I’m running for the Espoo City Council for a new term. I am currently also a member of the City Board. My themes are:
Better quality and easier access to the Mental health services and services for the people suffering from substance abuse.
Overcoming poverty in Espoo.
Taking care of the living environment and city nature.
The video is my campaign video while running for the EU Parliament. The text is a spoken word -poem. Video is made by Johannes Niva:
How to end poverty?
Ending poverty is a containing many aspects of social and health care field, employment, financial and monetary politics. People’s – and children’s – right to education and schooling is the most effective way to help people out of poverty. Below few details about poverty and what can be done at the EU level.
The year 2030 comes from the UN Sustainable Develoment Agenda that states that the world is free from poverty by 2030. The EU has launched already 2010 a task to reduce poverty in EU by 50% by 2020. It won’t happen, because of the financial struggles and the way EU and the World Bank etc. have tried to solve them (by cutting salaries, pensions, services).
Poverty
There are 585 million people living in poverty in the world. Extreme poverty has been diminishing, yet in Sub-Saharan Africa the numbers have been growing. Extreme poverty means a situation where a person lives under 1,90 US$ per day. There’s often lack of clean water, food, shelter, safety, too. UN has announced the Sustainable Develoment Goals (SDG), in which the first goal is to end poverty in all its forms by 2030. Finland has also signed the agenda.
In the developed countries poverty is often relative, which means that people who have to get by with less or maximum 60% of the country’s medium income rate and they are lacking the same social, financial and cultural opportunities and possibilities than most of the people.
In Finland there were 654 000 people living with low income in 2017 of whom great amount where young adults or pensioners. The number of people with low income grew by 0,6% from the previous year.
In Europe there are still people at risk of the extreme poverty and the goal to help at least 20 million people out of poverty by 2020 isn’t going to be reached.
What is EU doing to end poverty?
EU has (had) the Europe 2020 Strategy for Growth and jobs, but it has been affected by the financial crises in several EU countries. In 2017 the European Commission announced the Pillar of Social Rights, which has 20 principles to ensure a fairer economic and social Europe. It hasn’t been proclaimed also by the European Parliament and the Council – and the EU member states – but it doesn’t have a status of a regulation or a directive, yet it is more a guideline for the country’s own actions.
In the years to come EU will be heading deeper in the crisis’s management due to its role in the fight against the climate change and immigrant issues. It is also evident that it will play a part in the financial and economical solutions which the developed countries will face when digitalization, robotization, and the sustainable energy innovations really hit us. EU has fallen behind the USA and China in these business fields.
We need to make sure the small businesses and the Freelancers would be able to have opportunities and stay alive in the change. Also, it is important to ensure that the employees are able to live with their salaries and that working conditions are safe and fare.
The EU have to start regulating better the taxation of the transnational corporations. DigiGiants should as well be taxed within Europe. The companies like the Facebook make huge profits basically in every country, but the money flows somewhere (not seen) in to the pockets of the most riches men in the world. If the EU would tax corporations whose sales are 750 million Euros (from which 50 M€ digital business) it would be paid back to the country where the profit it made, it would already mean a great deal to finances.
The means are there, but the will of ending the poverty isn’t s strong enough at this political environment.
