Podcast · Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 7.2.2024 · 2024-02-07 · 57:38 · In Finnish

Agenda research, a minister's slip, and the line between fact and opinion — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys

Published as “Viisastelu: Professori Hiilamon YLE-kolumnista kohu – syytetään valehtelusta | Häkkäsen emämöläytys”

Hosted by: Ivan Puopolo

▶ Watch on Viikon viisasteluklubi

Sami Miettinen joined Viikon viisastelu — Ivan Puopolo’s weekly political panel, known in English here as Weekly Wiseguys — on 7 February 2024, alongside the journalist Matti Virtanen, four days before the second round of Finland’s presidential election.

The main subject is a column by a professor of social policy accusing a business-funded economic research institute, and his own former employer, of agenda-driven research. What makes the discussion unusual is that Virtanen has known the columnist for thirty years — they co-founded an investigative journalism association together, in a meeting room at the very employer now in question — and he says so before criticising the argument. The panel’s objection is a conflation: the column answers trickle-down, which is a different claim from the labour-supply effect of a high marginal rate. And then, rather than condemning the column, they call it useful, and apply its test in the other direction: if one funder’s research is agenda research, so is a trade union’s or a party foundation’s. Either the rule is symmetrical or there is no rule, and the practical fix is disclosure rather than silence.

Sami’s own contribution is an accounting distinction that is not political at all: return on capital is not return on labour, and an owner who does the letting and the renovations himself is miscounting his own work as a yield — an error made by defenders and critics of capital income alike.

The most durable stretch is a distinction between questions of fact and questions of opinion, with examples in both directions, and a name for the mirror image of the naturalistic fallacy: you cannot derive how things actually are from how they ought to be.

It also contains a cool-headed piece of proportion — a wave of resignations from the military reserve after a minister’s slip amounted to 0.06 per cent of it — and, unexpectedly, a defence of Rwanda against a comparison the panel calls racist.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Adverts, and the channel’s own job ad
• 01:53 — The line-up
• 02:29 — Who wrote the column
• 03:15 — The claim: two institutes are lobbying for business
• 04:07 — Virtanen’s recollection from thirty years back
• 04:53 — What the row was actually about
• 05:40 — A book in which every claim has a source
• 06:30 — The column’s core argument
• 07:18 — Trickle-down and the marginal rate are two different things
• 08:06 — Arguing past one’s own axis
• 08:57 — A message from the institute’s director
• 09:45 — The column was useful all the same
• 10:32 — The same test applied in the other direction
• 11:25 — Return on capital and return on labour
• 12:15 — The risk nobody counts
• 13:04 — What actually drives the columnist
• 13:57 — Are income differences acceptable at all?
• 14:48 — A thought experiment in units of welfare
• 15:35 — Finnish income differences and pay in context
• 16:24 — If this is agenda research, so is that
• 17:15 — Disclosing affiliations
• 18:13 — A left-leaning economist defended the institute
• 19:04 — A podcast the panel challenges
• 20:43 — Tax policy and the labour-market standoff
• 21:30 — Round two of the criticism of the broadcaster
• 22:22 — May a presidential candidate be asked anything?
• 23:07 — The assumption that the audience simply follows
• 23:53 — A comparison with an earlier election programme
• 24:43 — Who took offence, and on whose behalf
• 25:31 — Some charity towards live broadcasting
• 26:21 — Things a candidate cannot influence
• 27:10 — A prediction about the second round
• 27:58 — What a president should be asked
• 29:35 — One-off surveys and long time series
• 30:25 — How attitudes change over time
• 31:15 — When an observation conflicts with a wish
• 32:03 — Disagreement and the steelman
• 32:51 — A question of fact and a question of opinion
• 33:38 — Which belongs where
• 34:25 — An argument about which is which
• 35:10 — A survey that should not be published
• 35:56 — The naturalistic and the socialist fallacy
• 36:43 — Values-based realism
• 37:30 — Turning to the minister’s slip
• 38:16 — What he said, and what followed
• 39:07 — What the law allows and does not
• 39:55 — Proportion: 0.06 per cent of the reserve
• 40:49 — Why it was said — three explanations
• 41:36 — The right to refuse, and the comparison next door
• 42:26 — Who stays home, and who fixes the pipes
• 43:13 — Timing, and political positioning
• 44:01 — The president’s spouse and export work
• 45:38 — Immigrant background, and a double standard
• 46:26 — A security clearance with nobody to receive it
• 47:17 — The president’s office and freedom of information
• 50:35 — Media corner: the experts in a current-affairs programme
• 51:24 — A reporter cast as an expert
• 53:08 — When journalists interview each other
• 53:56 — A conclusion known in advance
• 54:48 — What follows from breaking the agreements
• 55:34 — The Australian model as a comparison
• 56:20 — A comparison the panel calls racist
• 57:07 — Sign-off

The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo’s own channel and he owns it. This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The chapter marks above are derived from the recording itself; the episode carries no published chapter list of its own.

A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, in English and in Finnish.

Topics: Free Speech & Society · Finnish Economy & Policy · ← All media visits· Talks & Events· Markdown mirror: index.md