Dear Editor
By almost anybody's standards, the Scandinavian countries (including Finland) generally have had the highest standards of living in the world, and have had the robust economies they need to support those standards. They have had stable and rational democratic governments that looked out for the well-being of their citizens, while striving to maintain a healthy and competitive national economic environment. Health and education systems there have been generally among the best in the world.
When I came to Canada from the United States in 1967, that's the kind of country Canada was too. I was impressed with even the conservative-minded people I met here, who surprised me with their reasonable and overall compassionate view of society. As an observer of the 1964 presidential election in the United States, where the radical right-wing was beginning to gain momentum, meeting some real conservatives here was a refreshing change. As a teacher, I was especially impressed with the education systems here and the attitude of people towards education.
Since then, that radical right-wing element in the United States, with its heavy emphasis on small government and big business, has become a dominant part of the scene there, and is also becoming a big influence here. One of the many unfortunate results of that shift has been the ever-widening gap between the very rich and the rest of us. Another result has been a kind of "dumbing-down" of politics, with personal attacks and all kinds of name-calling replacing much of what might have been serious discussions about policies and actual goals. (Education systems are changing too, but that's another topic.) Things seem to be becoming unbalanced.
There is still hope - more here than in the United States - but somehow we need to begin finding more of that balance between adequately rewarding the astute businessman and finding a way to make a more fair distribution of the wealth of the community and the nation. I think a lot of people have answers that could work, but the rest of us aren't even hearing much about the real questions.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
