Podcast · Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 11.11.2022 · 2022-11-11 · 62:47 · In Finnish
The midterms, envy day and the Sámi Parliament Act — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys
Published as “Viisastelu: USA:n vaalit ja Donald Trump | Kateuspäivä ja vaurausviha | Saamelaisten uudet rotuopit”
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 11 November 2022, alongside the journalist Matti Virtanen. It was three days after the US midterms and the same week Finland published everyone’s tax records.
The most portable idea has nothing to do with either. Puopolo had interviewed two Finnish specialists on American politics about the same question — would Trump win the Republican primary if he ran — and got diametrically opposite answers. The explanation the panel proposes is that an expert’s assessment of a foreign politician’s chances is coloured by what he thinks of that politician; wishes leak into forecasts. It is a reading instruction that works on any subject, and it applies to them too.
On the tax-records day the episode does something the annual argument rarely does: it puts a third option on the table. Norway publishes the same data but logs the requester’s name and shows the subject who has looked — which, on the panel’s account, ended neighbour-watching almost entirely. They also concede the case they are arguing against, distinguishing a genuine public interest in a politician’s income from an entertainer’s, and note that the published list omits consumption taxes entirely.
The sharpest exchange is between Sami and Virtanen over the same wealth figures. Wealth per adult is over a hundred thousand euros higher across Western Europe and over two hundred thousand higher across the Nordics, while Finland’s richest one per cent owns about 13 per cent of national wealth against roughly 40 in the United States. Sami reads that as “extremely poor, extremely equal”; Virtanen answers that this is simply framing a functioning welfare state negatively. Neither moves.
The last third is Virtanen’s, and the host hands it to him explicitly. He sets out what the Sámi Parliament Act dispute is actually about: who decides the electoral roll, why the Supreme Administrative Court has restored voting rights to many the Parliament removed, how the North Sámi reindeer families came south from Norway in the 1800s and lost their Arctic pastures, and why the argument between them and the Inari Sámi is also an argument about livelihoods.
Chapters
- 00:00 — Opening, and the agenda
- 00:49 — The US midterms: what was actually on the ballot
- 01:38 — “Won but lost” — why there was no red wave
- 02:26 — Trump-endorsed candidates and election denial
- 03:14 — Abortion as the driver of turnout
- 04:47 — Two narratives: democracy in peril versus the economy and anarchy
- 05:42 — Why the Finnish press adopted one of them
- 06:36 — A proposal: a columnist should disclose his own position
- 07:30 — What was actually settled and what was not
- 08:27 — Affirmative action and applicants of Asian background
- 09:14 — The American racial classification as a system of its own
- 10:17 — Trump versus DeSantis
- 10:45 — Two experts, two opposite forecasts
- 11:59 — Why an expert’s preference colours the forecast
- 12:45 — Politics and truth: the tactical truth
- 14:25 — Where the line runs between a lie and a shaded truth
- 15:11 — The parties’ ledger of each other’s lies
- 16:43 — Why one of them would not go into politics
- 17:33 — The threshold for a career-ending revelation has fallen
- 19:13 — Forgiveness in Finland and in the United States
- 20:00 — Envy day: the Norwegian model and neighbour-watching
- 21:48 — The opt-out list, GDPR and journalistic interest
- 23:23 — What the tax list actually tells you
- 24:11 — A 133-million prank that cannot be corrected
- 25:52 — Who is on the list, and why it changes every year
- 27:24 — What the list leaves out: consumption taxes
- 28:16 — Tracking consumption, and the exit tax
- 29:58 — Owner-occupied housing as the only tax-free income class
- 30:44 — An investment tip that is not an investment tip
- 31:30 — Imputed rent, and why the panel opposes taxing it
- 35:32 — Income gaps, wealth gaps, and two readings of the same figures
- 37:04 — The disagreement: poor and equal, or a working welfare state
- 38:42 — Twitter, Musk and eight dollars
- 41:12 — Tax transparency in Russia and in the United States
- 43:35 — Green politics as an instrument, and a party called the most right-wing left party
- 46:00 — Universally binding agreements, a fish trap, and section 106
- 49:22 — The economists whose recommendation did get through
- 50:12 — The Sámi Parliament Act: where the dispute comes from
- 52:37 — Why the dispute is also about livelihoods
- 54:09 — The Inari Sámi and the North Sámi reindeer families
- 56:43 — The minority within a minority, and the logic of collectives
- 59:02 — Self-government, transfers and identity
- 01:01:30 — The week’s good news
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 four-part chapter list of its own — the opening, the US midterms, envy day, and the Sámi question. 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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