[beckett]

Finland has an absolutely static population -- 5 million people and no more are expected to arrive, mostly because the winter months are unbearable for anymore but the most thoroughly acclimatized. It also has highly homogeneous population. They do live well in Finland but Finland is an irreproducable state, completely unique.

It is unfair to compare the Finland with a large, diverse, and, yes, multi-cultural, nation-state like the United States.

[cwb]

Exactly...and from what I understand, Finland has rather strict immigration controls...unlike our wide open borders that allow a flood if illegal immigration. Hell, we have more illegal aliens in this country, than Finland has citizens (1,190,785), with a land mass that is slightly smaller than Montana. And where we are one of the most...if not the most, diverse country in the world, Finland, like its Nordic brothers, is one of the most homogenious societies on the planet...93% Fins with 6% being Swedes. It's a little easier to run a government of less than 2 million similar citizens than it is to run one with over 280 million diverse people. Talk to me in a decade and let me know how Finland's doing after their participation in the EU. That prosperity that Finland supposedly enjoys is going to be spread pretty thin between them and their "United States."