HELSINKI — Ten minutes after opening its doors one chilly spring morning, the Hursti Charity food bank in Kallio, a Helsinki neighborhood often described as “up and coming,” has served 237 people. An electronic monitor at the front door silently counts the visitors. By the end of the day, more than 3,000 people will have come to pick up donated food and household goods.

This is not an image Finland likes the outside world to see. It prefers to be known as a country that tops "best in the world" lists: best place to be a woman, most transparent, least corrupt, best education, happiest, wealthiest — the list goes on. But as the economic crisis deepens, tens of thousands of people now rely on charities and food banks to feed their families.

Heikki Hursti paces the floors of the food bank, talking with volunteers and checking on deliveries, his gray hair swept back in a ponytail. His parents founded the charity in the 1970s. When he took over more than a decade ago, 300 people would show up every day, recalls Hursti, who keeps a note of the numbers in a hand-written ledger. The difference today, he says, is staggering.

The food bank relies on donations from some of Finland's biggest companies. It also receives surplus airline meals, pre-packaged and delivered twice week. Food prepared for passengers at 30,000 feet act as a lifeline for people living in food poverty. Of the dozens of volunteers manning the stations, some were previously recipients of food aid.

"Our country is a country that has everything. But our leaders in government have made very bad decisions" — food bank operator Heikki Hursti

The Kallio food bank is not a standalone example. With more than 300 food distribution points around the country, Finland’s Lutheran Church is one of the biggest charities dealing with food poverty, dishing out 150,000 kilos of aid — or 56,000 parcels of food — every month.

"Our country is a country that has everything," Hursti says. "But our leaders in government have made very bad decisions."

'Sick man of Europe'

The Finnish PR machine tells a different story. Finnish embassies dutifully re-post upbeat articles about Finland’s most popular exports — Marimekko, the Moomins, Angry Birds — that appear in international media.

Finland is the eighth largest economy in the eurozone, and its people have the fifth highest GDP per capita in Europe, ahead of Germany and France. Most other indicators paint a less rosy picture.

After four years of decline, Finance Minister Alexander Stubb dubbed his nation "the sick man of Europe" in September 2015, as GDP growth flatlined, becoming the second lowest in the EU. The country lost its triple-A credit rating this year, dealing a blow to its recovery prospects. At 58 percent of GDP, public spending is among the highest in the EU. Unemployment has hit 10 percent, with youth unemployment over 20 percent — considerably higher than in other Nordic countries or neighboring Estonia.

To many observers, Finland's economy is not merely sick, it is on life support.

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The right of center government — led by the Center Party’s Juha Sipilä, with junior coalition partners Timo Soini of the Finns Party and Stubb of the National Coalition Party — has embarked on deep budget cuts. It plans to tackle competitiveness and the power of trade unions. The fallout has provoked soul-searching in the Nordic nation.

Cuts to education are a particularly bitter pill to swallow, as Finland is fiercely proud of its educational standards, and universal free access to higher education.

Theo Tyrväinen, Marianne Saviaho and Rasmus Tillander are students at universities in the Helsinki region. Interviewed separately, they told similar stories of the heavy toll the budget cuts have taken on students: more debt, fewer specialized classes and days spent in the classroom, and a faculty brain-drain caused by retrenchment or disillusionment.

Until recently, Finnish students enjoyed some of the most generous provisions in Europe. They received a monthly grant for living expenses and, depending on personal circumstances, an accommodation allowance. For many this aid was indispensable. Now both sets of funds have been cut or capped.

Students were also used to smaller perks, like subsidized university meals and a 50 percent discount on public transport in the Helsinki region. But budget margins are now tighter than ever.

The incremental cuts add to the feeling that the government is insensitive to their concerns, and has specifically chosen to target students, the elderly, families, and low wage earners.

Many students would like to take a job on the side, but their prospects are slim. "The problem really is that the system only allows you to get paid a certain amount,” says 22-year-old Tyrväinen, who is studying community education at Humak University. Authorities cap the maximum a student can earn before their benefits are reduced, meaning there’s a limit to how much the extra income will help.

Others have resorted to taking out more government loans to make up for the subsidies cuts — but many don’t see increasing their debt as a fair price for getting a "free" education.

"We lived our childhood in the ‘90s depression, so none of us want to go into debt,” says Saviaho, in her final year of a master’s degree in environmental science at Helsinki University. “Many of my friends already have student loans and you can't survive on just this money unless you get help from your parents.”

Second year theology student Tillander is already €5,000 in debt — a large amount in a country unaccustomed to paying for education. He struggled to find a job, and turned to government-backed loans as a last resort. Ministers, he says, are out of touch with reality.

"I think they don't understand how difficult it is to live on €200 per month. They don't understand how difficult it is to take a loan just to buy your spaghetti and ketchup. I think they just don't care about it,” says Tillander.

Student union activists are worried that cuts to university education will hit less affluent Finns the hardest. People who have no recourse to money from their parents, or who can’t afford to take out loans, could be discouraged from enrolling in the first place.

“The strength of our system has been in the radical equality of people from varying backgrounds,” says Heikki Koponen, president of the National Union of University Students SYL, which represents 132,000 students.

“For the past decades education has been seen as a societal investment into the future,” says Koponen. “Now there seem to be significant forces that want to see education solely as an individual's investment in his or herself. This change shouldn't happen unnoticed.”

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Finance Minister Stubb has taken much of the heat over cuts to the welfare state and education budget. As another round went through parliament last December, Stubb — an inveterate tweeter — wrote "Good sleep. Good morning session on the @wattbike. Good coffee. Good raw porridge. Good energy levels. Gonna be a good day. Good morning!"

Successive governments failed to tackle long-term structural problems at the heart of the Finnish malaise, including the labor market.

The tweet was a typically upbeat, off-hand remark from Stubb, but its perceived thoughtlessness sparked a swift reaction on social media. "You're feasting on the grave of the welfare state," was one response. Another compared Stubb to Monty Burns from “The Simpsons,” who delights in tormenting the cartoon's workaday characters.

It was just one in a series of gaffes by Stubb. He now faces a leadership challenge from within his own party, with polls predicting he will ousted in favor of Interior Minister Petteri Orpo at a National Coalition Party conference in June. It would be a rapid fall from grace for Stubb, who was prime minister a little more than a year ago.

Stubb and the current government are not at the root of the country's economic woes. Successive governments failed to tackle long-term structural problems at the heart of the Finnish malaise, including the labor market — a key target of recent cuts.

According to the European Commission's 2016 country report on Finland, its labor market "has continued to worsen, contrary to developments in other EU countries." The report cites a mismatch between labor supply and demand, which follows a sharp increase in unit labor costs between 2008 and 2013. The current government has implemented a contentious "competitiveness agreement” to boost production, lower costs, and make the economy more attractive to investment.

“In both Sweden and Germany significant market reforms have been performed some 15-20 years ago and it took roughly a decade before the effects could be felt in the overall economy,” says Elina Lepomäki, one of the MPs who is challenging Stubb for leadership of the NCP. “We are yet to get started."

Efforts to reform the labor market have resulted in protracted, difficult negotiations between unions and the employers’ federation, with the government threatening to impose its will — a horrific concept in a country where traditional consensus politics have always prevailed.

When a deal was tentatively reached — the Confederation of Finnish Industries concedes it will only narrow the competitiveness gap by 4 percent — Sipilä and Stubb ended a conference by grinning and bumping fists. It was interpreted as a triumphant gesture mocking the workers.

Lepomäki argues the government’s cuts target the wrong sectors of society. "The cuts should be directed at middle and high income people rather that at people who are not in a position to help themselves."

"Almost 70 percent of the current income transfers of the Finnish welfare state are directed from middle income people to middle income people, not from rich to poor," says Lepomäki. "That generates inefficiencies and wrong incentives for people. The focus of the public sector should be re-thought."

The protest spirit has since died down — there was never revolution in the air — but gloomy economic predictions do nothing to bolster the mood of Finns.

As the deal was hammered out, public discontent about the government’s handling of the economy grew. Workers, students, farmers and pensioners protested across the country, and were joined by police, teachers, and emergency service personnel. The strikes underscored how deeply, and broadly, the austerity cuts affected Finnish society.

The protest spirit has since died down — there was never revolution in the air — but gloomy economic predictions do nothing to bolster the mood of Finns. Many appear resigned to facing cuts and renegotiated working conditions, after months of talks led nowhere and protests fizzled out.

Back at the food bank in Kallio, Hursti takes a break to answer a phone call. Social Democrat Party leader, and veteran trade unionist, Antti Rinne wants to know how things are going. He's a regular caller. As is President Sauli Niinistö, who visited to help serve meals at Christmas. His predecessor, Tarja Halonen, also made appearances.

So far, says Hursti, neither Sipilä, Soini nor Stubb have paid a visit to what is one of Finland's busiest food banks.

"Nobody from Alexander Stubb's party will set foot inside here," says Hursti. "It would be too much for them to see in concrete terms how the people are living in poverty, and how lost our society has become."

David Mac Dougall is a Helsinki-based journalist and broadcaster covering the Nordic and Baltic region. Follow him on Twitter @davidmacdougall.