What’s not mentioned here is differences in implicit culture. And that makes all the difference.
Everything in this piece is relevant, as is the comment about voting system differences.
And, how Finns think about who they are, what they want, and what their country should be like is what makes it so.
Likewise what we in the USA believe we are and want is what makes it so here.
Americans are taught a myth of rugged individualism. If you are a “failure” it’s your own fault, for one reason or another.We don’t even notice that this is our foundational belief about each other. And, this foundational belief is part of what generates the “victim culture” that another comment mentions.
In social democracies like Finland, this is not a foundational belief. Challenges in one’s life are not assumed to be all the fault of the individual. It is understood that context matters — that society as a whole carries significant responsibility for well-being of its members. A certain level of material security is considered necessary and humane to insure for all citizens. Not just for their individual good, but for the good of society as a whole.
Material wealth is not worshiped and glorified as an end in itself, as it is in the USA. In Finland there is social pressure against being absurdly rich, beyond all need and reason. There are very wealthy individuals, and, they are discreet about it. It is not something to brag about or rub in the face of those less well off. And of course they pay a lot more taxes than they would in the USA, to balance out individual wealth vs. societal needs.
Also, Finns work hard for their freedom and relative economic prosperity and equivalence. They’ve earned it. They lived through hundreds of years of occupation and colonization by the Kingdom of Sweden, and then by Russia for another hundred years or so, until independence in 1917. They were the first, and only, nation to fully repay their war debts from WWII.
These are the sorts of differences that make a difference, if we’re comparing cultures.
[Full disclosure: my ancestry is 1/4 Swedish-Finn, the ethnic minority of Swedish origin still living in parts of Finland, with a bit of Finnish mixed in. I have a bunch of relatives in Finland, have visited multiple times over decades, and my understanding and experience of Finland and its culture is significantly informed by these factors. I have also lived in Sweden for a year and experienced that culture’s social democracy first hand.]