Makes me laugh. For example, here's an excerpt regarding Norway's well-being:

"The government controls key areas, such as the vital petroleum sector (through large-scale state enterprises). The country is richly endowed with natural resources - petroleum, hydropower, fish, forests, and minerals - and is highly dependent on its oil production and international oil prices, with oil and gas accounting for one-third of exports. Only Saudi Arabia and Russia export more oil than Norway."

In other words, subtract oil and Norway's a basket case.

I recall Milton Friedman's response to the person who claimed: "We have no poverty in Sweden!"

"We have no poverty among Swedish-Americans, either."

A couple years back, I sent a Swedish friend into a tizzy by forwarding her an article that showed that African-Americans had a higher per-capita income than Swedes.

It's even worse now.

So, in conclusion, good for business, bad for individuals.

HD- Especially if your business is government.

The Nordic nations do have one thing going for them, and that is their lack of corruption. The governments are intrusive, the taxes over-bearing but the officials are as honest as officials can be.

If we gave a Jersey City alderman the power of his Helsinki counterpart, he'd make Edwin Edwards look like St Francis of Assisi.

I'd like to see them report on how easy it is for a racial minority to set up and run a business in one of these countries. When you are as racially homogenous and small as these countries are, you are basically a large extended family. People of like heritage, genetics and culture trust each other to make decisions for them. Social conformity is high because you are basically conforming to values that are already deeply culturally ingrained in you. It's a nice comfy little fish bowl, if you can find it. It doesn't scale, however.

Bart:

That's a function of their Lutheranism.

I'll bet if you judged alignments by weekly church attendance instead of asking how people labeled themselves, Germany's Christian population would be almost non-existent.

Nothing is a function of their Lutheranism. These countries are thoroughly secularist. Labels are meaningless.

Robert,

Israel can be a real nightmare to do business in for American Jews. Someone I know, who returned to where he was born in Ireland to start a business similar to one which made him several million dollars in the States, found it practically impossible to dig through nightmarish regulation to do business.

OJ,

I think it goes beyond Lutheranism. East Germany is certainly Lutheran and the Treuhandschaft has been a boondoggle of Chicagoesque proportions.

Bart:

No it's not--it's communist.

They are honest, conscious of the need to compete internationally, politically cohesive (compared to the rest of Europe) and they work hard. Without the statist superstructure and tax levels, they would all be Singapores with resources. They obviously can't continue (except maybe Norway) but I'll bet they adjust easier than the rest of Europe.

They are also actually very conservative in spirit. It is only when they look beyond their borders that they lose all their marbles.

Peter:

They are also tiny--none is even a 30th our size.

A retired engineer in Oslo told me that Norway's oil wealth ruined their shipbuilding industry. You need skilled tradesmen -- welders, pipefitters, etc. -- for the oil platforms, but the government imposed a quota limiting the number of non-native workers who could be hired.

So the oil exploration companies outbid the shipbuilders and hired away all their skilled labor. Result: the shipbuilders found themselves bereft of the people to do the work.

U.S. literacy 97%?

That can't be right. We've been assured the school system here doesn't work.

Harry:

Everyone has tv's.

Harry,

The standard for literacy in such surveys is a very low one.

OJ,

The statist aspects of Lutheranism predate the DDR by about 3/4 of a century. The Kaiser's chaplain, Stoecker, was one of the founders of Christian Democracy, a movement that can best be described as socialism combined with religious zealotry and a disregard for civil liberties.

The Lutheran clergy, as do many clerics of state religions, saw the rise of an educated, affluent middle class as a threat to their monopoly over learning, and consequently as a threat to their status in society. Whether it is mainline Protestant, Catholic and Jewish prelates in the States or Christian Democrats all over the world, now that the Soviet Union is dead, they see their main foe as the high-tech, innovative sectors of society, IOW people who work for a living and are creative.

Bart:

Yes, religious zealotry is a healthy thing. States oppose it.

Christian Democracy is religious zealotry combined with statism. Religion is correctly a matter of individual conscience not a matter for government to legislate.

All legislation is based on religious values.

Christian Democracy is what created a stable German democracy and the German economic miracle. It is more statist than what would be found in America, but Germany has always had a strong socialist tradition. They simply reflect their country. Chancellor Adenauer and Economics Minister Erhard proposed reforms of the German economy that were initially thought not statist enough by the experts - but this was the era where people thought socialist Tanzania had more future prospects than S Korea.