It Is Not Only Work That Ensures the Wealth; Achieving Wished Results Often Requires Tremendous Efforts We have been hearing about many positive signs of the performance of Finnish economy. While GDP and confidence figures were freshly referred positive, the export figures from recent years showed barely any signs of growth by the end of 2016. A share of R&D intensive business has diminished during past years, though the amount of public funding for R&D and education was cut some time ago. Finland belongs to the worlds’ most highly educated nations. The unemployment of highly educated has also remained high in the recent years, as has the number of long-term unemployed. One way, in which Finland differs from many other countries that have high education levels, is the share of people working in knowledge intensive business services sectors and the target markets of Finnish KIBS sector. The creation of clusters generally increases the potential to succeed. The vacancies Public discussion very often concentrates on vacancies that are apparently existing, easy to identify, have the possibility to receive short-term public funding, or have no need for funding at all. Nevertheless, there are some peculiarities in Finnish system: The funding available for certain types of work has been due to the fact that municipalities have been able to evade certain sanctions and create income by engaging an unemployed in supervised activities. The hasty effort to evade sanctions has in many cases outweighed the purposefulness of the activity and shifted the focus from considerations on value added and capabilities of a job seeker to the creation of rather strange modes of action. Often vacancies that seem easily identifiable do not exist or are short termed and lead to increase in public debt. Easy to identify also indicates that there might be loads of competition and replacing solutions to cure the problem. On the other hand, the “open positions” that could provide for long-term growth, i.e. the income that needs to be created, are often considered non- existent and not encouraged by public sector. As the world is becoming ever more complex, it is more likely that the potential growth comes from tasks that provide a large value added and therefore require high level of knowledge. It does not increase motivation or confidence to hear about any initiatives on assigning highly educated valuable resources to activities that are not consistent with their skills or have barely any potential to provide value added. In my opinion, thoughtless public sector involvement in employment creation very often results in decreased economic growth and increased unemployment. The activation It seems to be a widely-presented opinion that the threat of losing benefits would lead to increase in activity. If an activity that empowers the benefits is rather narrowly defined and the decisions regarding availability of funds skewed or arbitrary, the influence is likely be undesirable. It would be beneficial to consider the influence of e.g. internationality, travelling, self- motivated interaction with others, or participation in happenings as potential initiators of future earnings. In general, I have been wondering the role of public sector in certain issues related to entrepreneurship, employment and even personal activities. I do not recall any research that would praise the active involvement of public sector e.g. in corporate decision making. What is work The world has for ages created the ever-fancier ways to achieve the best possible results with ever lesser amount of resources. How should we feel about investing in activities that do not serve any goals, are somehow detrimental or could be replaced by more efficient means? What should be an acceptable goal and who should get to decide the acceptability of an activity? We have a system, which in many cases, rewards for working for the goals of others, though even punishes for the efforts that one makes to achieve own ones. Voluntary work One of the latest ideas to treat the unemployment in Finland has been to encourage voluntary work. Voluntarism might have a place in the society, nevertheless we should also discuss the means we plan to use to maintain and increase our standard of living. We can aim to increase the availability and reduce the cost of essentials by rationalizing and automating. Any public benefits or services require funds, and one way to achieve the required funds is through taxation of value added. Salaries and profits belong to the important components of value added, and therefore preferring activities that do not provide means to create value added in large scale, but rather cost, is at least questionable, if not even detrimental. Operating environment influencing How big role does the stable environment play in the encouragement towards earning and entrepreneurship? How much do changes in legislation, taxation and other rules cause indirect costs in the society ( e.g. modifications in operational structures, clarification work, delays, lost income etc.), or are the consequences more likely to be only positive? The benefit of stability, fairness and predictability Our legal system has evolved during a long time. To me, it seems that there is a good reason for most of the rules in the legislation. Fundamentals in legislation have been deliberately made difficult to change, which protects us from unnecessary or detrimental changes. In addition, especially the fundamental rules have many connections to e.g. practices and other ruling. Making an inappropriate change can prove extremely costly to the society. I am not saying all the rules and practices in the existing system are all up to date. I just wish for carefulness and reasoning in any changes. Having a situation, where the public sector exactly follows the legislation is always desirable. Johanna Sandman 24.4.2017 11:42