Appraisal of the Nordic model of society will be continued from the decisions that the Committee arrived at in its report on the future (1/1997) nearly ten years ago. The worst structural flaws, distortions and misconceptions – taboos – in the welfare model will be studied. How is it possible that 1) poor people die and get sick more than rich ones, 2) the best and most expensive school places of all go to the children of wealthy, well-educated parents in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, 3) in housing, through taxation and other measures, the State gives more support to the wealthy than to the poor and 4) more than 90.000 young people are not in school or in work and half of them are so out of everything that actually we do not know anything about them? Whose interests is the State actually looking after? Globalisation and the Knowledge society impose big challenges to the traditional equality oriented welfare state model of Finland Increasing income differences between the richest 1% or 5% and the main population as well as the especially slow increase in the incomes of the poorest 10% are 'black points' of the development In many public services (e.g. in the health care) there is a risk of the division of the traditionally egalitarian services to the much better services to well-offs and poor basic services for those who are not able to pay