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Those that don't work in Finland, get welfare, lots of it. In fact, they get pretty much everything that the working people get. Accommodation, food, medical, dental, optical, mental, psychological, training, education, even recreational services - are all available to the people on welfare. You do not need to be disabled, medically, to qualify for welfare. If you don't have work, you qualify. The only drawbacks to being on welfare - you can't travel abroad and you have to, well, humiliate yourself periodically to get some of the "extra luxury" services (i.e. massages) approved.
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Very little of the above is accurate, and most of it is flat out untrue.
First of all,
you're not allowed to study while unemployed. It's literally forbidden, or else you lose your unemployment benefits. Student benefits are smaller than unemployment benefits, and if you already have one education you probably don't qualify for student benefits anymore. So for most unemployed studying is just not an option.
You are btw also forbidden to do any work in your field, even for charity, unless mandated by the unemployement office. Also, if you set up your own company and do
any work in your own field, no matter how little money you make, you immediately disqualify for any benefits. In short, while unemployed you are forbidden to do anything that the unemployment office isn't telling you to do.
You don't get food. This is just not how it works in Finland, except if you're considered unfit to handle money by the social services. The typical unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed are very small. Typical things considered "luxuries" by the unemployed are for example cheese. (There are songs about it.)
"Training" for the unemployed is these days generally unpaid work. You go to work for six months, you don't get paid while in training, at the end of it you're replaced by another "trainee". This statistically almost never results in anyone actually getting a job. If you don't go on the other hand, you might lose your benefits. Even if the job isn't in your field. An academic friend of mine was essentially forced to work at an assembly line for example. Again, unpaid.
Finland has one of the biggest gaps in availability of healthcare services for working and non-working people in Europe. We regurarly get notes from the EU chastising us for the availability of many healthcare services for the unemployed.
Psychological services are pretty much not available at all unless you have really serious problems. For example it has proven impossible for me to get treatment for my ADD. As in, I have a diagnonis but I still can't get a recipe for medication. I can't afford to buy the psychiatric services from the private sector (unless I could find a doctor who was willing to just flat out write me a recipe without regular checkups, which is rare), and have been flat out told by the public sector that I'm not getting help from them. As long as I can work in my current job I'm not considered sick enough. On the other hand if I was unable to work, I'd simply be unemployed, in which case my treatment is also not paid because they only pay psychological services that support a persons ability to work.
The other reason to get publicly paid psychological treatment is if you're a threat to yourself or others. Suicidal or otherwise deeply disturbed. So most unemployed people are pretty much just s*** out of luck with their problems.
Recreational services are most certainly not available for the unemployed. There is some support for childrens hobbies, but that's pretty much it. You most certainly don't get a massage unless it's part of a physiotheratic treatment.
I'm sorry but your friend obviously has almost no contact to the lives of actually unemployed people. (Which isn't surprising considering that as a professor he personally has only really known success in his career and he currently pulls around double the average salary). Plus he doesn't apparently read the news, which is a bit surprising for a professor.
The healthcare services are not free, and neither is medication. They are very heavily subsidized, but the costs are still significant if you're actually poor. Ynless you have an emergency, it can also take weeks to get a doctors appointment from the public sector. (Although that depends heavily on where you live. There are plenty of areas where the situation is better.)
Accommodation is not free. You can currently get benefits for up to 80% of your rent, but the rest you have to cover from your other benefits. There's a cap on how high a rent they'll support, if yours is more than that you also have to cover the difference yourself. In high-rent citys such as Helsinki it can be very difficult to get a flat that qualifies for full rent support.