Podcast · Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 31.1.2023 · 2023-01-31 · 63:14 · In Finnish
The Erdoğan cartoons, and three positions on tax — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys
Published as “Viisastelu: Miesten menkat | Pilakuvakisa Erdoganista | Vasemmiston miljonäärivero ja taloustyhmyys”
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 31 January 2023, alongside Joakim Vigelius, chair of the Finns Party youth organisation, making his first appearance. The first five minutes are a paid segment about a book on ownership, separate from the rest.
The episode is worth keeping for two arguments the panel does not resolve.
The first is about a left-wing youth organisation running a cartoon competition about Turkey’s president while Finland’s NATO ratification sat in Ankara. Puopolo and Vigelius treat it as a straightforward free-speech question — the same right to provoke that Quran burners and cartoonists of Muhammad have, and if a marginal youth group’s drawings can block an accession then the problem is at the Turkish end. Sami argues it as a question of national interest instead, reaching for Risto Ryti signing personally so that parliament would not have to, and noting he had suggested on television that Finland’s leadership could flatter Erdoğan for tactical reasons. Vigelius then draws the line that survives the exchange: an individual may be inconsistent, a state may not. Nobody moves.
The second is tax, where three right-of-centre speakers end up in three different places. Puopolo would constitutionalise a ceiling and regards progression as unjust in itself; Sami is pragmatic and doubts progression will go, while arguing its steepness can be reduced; Vigelius argues that a flat tax is incompatible with the Nordic welfare state, that most Finns do not want it dismantled, and that if that is the public’s will then progression stays. Along the way Puopolo concedes the property-rights paradox to a left-leaning economist: property rights require a state, a state requires taxation, and taxation infringes property rights.
The opening is Vigelius’s first-hand account of being removed from a 200-person university lecture after questioning a claim made in it — with the useful observation that removing a student from a course is an exercise of public authority under the Universities Act rather than a lecturer’s discretion.
Chapters
- 00:00 — A commercial opening segment: ownership, and the state as an owner
- 05:05 — The panel, and Vigelius’s debut
- 06:21 — What happened at the Tampere lecture
- 08:15 — The consequences: removal from the course, an event cancelled
- 09:08 — The administrative complaint, and the university’s response
- 10:49 — Is the claim knowledge-based teaching
- 11:36 — The Universities Act and research-based teaching
- 12:24 — Word magic: a definition that makes the claim true
- 13:22 — Campus, faculty, and who self-selects into them
- 14:55 — How far a moral wave can go
- 15:41 — Merit and representation in sport
- 17:20 — The gender law: a minority of one per mille, and the whole adult population
- 18:08 — A concession: perhaps this is needless hysteria
- 19:34 — A youth organisation’s Erdoğan cartoon competition
- 20:40 — The free-speech view: the same right for everyone
- 22:14 — Finlandisation in reverse
- 23:01 — Miettinen’s counter: national interest, and a wartime precedent
- 23:52 — A reductio: how far do the demands go
- 26:18 — An individual may be inconsistent; a state may not
- 27:05 — Quran burning, religious peace, and the Swedish police line
- 28:41 — The game-theoretic problem: what does a concession buy
- 30:29 — Should Finland wait for Sweden
- 31:17 — A proposal: ratify but do not deposit
- 32:59 — Finland as an international negotiator
- 33:46 — Sweden’s violence, and the cycle of revenge
- 35:39 — Denmark’s legislation on vulnerable areas
- 37:18 — Denmark first, Sweden after — and Finland
- 39:06 — A party’s election programme, and a millionaire tax
- 39:55 — What the tax would raise, to scale
- 40:46 — The paradox of property rights
- 43:19 — Why the proposal is made even though it will not happen
- 46:37 — Where the line runs on tax — three different positions
- 48:27 — GDP as a wealth signal, and wealth at the individual level
- 51:48 — On whose mandate the welfare state would be dismantled
- 52:39 — The Nordic bargain between generations
- 53:28 — Development aid and other items, to scale
- 55:03 — A politician’s awkward answer, and who at least tried
- 57:22 — Mindset: whose money are you spending
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 episode carries a five-part chapter list of its own. The finer marks above were derived from the recording so the sections can be found.
A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, in English and in Finnish.
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