Finland

FINNS KOWTOW TO BIG GOVERNMENT STATISM AS FUTURE GENERATIONS LEFT TO TANGLE WITH PUBLIC DEBT…….

That’s if Orpo’s budget proposal goes through……

We already pay a whopping tax on gasoline, the statists/neo-statists want more to pay off their buffoonish funding of muslim settler migration in Finland. (Gas costs on average 1.45 per ltr / $3.80 a gallon).

An end to seven lean years? Finns respond to budget proposal

Finland’s new Finance Minister Petteri Orpo presented his first state budget proposal on Thursday. It is generally seen as a less punishing version of his predecessors’ efforts, in that it included income tax relief and no major spending cuts. Yle caught up with a few Finns on the street to ask them their thoughts on the proposal.

Ihmisiä Helsingin Rautatieaseman edustalla

Image: Yle

The Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle conducted a man-on-the-street interview with several Finnish passersby recently, after Petteri Orpo unveiled his maiden budget proposal as finance minister Thursday.

Analysts expect that Orpo’s proposed tax-relief measures will put an average of 13 more euros in middle-income earners’ pockets each month. Income taxes paid by wage earners and pensioners will be cut by 0.5 percent on average, while the tax on sweets will be cut by less than a euro.

Taxes will rise in other areas, however: a pack of cigarettes will be 50 cents more expensive if the proposal goes through, and the price of petrol will rise by 2.5 cents a litre. Another major proposed change would reduce the percentage of housing loan interest that can be written off in taxes from 55 to 45 percent.

Always look on the bright side

Orpo declared on Thursday that his budget would put an end to painful austerity policies and return around 400 million euros to taxpayers’ pockets. The general reaction when Yle conducted a man-on-the-street poll of Finnish passersby was one of cautious optimism.

Helsinki pensioner Leena Hilokoski-Björkbohm had a clear message for Orpo: No cuts to health care.

“Pensioners’ budgets are very small, so this should be taken into account,” she says. “Taxation on pensioners could be cut from current levels, too.”

Helsinki pedestrian Marja Häkki admits that she hasn’t taken the time to learn much about the latest budget proposal, but says she did take notice that Minister Orpo has proposed incorporating the chicken pox vaccine into the national immunization programme.

”It will create lots of savings because people won’t miss work. Chicken pox usually continues for a long period, keeping people off the job,” she says.

Häkki says she is optimistic about the future, and has faith that the sitting government can turn the stagnant Finnish economy around.

Debt is here to stay

Kokkola resident Anita Välimaa says her family will be most affected by the changes to petrol and housing costs.

“It will probably have a 50/50 effect. We have to use our car and pay off our loans, but I doubt we’ll be eating any more candy now that we did before,” she says.

She says she can’t judge the wider effects of the budget, but says that even if the state were able to mitigate its outstanding debt, the scourge of national debt is here to stay. She also doubts that the country’s citizens have much say in the government’s budget decisions.

“Maybe we Finns are just getting used to having the government decide for us, humbly accepting their decisions,” Välimaa says.

More here at YLE

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