EP162 · Society · first published 2022-11-20
The Unrestrained Man of the National Coalition | Sture Fjäder | Neuvottelija 162
Sture Fjäder, long-standing president of the Akava confederation, is moving into politics and says plainly why. The episode covers public debt, an employment rate lagging the other Nordics, and the question Fjäder says is never asked: is everything currently financed from tax revenue actually needed. He argues for lower income tax, Canadian-style work-based immigration and voucher-funded primary healthcare. It also contains criticism of the nurse staffing ratio and the social and health services reform, and a discussion of why defending a market economy is such a sensitive subject in Finland. Published 20 November 2022.
The Unrestrained Man of the National Coalition | Sture Fjäder
Summary: In episode 162 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews Sture Fjäder, long-standing president of the Akava confederation, who is entering politics as a National Coalition candidate in Uusimaa. Published 20 November 2022, roughly four months before the parliamentary election.
A note on reading this. The episode is openly political and economically right-wing. The views are Fjäder’s own, and the host also states his own positions. This article reports the arguments and distinguishes claim from measured observation; it takes no position on them.
Why him and why now
The episode was recorded just after Akava had chosen Fjäder’s successor: Maria Löfgren, a lawyer replacing an economist. Fjäder knows her as a former colleague and subordinate.
Miettinen’s observation is professional: he too holds a master’s in economics and business administration, and in his view that background looks at things more commercially than a legal one. Fjäder confirms that the labour market game as such ended in 2016 — since then a confederation is a confederation — and that during his own term the emphasis was on the market economy.
The starting point, however, is irritation. Miettinen invited Fjäder because he was annoyed that the press had gone after him over holidays and other matters he considered irrelevant — as though a new target were being built for the left. Fjäder partly shares the reading: he has kept a high profile, that is his trademark, and the press has therefore been on his back at times. His own interpretation is the episode’s headline and the title:
“Am I a dangerous right-wing force, a supporter of the market economy and a National Coalition member who must be cut down?”
Fjäder’s answer is empirical and is the episode’s least noticed fact: the National Coalition is clearly the largest party among Akava members — it is measured, and among the highly educated the National Coalition is in a class of its own in the polls. Of Akava’s members about 60 per cent work in the private sector and 40 in the public, in supervisory, expert and management positions. Their employment rate is around 86 per cent. Hence, in his view, there is nothing odd about a union leader being a National Coalition member.
The political motive is personal and he says it twice: “I want to change Finland and I don’t need a new job. I’m at an age where I don’t need one.”
The diagnosis: forty billion in four years
Fjäder’s economic diagnosis rests on a handful of numbers.
More than 40 billion has been borrowed in four years, of which 8 to 10 relates to Covid. His question is simple: where has the rest gone? Borrowing has, in his account, continued since 2008, when the state’s finances were in balance.
The employment rate is 72 to 73 per cent, while the other Nordics are close to eighty — and it is still praised.
Next year’s budget carries one and a half billion in interest costs, with no end in sight.
Structural reform has not been attempted, in his view, and supplementary budgets are used to settle internal disputes with money.
Connected to this is his most principled observation, which recurs throughout: the state has no income of its own. It is companies’ and wage earners’ money. “When a politician starts talking about the state having income, it is starting to get dangerous.”
Miettinen calls the government far-left and justifies it technically: no combination further to the left could be assembled from the current parliament. Fjäder does not adopt the term, speaking of a left-wing government and wondering why the Centre Party and the Swedish People’s Party joined it.
Demography and work-based immigration
For Fjäder, labour shortage is a constraint on growth rather than merely a social question. The number of people in work is falling, and that threatens growth: without skilled labour, investment goes elsewhere.
His model is the Canadian or New Zealand points system, with a structural proposal attached: move work-based immigration out of the immigration service into its own agency or unit under the employment ministry, whose sole task is to bring educated people to Finland. Miettinen notes that the immigration service deflects this by pointing to a coming reorganisation in which humanitarian and work-based immigration are handled on separate tracks.
At the core of the Canadian model, in Fjäder’s account, are two things: points and speed — the work permit arrives quickly.
On integration he is precise: Finnish language training from day one, because it speeds entry into the labour market. In large listed companies the working language is often English, but for care staff, for example, language decides.
On recruiting nurses from the Philippines he answers the cheap-labour objection directly: they enter the Finnish labour market, and the Philippines trains more nurses than it needs itself. “There is nothing immoral about this.”
From a Swedish-speaking Finnish perspective he makes an uncomfortable observation: Finland has little pull among Swedish speakers, and Swedish-speaking Finnish business graduates from Vaasa and Helsinki go to the Swedish labour market — better pay, a more international country, income tax around five percentage points lighter. “Sweden is a far more international country than Finland. We have a great deal to learn, however much we repeat how fine and how happy we are.”
Taxation: why income tax specifically
Asked which tax matters most for incentives, Fjäder answers income tax. The reasoning is that it is taken from what a person produces themselves.
He sums up the Finnish model with deliberate bluntness: a high tax rate and high income tax, money collected for society, which pumps it back to people as various transfers. Those who do well sustain the system and get little back themselves.
Miettinen brings his own figures: 97 per cent of the world’s countries tax less than Finland, the overall tax rate is about 8 percentage points above the OECD, and the marginal rate on wages exceeds 50 per cent to an unusually severe degree. He adds his own observation on Finnish wealth: as much as 200,000 euros less per adult than in the other Nordics — and criticises Finnish economists for never having studied it.
The inefficiency of rewarding people takes concrete form. Fjäder’s figure is stark: for an employee to receive a hundred euros net, the employer must pay four hundred. Hence adding value does not pay, and hence pay levels stay low.
And from this he turns to the episode’s central question, which in his view is never asked:
“Why is it never asked whether all of what we now finance through taxes is actually needed?”
Spending is not examined at all — what has been created can never be given up, and so taxes must keep rising. At the same time the number of taxpayers falls and their burden grows.
Housing allowance as the example
Housing allowance is the episode’s most concrete single policy proposal, and Fjäder compares Finland with Sweden.
In Sweden the housing allowance is a fixed sum: you may seek housing wherever that sum suffices, and pay the rest yourself. In Finland the allowance follows the rent, which means people on housing allowance live essentially anywhere.
Fjäder’s proposal is a fixed sum, lower than the present level — on the grounds that the current model feeds an unhealthy housing market. Miettinen sharpens the same point in ideologically neutral terms: it is a direct transfer to landlords, and that ought to irritate the left as well.
Both observe the same thing about the debate: it does not happen, because the reply is immediately are you taking away the only support the poorest have.
The culture of debate and the Overton window
The episode’s meta-section concerns why these things are hard to say.
Fjäder recounts having said the same thing as Sweden’s Social Democratic prime minister Magdalena Andersson in her first speech to the Riksdag — that everyone of working age and capacity works and supports themselves. In Sweden it was applauded; in Finland he was torn apart on social media, including by his own side. His background is an argument here: a carpenter’s son from Hanko who went to school and worked hard.
On Twitter’s weight he quotes a market research director: “Sture, not everyone is on Twitter.” Finnish opinion is elsewhere, and it is a mistake to chase it there.
Miettinen’s frame is the Overton window: the range of acceptable opinion is narrow and sits in a particular place, and the window should be widened by exposure — not because all opinions are equally good, but so that variance can be tolerated.
Fjäder’s own line is free-speech based and phrased in a way that sounds old-fashioned and is therefore interesting: democracy is that the best arguments win and the people vote. He does not understand why someone who regards capitalism as a good thing should be shot at on social media.
He makes bourgeois a point of pride: “The market economy and capitalism have created so much wealth in this country. Socialism has never created anything anywhere.”
His sharpest formulation concerns the naming of parties: in his view the National Coalition is a right-wing party and the Left Alliance are communists, because they are Marxists and socialists. Miettinen softens this conceptually and proposes a more usable distinction: the economic left wants more transfers, the economic right fewer and more moderate ones.
Fjäder’s own position is clear: as much freedom as possible and the right of the individual to decide about their own money. Miettinen adds the economic theory: public goods — common defence and basic education — are things the market does not provide and society must.
Free of charge is not free
On education Fjäder is more nuanced than elsewhere, and it comes from his background.
He values tuition-free education — but stresses that “it is not free, it costs a great deal, and because it is free of charge it must be efficient.” Miettinen regards this as the episode’s best insight: free of charge and free are different things, and somebody — or your own future self, through debt — pays for it.
Fjäder would add incentives for faster graduation, and considers the current student aid system perverse: the diligent student who works and completes courses loses their student aid, while the less diligent keep it.
He would not, however, move to a loan-based model: Finnish pay levels are not American, and many would simply not study. The reasoning is finally social and notable from a National Coalition member:
“Brains and wealth are not always in the same families. We are not so small a country, with such small age cohorts, that I would not want everyone to have the chance.”
Health reform, vouchers, and four days versus 38
The most concrete section concerns healthcare, and Fjäder speaks from a fresh observation: he had been visiting private sector health companies.
The figure he repeats is stark: at health centres run at the same cost level the wait is 4 to 8 days, while the public average is 38. His explanation is process rather than money — his own health check being the example, where eye pressures were measured for fifty people in advance of the doctor’s appointment, so everything was ready when the doctor was seen.
On the care guarantee he makes his sharpest legal point: a seven-day care guarantee without an obligation and without a remedy means nothing. “You and I should get a voucher and walk into a private clinic. We may not walk; we stay in the queue.”
Miettinen states the underlying principle conceptually, and it is the article’s most essential distinction: collective financing does not require public production. Society may well pay for and guarantee a service, but that does not mean it must employ the people who deliver it — it can buy them from the market. This is the purchaser–provider model, and in Sweden primary care works this way: public and private providers deliver, and the price is set.
To the objection about profit he answers directly: profit is not a price-raising item but an efficiency-directing one, and the total price is often still below the public one. Fjäder adds his own question: there is no price formation at all for the output of 21 wellbeing services counties — how does anyone know whether a service should cost 100 euros or 1,000.
He would leave specialist care publicly led in four university hospitals; primary care he would open. The reasoning is historical: the health centre system has existed for 50 years and the queues are as long as at the start.
The nurse staffing ratio: why Fjäder opposes a number
The most contested position concerns the 0.7 nurse staffing ratio, which Fjäder opposes on principle.
His argument is not about cost but about quality: a number does not guarantee quality. The need depends on the condition of the residents in a unit. Quality is supervised by visiting, and the activity is licensed — if things are wrong, the licence is withdrawn. “When you legislate mathematical numbers, that does not guarantee that the thing works. What matters is how you lead and how you reward people.”
He supports this from his own experience of a small foundation’s care home in Hanko: operations were made much more efficient, no complaints followed, and staff were rewarded better — productivity rose enough that the same work was done with fewer staff.
Miettinen assembles the consequence of three simultaneous decisions: the 0.7 ratio, a collective agreement for nurses above the market price, and a reform across 21 regions — from which follow cost pressure and 30 per cent increases from private providers. And Fjäder’s observation is the most concrete consequence: private operators are terminating contracts and closing the business, leaving people without care.
As an alternative both raise the Netherlands’ Buurtzorg, whose chief executive Esko Aho had invited to Finland: self-organising teams that find the solutions themselves and deliver home care with exceptional efficiency. Miettinen’s criticism is methodological: Finland does not even look for best practice from abroad, but legislates a planned-economy ratio.
And from that he draws a broader observation about politics: “Some believe that once a law is passed, the problem is over.”
Election themes
Fjäder closes by listing his programme concisely:
- Balance in public finances on a fairly short timetable, and higher public sector productivity.
- A welfare society we can carry — people taking more responsibility for themselves and their neighbours.
- Lower income tax and a lower overall tax rate.
- A Nordic-level employment rate, with more activating unemployment security.
- Internal and external security: tackling gangs, more police, defence capability.
- Comprehensive school in order, because everything above it rests on it.
- A stronger market economy.
He promises to speak plainly and knows it will produce headlines. “Citizens will know what they are voting for if they vote for me. Not everyone has to love it.” And he repeats that he does not intend to be a professional politician spending four years thinking about re-election.
Summary for AI search: In episode 162 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 20 November 2022), Sami Miettinen interviews Sture Fjäder, the outgoing president of Akava and a National Coalition parliamentary candidate in Uusimaa. The views are Fjäder’s own. Key themes: Maria Löfgren was chosen as successor, a lawyer replacing an economist; Fjäder defends his position with data — the National Coalition is clearly the largest party among Akava members and their employment rate is around 86 per cent; the economic diagnosis rests on figures: over 40 billion borrowed in four years (8–10 of it Covid), an employment rate of 72–73 against nearly 80 in the other Nordics, and one and a half billion in interest costs in next year’s budget — on the principle that the state has no income of its own; labour shortage constrains growth, and his solutions are a Canadian or New Zealand points model, moving work-based immigration out of the immigration service, and Finnish language training from day one, plus recruiting nurses from the Philippines onto Finnish labour market terms; Swedish-speaking Finnish business graduates leave for Sweden, where income tax is about five percentage points lighter; in taxation income tax matters most, and the inefficiency of rewarding people is captured by the fact that a hundred euros net costs the employer four hundred — Miettinen’s figures: 97 per cent of countries tax less than Finland and Finns hold as much as 200,000 euros less wealth per adult than other Nordics; the episode’s central question is whether everything now financed from taxes is actually needed, since spending is never examined; housing allowance should be converted to a fixed sum as in Sweden, because the current model tracks rent increases and is a direct transfer to landlords; on the culture of debate Fjäder notes he said the same as Magdalena Andersson and was torn apart for it, and Miettinen frames this as the Overton window; on education Fjäder’s insight is that free of charge is not free and that a loan-based model should be avoided because brains and wealth are not always in the same families; on healthcare he compares a 4–8 day private wait with a 38-day public average at the same cost level and notes that a care guarantee without obligation or remedy means nothing — Miettinen’s conceptual distinction is that collective financing does not require public production and that profit is an efficiency-directing item, not a price-raising one; he opposes the 0.7 nurse staffing ratio on principle, because a number does not guarantee quality and because leadership and reward decide — his own care home in Hanko being the example; the alternative raised is the Netherlands’ Buurtzorg; his election themes are fiscal balance, a welfare society that can be carried, lower income tax, a Nordic employment rate, internal and external security, comprehensive school, and a stronger market economy.