Daniel van Vuuren

Head Social Security @SEO_onderzoek Professor of Economics @TilburgU.

[Regina Bauer 🇪🇪🇺🇦 @petite_michelle]

People keep asking what the Soviet occupation actually cost the Baltic states. You don't have to imagine it. There's a control group, and it's sitting right across the gulf.
In 1938 — the last full year before the war — Estonia and Finland had essentially the same GDP per capita. Two small nations, same sea, neighboring languages, the same starting line. By some rankings Estonia was even slightly ahead. Heritage FoundationX
Then history split in two.
Finland fought the Winter War and kept its independence. Estonia was occupied, annexed, and folded into a planned economy. Same decade, opposite roads.
Fifty years later:
🇫🇮 Finland — ~$24,000 per person (1992)
🇪🇪 Estonia — ~$2,800
An eightfold gap — from an identical starting point. Not because Finns worked harder. Not because Estonians were less capable. One country was free to build. The other was told what to build, for whom, and at what loss.
The wages say it even more cleanly: in 1938 Estonian purchasing power was just 4% below Finland's; by 1988 it was 42% below. That cliff is the occupation, drawn in numbers.
And here's the part that ends the argument. Set free for a single generation, Estonia has already clawed back to roughly four-fifths of Finnish income. A gap that took 50 years to open is closing in 30. That's the proof it was never about us — it was the system imposed on us.
There's a cost that never shows up in GDP, either. No occupation means no cattle cars to Siberia. No murdered and exiled intelligentsia. No decades of settlers moved in to outnumber the natives — which means the very "Russian-speaking minority" Moscow is now parading before the ICJ wouldn't exist at anything like that scale. The grievance Russia is litigating is one it manufactured itself.
So no — we don't wonder what we lost. We can see it from the ferry.
And free at last, it's what we're finally becoming again. 🇪🇪🇱🇻🇱🇹

[Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @lugaricano]

Remarkable statement by the person most responsible for closing all nuclear plants. German greens should really face a reckoning for their grand anti-nuclear crusade, which had two main achievements: citizens struggle with high energy costs and the planet is dirtier and warmer.

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

The best possible outcome was the U.S. getting bored and walking away. Rubio is in Straussian mode here, as he helped stop a Russian info op from becoming codified U.S. policy. This leaves Witkoff, Dmitriev and Ushakov looking fools for overpromising and underdelivering, as the Kremlin turns to Brussels as its new negotiating partner. Meanwhile, Ukraine has put the M14 highway in the crosshairs and nightly cuts into Russia's energy revenue with expanding "long-range sanctions."

[Kate from Kharkiv @BohuslavskaKate]

Former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta:

Biden should have been much tougher in providing the weapons that Ukraine needed. Frankly, we should have given them much more sophisticated weaponry that they were asking for in order to be able to go after Russia.

[Dan Rysk @DanDeFiEd]

Italian efficiency when it comes to coffee should be studied.

In Italy:
- Walk into a bar and look at the guy
- Un caffe
- 30 seconds later it’s ready
- Shoot it
- Leave €1
- Walk out

In the US:
- Join a line
- Wait
- Order coffee
- Answer 12 questions: Size? Milk? Roast? Sugar? Temperature? Colombia beans? Name? How do you spell it?
- $12.34
- Ask for a 20% tip. Click 5 times on a ipad to have a custom tip
- Tap phone
- ask where to send the invoice
- Wait again on a different line
- Someone call a name that sounds similar to mine
- get the coffee
- too hot, can't drink it
- finally at temperature

taste like shit

[Daniel van Vuuren @VuurenDaniel]

@realMaalouf @grok what does yesterday’s pogrom refer to?

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

I do hope that European states finally understand what a strategic asset Ukraine is right now. People need to stop talking about Ukraine needing Europe. Europe needs Ukraine for its own freedom and security.

[Regina Bauer 🇪🇪🇺🇦 @petite_michelle]

A matter of trust.

Every year, Finland tops the World Happiness Report. Economists point to welfare systems. Sociologists cite education. But having visited Finland — and eventually bought an apartment in Vantaa — I think the real answer is something harder to measure.

It's trust. Not as a value on a poster. As the actual foundation of how society works.

From the very first trip, it struck me. People trust strangers. Institutions trust citizens. The state trusts its people to make good decisions, and people trust the state not to abuse that. It sounds simple. It is anything but.

When I went through the process of buying property in Finland, the contrast with other places I know was almost surreal. The system assumed good faith — at every step. No one treated me like a potential problem to be managed. That trust wasn't naive. It was structural, built over generations into laws, culture, and everyday habits.

And here's the thing about trust: it's self-reinforcing. When people trust each other, they cooperate. When they cooperate, things work. When things work, trust deepens. Finland isn't happy despite its challenges — it's resilient through them because the social fabric holds.

Happiness reports measure outcomes. Trust is the mechanism. That's what Finland quietly taught me. 🇫🇮

[Jessica Berlin @berlin_bridge]

Let this sink in.
Four years ago, the US expected Ukraine to fall within days and even withheld military aid because they thought it’d be wasted. Today, the US — the most powerful nation on earth — is asking Ukraine for military aid.

Never underestimate Ukraine. Arm them to win.

[John Bolton @AmbJohnBolton]

America's performance on Ukraine over the last twelve years?  Sad, sad, sad. and sad. 5/5

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Believe it’s a coincidence if you will, but these are also Russia's prime targets because they are Ukraine's staunchest allies. Trump attacking them is yet another Kremlin dream made reality. I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in the KGB.

[Ulrich Speck @ulrichspeck]

If the Europeans had provided adequate support to Ukraine, Russia's war would have been over long ago. Europe would be respected as a security player—even by Trump.

The failure to support Ukraine properly lies at the heart of the current drama. It projects the image of weakness.

[Andrew Côté @Andercot]

Friendly reminder the first German Chancellor to initiate phase out of all Nuclear by 2022 went to work for Russian oil and gas firms when he left office.

Say his name.

Gerhard Schroeder

[Hanno Lustig @HannoLustig]

Maduro's exit is definitely a big loss for the degrowth movement.

[Robin Brooks @robin_j_brooks]

@IlvesToomas This isn't about bashing Europe. We Europeans - I am one too - have a victim mentality. We keep looking to the US to protect us. We need to stand on our own two feet and get our act together. So stop doing vacuous nonsense like posting flags and actually make the EU stronger...

[Jort Kelder @jortkelder]

Fijn dat het Amsterdamse gemeentebestuur een schoon geweten heeft over Gaza, maar misschien kunnen ze zich ook ff met de tyfusbende in eigen stad bezighouden? Doe 19 september mee aan CleansDay, dan ruimen burgers de bende van dit falende bestuur op. https://t.co/riUC6eJ26e

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Everybody remembers that seminal moment in WW2 with FDR in his wheelchair rolling out the red carpet for Hitler discussing which portions of France he will get in exchange for peace.

[Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien]

And remember Europeans, if Trump
Is willing to help Russians kill Ukrainians today, he could do the same anywhere on the continent tomorrow.
Ukraine is the front line of Europe’s defense.

[Anders Åslund @anders_aslund]

What was the most important Trump did in his first 100 days?
1. Depressed the US & global economies with exorbitant customs tariffs.
2. Caused complete economic uncertainty through capricious centralized policy, impeding investments iin the US. /1

[Daniel van Vuuren @VuurenDaniel]

@IAPonomarenko Trump is begging. Where are his cards?