Sustainable economy is the foundation for everything

Thanks to our strong welfare state, we have come out of the pandemic with relatively small damages. Record-high employment and policies that have strengthened the economy provide us with tools to face future challenges, but in the coming years, the conditions of Finland’s economy and competitiveness must be strengthened further. The choice of methods is significant: SDP’s economic policy leans on fairness and evidence-based information. It is socially and ecologically sustainable.

For decades, the Nordic welfare state has been an economic success story. A well-being, educated nation that has confidence in the future is efficient, competitive and innovative. This success story must not only be safeguarded but also developed and grown. The economy grows when we make wise investments in high-level education and high-quality services. These, then, increase wellbeing, the supply of highly skilled labour, and social stability, which improve market conditions.

A rhetoric of no alternatives and newspeak has seized economic policy in Finland. Cutbacks are called reforms and the welfare state is saved by cutting from the people who are most vulnerable. During this parliamentary term, with SDP leadership, we have shown that large structural reforms that generate conditions for growth and wellbeing are not cutbacks. The free-of-charge upper secondary level increases the level of skills, productivity, and employment and it is an improvement, not a deterioration, in the lives of young people and their families.

The Social democrats want to continue to reform society, develop the welfare state and reinforce structures. This requires a strong economy.

Sustainable two percent economic growth

• A fair economic policy that protects and strengthens the operating conditions of the welfare state and the most vulnerable in the society and treats everyone in the society equally in terms of taxation, economic ground rules and subsidies
• Future investments in education, RDI contributions and other targets that fuel economic growth
• Ensuring the purchasing power of regular people through, for example, fair wage development and the development of various fees and costs. SDP wants both a price ceiling for electricity and harmonisation of price ceilings for services
• Shifting the social security contributions, transferred to employees in the Competitiveness Pact, back to the employers to improve wage earners’ purchasing power

Long-term sustainability of public finances

• Reversing the upward trend of debt and reaching the level of central government debt defined in EU agreements by the 2030’s
• Strong employment to support public finances. The employment rate must be raised to 80 percent
• Strengthening the tax bases and shifting the focus of taxation toward taxation of capital and negative effects. Intensifying action against tax evasion
• Maintaining the overall tax rate at least at its current level to safeguard the services of the Nordic welfare state and increasing the progressivity of taxation
• The taxation of low and middle-income wage earners and pensioners must not be raised
• Reforming of the spending limits system in public finances

Open-minded savings

• Better utilisation of the opportunities for expenditure cuts through maintaining health and the ability to work
• Savings from properties, reforming operations, and wiser procurement
• Combing through business and agricultural subsidies to cut ineffective and adverse subsidies