Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "GZERO Media" channel.

@J-Kimble It took many of my friends 3 years to get into university in Finland. Nothing is free. If certain grades aren't maintained, you will be indebted to the government to pay back the costs of your courses. It is very competitive to get into school there. I've been traveling to Finland since 1979, have lived there several times for anywhere from 3 months to a year. My mom is from there, and I have many family and friends there. Most of what people hear and learn about Finland is from the "honeymoon stage" of tourism, not reality. It's a beautiful country I love deeply, but is handicapped by a very poor style of government in the wake of loss of the soldiers during Talvisota and Jatkosota. Finland could be a far greater nation, but they won't allow their greatness to emerge due to fears of Russia, which are not to be ignored for sure.
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Finland suffers from chronic naivete and willing ignorance because the war was so brutal to want to face again. Finland hungered for the peace dividend and was somewhat in that mindset by being neutral during the Cold War. The Finnish defense and security community has been one of the only sane camps in Finnish society regarding foreign relations, and even with the naive posture of most Finnish PMs, everyone has a gut-level instinct that they need to be prepared. The FDF has been asking for more resources for decades, normally hamstrung with a modest budget, but over the past decade has seen significant changes. One of the biggest shocks to many was Finland's selection of the F-35A after a 7yr H-X Challenge to replace F/A-18C Hornets. Finland won't take in-country deliveries until 2026, which leaves a tiny window for Putin to invade Finland. Once Finland has about a dozen of their F-35A order, Russia will not have much of a chance of establishing any sense of air supremacy. With the existing Hornet fleet, Finland would already inflict disproportionate attrition on Russian fighters, attack aircraft, UAS, transports, and helicopters far in excess of what Ukraine has been able to do. The reasons are because of the quantity and quality of Finnish Air Force, IADS, and battlefield information network. FiAF is exceptionally-trained for this type of conflict, and now has an even more recent intel assessment of RuAF and ground forces capabilities.
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@mrparts True. Finland has kept its head down and traded both with the West and Russia. Pupulation is only 5.5 million, so nobody gives a rip about Finland, not even Sweden. There's lots of lip service, but the US has been the largest supplier of FMS to Finland, and the US can't even find it on the map.
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@J-Kimble Capacity is limited. I live in a State in the US with 2 million people less than Finland. We have 6 public 4yr+ universities and 10 community colleges, plus 15 private universities, one of which I got my BS in Business from. Finland has 10 major municipal universities and 4 specialized universities including the National Defense University. Finland also has polytechnic trade universities, but my State also has at least 10 of those as well. There are far more educational opportunities in the US across a wider field of academic and applied sciences and arts than any other country, for the same reasons why we're the #1 economy. We have the 3rd largest population on a huge land mass with very loose population density and highly-connected transportation routes, with vast resources and temperate zone weather for most of the 48 States.
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@yo-ry1np There will be a new political movement driven by Gen X and Gen Y who push out the old. Legacy media has hollow viewership now. People don't trust corporate media and have moved into a million other spaces. There's no such thing as Democrats or Republicans in DC, only millionaires, so why should the rest of us hate each other with their stupid game?
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@josue.ortega You start school at age 7 in Finland and they don’t focus on quizzes and tests in the early years. My mom went to an all-girls private school that was way ahead of the others in the 1960s, but they shut it and the other one down. One way Finland fudges its numbers is that many kids go to trade schools, while the ones who are more academic go to high school and college. Friends of mine who are teachers envy the autonomy that many US teachers have, while US teachers say they don’t have enough autonomy. The short story is that all public schools pretty much suck and don’t do a good job of facilitating an educational environment, so we are wasting our time looking at neighbor’s grass thinking it’s greener. The biggest thing in Finland regarding standardized testing performance is that they have been a homogenous ethnic population until recently, with a single culture, primary language, and sense of strong identity. The population is very small.
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