Finland Leader: To Achieve 'American Dream,' Go Nordic

Finland's leader thinks her nation and neighboring ones might be better at giving people a shot at the "American Dream" than America itself. “I feel that the American Dream can be achieved best in the Nordic countries, where every child no matter their background or the background of their families can become anything, because we have a very good education system,” said Sanna Marin, the world's youngest prime minister at 34. The comments, first given last month, are being revisited in a Washington Post analysis about Bernie Sanders and his quest to bring aspects of the "Nordic model" to the US.

“We have a good health-care and social welfare system that allows anybody to become anything," said Marin. "This is probably one of the reasons why Finland gets ranked the happiest country in the world.” (She's right about that ranking.) Though she doesn't mention Sanders by name, Business Insider thinks the comments amount to a "tacit endorsement" of the progressive senator. (Marin comes from a blue-collar family and once worked as a sales assistant—which is apparently why a 70-year-old government official in Estonia dismissed her as a "sales girl.")