---
title: "Economics Instead of Number Magic | Martin Paasi, Elina Valtonen | Neuvottelija 183"
titleOriginal: "Talous numeromagian tilalle | Martin Paasi Elina Valtonen | Neuvottelija 183"
episodeNumber: "183"
guest: "Martin Paasi, Elina Valtonen"
datePublished: 2023-03-22
duration: "45:00"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["finnish_economy_policy","ownership_capital_tax","leadership_governance"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and a MacWhisper transcription of the Finnish audio. The chapter marks are the publisher's own list as released with the video, each verified to fall within ten seconds of a real transcript cue. No English caption track was produced, so no transcript is published here. This is an election episode in which two candidates from the same party speak in their own names, and the summary attributes views by speaker."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/271-talous-numeromagian-tilalle-martin-paasi-elina-valtonen-neuv"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep183-talous-numeromagian-tilalle-paasi-valtonen/
---
# Economics Instead of Number Magic | Martin Paasi, Elina Valtonen | Neuvottelija 183

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=0s) Intro: Finns are smart entrepreneurs and employees whose ideas beat the government's; if pouring money into care solved problems, the US would be the left's dream
- [00:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=45s) Sami invites back former guests: Elina Valtonen, Helsinki no. 152, and Martin Paasi, Uusimaa no. 70
- [01:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=110s) The government's number magic 1: raising the tax rate from 41.8% to 43.2%, and aspiring to overtake Denmark as the world's heaviest taxer. Fifteen years of poor growth and a mountain of debt
- [03:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=195s) What does efficiency mean in the private and public sectors?
- [10:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=615s) Growth investment into Finland by listening to what companies need — a whatever-it-takes attitude
- [13:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=817s) Strengthening Finnish defence industry instead of ill-considered promises of Hornets
- [16:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1005s) What NATO means from here
- [19:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1155s) Ministers' competence and incompetence, and the use of experts in EU, NATO and Fortum-Uniper level negotiations
- [21:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1295s) Did Finland lose billions by refusing to consider the western European rail gauge?
- [23:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1410s) Economic expertise is missing from the left. Sami even misses Esko Seppänen. Economists to parliament
- [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1500s) Finns are programmed to think through the collective and the state; individual potential is forgotten
- [26:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1570s) Finns are a small nation — Norway will soon pass us
- [29:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1770s) The government has had no demographic view of the economy
- [31:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1870s) Work-based immigration into the hands of competent and reliable companies
- [33:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=1985s) Even Ukrainians are not allowed to work in rule-bound Finland, and will not move here from Estonia. Abolish labour market testing; replace it with ex post supervision or certification
- [35:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=2140s) Estonia's flat tax, the side cost of Finland's pension system, and moving at least the self-employed scheme to funding
- [37:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=2268s) Valtonen: the election is upon us and we are still arguing irresponsibly about immigrants' minimum pay. Self-reliance must be rewarded
- [40:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=2455s) Paasi: success must be permitted, and public administration must stop throwing spanners in the works
- [43:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=2625s) Sami recommends both Martin Paasi and Elina Valtonen from his own experience
- [44:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA&t=2645s) Sami learns that a candidate's residence and constituency may differ, when Martin says he will vote for Elina. Next time, the banking crisis

## A note on reading this

An election episode recorded ten days before Finland's April 2023 vote, in which two
candidates from the same party speak in their own names. Views are attributed by speaker
below, forecasts are marked as forecasts, and since both men are criticising the incumbent
government the other side is not represented here.

## Summary

**Martin Paasi**, an economist at Nordnet standing in Uusimaa, and **Elina Valtonen**, a
sitting MP standing in Helsinki, came on shortly before the election.

**The best passage is about a concept, not a campaign.** A televised debate had attacked
the Coalition for increasing health and social spending over a term by three billion
rather than four, and had called that a cut. Paasi separates the terms: making something
more efficient means doing it more intelligently, not making people work harder or longer.
His example is a health centre with three-month queues where the staff themselves decided
to handle everything possible by telephone — six nurses around one doctor in the mornings,
freeing afternoons for anything serious. Valtonen's parallel inverts the usual assumption:
if a health system improved with money poured in, American healthcare would be the left's
dream.

**On the tax rate, Valtonen refuses the easy comparison.** Presented with Finland passing
Sweden and approaching Denmark, she notes that comparing a single country to Finland's
situation is problematic. Miettinen deepens it from the other side: Denmark's VAT is flat
at 25 per cent, its top rates are lower and its lowest higher, and nobody here wants
Denmark's near-absent protection against dismissal. The aggregate rate conceals how the
tax is raised. Paasi's context is that GDP and productivity have both been flat for
fourteen years.

**Paasi's proposal is the episode's most concrete idea.** Telephone the hundred most
growth-hungry companies in the world, ask directly what it would take for the next
investment to come to Finland, collect the answers, work out which commitments buy the
most investment, and agree it in writing. The point is to replace guesswork with
information. He expects the three commonest answers to be connections, work-based
immigration or the right to recruit directly, and lighter regulation.

**On defence, both criticise promising Hornets to Ukraine.** Valtonen argues it
technically — the aircraft are at end of life, which is why replacements are being bought,
parts support is limited, and the horizon is years away — and procedurally: such a thing
should not be promised to a country at war in a term's closing weeks. She would instead
establish the bottlenecks in scaling Finnish defence production, with the state as bridge
financier, and widens the frame to dual-use goods and the American market that NATO opens.
Paasi adds the point he says has drawn least attention: NATO membership also lowers the
political risk a foreign investor prices into Finland.

**On ministerial competence** Paasi's formulation is that a minister need not understand
everything, but must understand that they do not — and must then turn to those who do. His
examples are the Fortum–Uniper affair and EU money left unclaimed, including whether rail
gauge conversion could have been funded region by region. Those are the speakers' own
assessments of what might have been obtainable.

**Work-based immigration** produces four separable proposals: abolish labour market
testing, shift from ex ante to ex post supervision, certify trusted employers with a fast
lane for permits, and issue a recruitment passport with follow-up monitoring. Sweden's
abuse cases are addressed directly rather than dodged. Valtonen calls talk of a salary
threshold for entry irresponsible, since it would exclude nurses, bus drivers and
restaurant and factory workers.

Two figures endure: Estonia's flat tax means ten times the salary pays ten times the tax
where Finland's marginal rate makes it roughly thirty; and a quarter of an employer's wage
cost in Finland goes to maintaining the pension system. The episode ends personally, with
Paasi describing his own period of unemployment and arguing that the obstacle is not
willingness but a benefit system nobody can anticipate — and with the discovery that Paasi,
standing in Uusimaa, will be voting for Valtonen in Helsinki.

## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel:
[Talous numeromagian tilalle | Martin Paasi Elina Valtonen | Neuvottelija 183](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1x1s2JPpCA).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at
[www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/271-talous-numeromagian-tilalle-martin-paasi-elina-valtonen-neuv).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Economics Instead of Number Magic | Martin Paasi, Elina Valtonen | Neuvottelija 183, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep183-talous-numeromagian-tilalle-paasi-valtonen/, 2023-03-22. For quotes include episode 183 and timestamp.