a lot of the classic 1970s conservative old world stiffness still present. However, right now a lot of confidence has been placed on PM Sipilä and his government, so we'll see.

I see from your comment that you apparently approve of the government's actions. Fair enough, I just disagree. However, your statement about the confidence placed on the PM could be just a tiny bit more accurate... PM Sipila's approval ratings have plummeted from 60% (June 2015) to 36% (Dec 2015). You simply cannot call that "a lot of confidence".

And then Samzenpus was laid off

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironic that Samzenpus posts a story about lay offs on the day he's laid off.

Problems in Finland

[TheSync]

1) Finland's total tax burden equals 44.1 percent of domestic income, and government spending is equivalent to 56.7 percent of domestic output.
2) Labor regulations are relatively rigid, and the non-salary cost of employing a worker is high.

Re:how is this wisdom relevant to /.

[HornWumpus]

Sorry, Finland is known for its drunks and drivers. Both of which are legend.

You can out drink the Ruskys and all drive like you think you are F1 champions.

For the record those are both good things IMHO.

Of all the things to be ashamed of in the USA, I'm most ashamed of our drivers. 7 of 8 cars in the USA have slushboxes, even 'vettes are mostly autos. People think 'road armor' is a good strategy.

Re:Don't fret. You just suck at reading comprehens

[gay358]

Both of you are using inaccurate, old and/or false information. The situations is much worse than you seem to think. Here are just some examples where you are using false information or misinterpreting it:

-During 2015 the number of asylum seekers in Finland was about 32000 persons and not 15000 persons
-That 15000 euros doesn't cover all costs
-That 2400 persons using relocation of 120000 persons would come on top of that 32000 persons. However, even this relocation scheme is more or less dead (*).
-"Finland is likely to resettle asylum seekers to other countries of the European Union if the bloc creates a permanent and binding mechanism of redistribution of refugees": There doesn't seem to be much political will for this and in any case, it wouldn't make the asylum crisis any better. It would only spread it to even more countries and buy little more time, but the flood from developing countries is in practice endless and accelerating. It is simply unsustainable and must be stopped or Europe as we know it, will collapse.

*) The relocation of 120000 persons from certain South-European countries was one time test. Finland took about 100-200 person of the promised 2400 persons, but all other countries took much less, even if those countries were much bigger and had promised to take much more people than Finland. It seems that this process failed miserably. And in any case, 120000 is only small fraction of persons that are in Southern-Europe. It would not have solved anything, especially as so many persons come in daily, that it would hardly make any difference.

Re:Don't fret. You just suck at reading comprehens

[zapadnik]

Just that your prejudices lead you to be afraid of brown people so much, that all you see are large numbers.

Ah, the old "your a racist" canard. Always pulled out just when a Leftist is about to rob you - and in this case, rob the tax paying citizens of Finland from the benefit of their own money. You don't even know what my skin color is (not that it makes any difference, except to racist Leftists who think virtue is determined solely by skin color).

And you advocate for robbing the Finns just so you can 'virtue signal' and feel sanctimonious with unearned moral superiority. How about instead of demanding the Finns pay you instead work harder and put up YOUR OWN money? how about you practice what you preach and sell your computer right now and give it to the "brown people" you worship? you don't. You are a repulsive hypocrite of the worst kind - and the citizens of the West are getting tired of your slanders and tantrums, bullsh!t and demands to steal our hard-earned tax money while depriving our fellow citizens of the fruits of our labor. Bugger off, Comrade.

Petrocurrency

[NewYork]

Unlike USA, Finland has to EARN dollars to buy 331,200 barrels of crude oil every year;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Ah... the old "I have no arguments" canard.

[denzacar]

But hey... you said racist. I just called you a coward.

But it's nice to see that when faced with your own ignorance and inability to refute any of the arguments (which IS kinda hard to do when facing truth) - you run and hide behind a fallacy. Or two... Or more...
While even the punctuation fails you. Or are you secretly a 12 year old? Or maybe a dog?

What a truly pathetic creature you must be.

Re:Ah... the old "I have no arguments" canard.

[zapadnik]

But hey... you said racist. I just called you a coward.

Nope, you said "brown skin". That's calling me a racist. When I countered and called out your bullshit you then switch to "coward". Where is your evidence that I'm a coward? where?

Perhaps I don't like Swedish, British and German children getting raped just so a narcissistic douchebag like you can virtue signal how 'tolerant' you are towards such rapes.

But it's nice to see that when faced with your own ignorance and inability to refute any of the arguments (which IS kinda hard to do when facing truth) - you run and hide behind a fallacy. [wikipedia.org] Or two... Or more... While even the punctuation fails you. Or are you secretly a 12 year old? Or maybe a dog?

It is not a fallacy when you have STILL not made a coherent argument. You're just a sanctimonious douchebag who has no empathy for the tens of thousands of raped children which all could have been avoided - except that delusional people like you oppose stopping the madness - the problem is not the invaders, it is people like YOU who demand that more people with the culture of rape and murder and female abuse be brought in. The problem is not me, or them, it is YOU. You don't understand now, but very soon the blood of innocent Europeans will be on YOUR hands. Douchebag.

What a truly pathetic creature you must be.

What? for wanting the fruits of Finnish labor to go to Finns? to think that German women should be free to walk the streets wearing what they like? that cartoonists should be free to draw Mohammed without being killed and having you cheerlead their deaths? it is YOU who is utterly repulsive and against Enlightenment Civilization.

Fortunately, the Internet never forgets. All those that supported the barbarian invasion of the West by Islamic Supremacists will not escape justice. And you will not be able to say you were not warned .

You understand you're off in cognitive dissonance?

[denzacar]

Here... Let me quote you.

Everyone there pays for it through large taxes

Someone else is forced to pay for it.

Who is that mythical "someone else" if "everyone" is already paying it? Martians? God? Smurfs?
When "everyone pays", everyone pays LESS, and everyone gets to have the same (and much higher) quality of service due to the pooling and sharing of resources.
And there is no "someone else" - cause "everyone" already includes EVERYONE.
Thus everyone pays less and gets more.

That's why a bus ticket costs less than a ride in a taxi and a ride in a taxi costs less than renting a car which costs less than buying a car - same resources get used by many people thus reducing per capita costs of being driven or driving from A to B instead of walking there until you can afford a car of your own.

Tell it to the OP.

[denzacar]

He pulled that article out of his ass, without being able to read it properly.
I frankly don't care about Finland or refugees or what will both sides end up telling themselves about themselves and others five or ten years down the road.

I just refuted his "arguments" by pointing out that he can't read - which leaves only the question "Why did he read something that was not there?" on the table.
Which he provided with an answer by replying with a "sell your computer right now and give it to the "brown people" you worship" tirade.

Just remember to give sources to your quotes - cause he clearly can't even google up anything for himself.
You apparently have different sources. Feel free to source him up.