EXPENSIVE SOCIALISM - FINNISH STEVEDORES MAKE 50K EUR ANNUALLY

Finland – Finnish stevedores’ strike is over and labour returns to work. No information on salaries given, but a reference was made to last year salaries, according to which a stevedore made already 50.000EUR per year.
In Finland this blue-collar salary is as high as surgeon’s annual salary. What we can say for sure is, that packing or unpacking a ship is something we all pay, when reading a newspaper made of Finnish paper.
We are also entitled to ask, how come private sector executive salaries are so much behind some of these key area salaries.
If we were to import freely workers from abroad (or Europe) – without Labour Union interfering, then our salary cost would be only 2/5 of the days cost. Labour Union representatives seem to know what they have done in Finland. It is really no wonder, why some of then are using prostitutes and having a nice salary too.
They rather miss anything in Finland, except original priest’s (divine) service, which they are not entitled to enter as sinners.
Costs has to be multiplies by 6, which was the factor of EUR-currency, when we got involved. Inflation is high and I do not think Finland is able to keep up raising the living costs, especially when such big names like Nokia has stated of moving out from Finland sooner of later. It will be a demanding experiment to observe how Nokia HQ’s transfer is affecting into Finnish economy.


(*) Source: Half Nine News at YLE (SDP) channel 1 on April 18, 2005.

The stevedores in America make $36k a year. If we adjust and say $1 = 1 euro (which is not the case, but is when we don't have a jerk for a president), that's around 1/4 less. That's a lot smaller saving than the 3/5 you state. Moreover, this is America, where it's not that hard to work undocumented (though stevedores are probably unionized and citizens... but they still feel the effect of the presence of a large second-class labor force with fewer rights). (The numbers are from salary.com.)

The average surgeon salary here, in contrast to Finland, is $223k. That is the difference. Professional services clean up, with high fees. That's partly because we have no free medical education, and all doctors go deep into debt to complete school (unless you come from a wealthy family and can afford it). Consequently the baseline salary for a doctor is high, but the loan payments eat up much of tne salary.

Our high medical costs are paying the debt burden that the doctors and nurses carry for expensive educations. It also seems to create a shortage of doctors, because med school is such a hurdle.

Exacerbating the shortage is the fact that a lot of health professionals to move into cosmetic surgery, which is more lucrative (and less stressful) than working at a regular hospital. Here's a link to an article about that:

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1407024,00.html

Cosmetic surgery is lucrative because it's completely elective, and people are willing to go into debt for it. It's like a fancy car. It's like any business in any sector : it always pays better if you cater to the wealthy clientele.

The "free market" has produced a situation where, someone with a broken bone might be sitting in the ER waiting room, while someone getting a facelift doesn't wait at all. Is this reallly "success"?

Sounds like you want to find some kind of poor country you can exploit by paying their workers miserable wages, then blaming problems on them because they are "illegal aliens." That is what we do here in the US. What countries do you have in mind? Albania? Greece? Turkey? Morocco? Palestine? Some of these people might have a little problem getting used to the Finnish climate.