How the Nordic countries, especially Finland, can teach us how to live better

At a May 2012 conference on social mobility, where experts discussed whether people worldwide were attaining a better life than their parents, Ed Miliband made a surprising quip: If you want the American dream, go to Finland. For decades, the country best known for opportunity had been the United States. No longer, said Miliband.
Moving to America in 2008, Finnish journalist Anu Partanen quickly went from confident, successful professional to a wary, self-doubting mess. She found that navigating the basics of everyday life from buying a mobile and filing taxes to education and childcare was much more complicated and stressful than anything she encountered in her homeland. At first, she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered they shared her deep apprehension. To understand why life is so different in the U.S. and Finland, Partanen began to look closely at both.
In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Partanen compares and contrasts life in the United States with life in the Nordic region, focusing on four key relationships: parents and children, men and women, employees and employers, and government and citizens. She debunks criticism that Nordic countries are socialist nanny states, revealing instead that it is Americans who are far more enmeshed in unhealthy dependencies than they realise. Her conclusions: the Nordic approach allows citizens to enjoy more individual freedom and independence than the average American.
Offering insights, advice, and solutions, The Nordic Theory of Everything makes a convincing argument that Americans can rebuild society, rekindle optimism, and restore true freedom to relationships and lives while pursuing the American dream by following the Finnish way of life