Political Views
Katainen states that "the values that guide the direction of my political thinking are: liberty, equality of opportunities, education, encouragement, tolerance and caring." In 2008 Katainen supported the Vanhanen cabinet plans for tax cuts to be spread out evenly among pay earners of all income levels. Katainen has criticized ideologization of energy sources and has called for a smart green policy that is a mix of many energy sources. He supports providing affordable energy using nuclear power. Katainen has stressed that the six-party cabinet will take an active, initiative-taking foreign policy grounded in continuity. Katainen has asserted that Finland would be better off if the country welcomed work-based immigrants.
With the start of his premiership, and even before it, Katainen has strongly supported EU-co-operation and bailouts for crisis-torn European countries, primarily Greece, receiving both praise and criticism from the citizens.
Another important act on the government has been The Municipal Reform. The aim is to reduce the amount of municipalities from current 336 to about one third of it by 2015.
Jyrki Katainen decided that Finland will not join a group of eleven other European Union states that have signed up to be at the forefront of preparing a financial transaction tax in November 2012. Other government parties the Green League, the Social Democratic Party of Finland and the Left Alliance had supporters of the tax.
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“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)