6 ms·

As a result of their tax rate and size of government? That's ridiculous. Denmark is wealthy and comfortable because it's full of Danes. I bet you Danes in th

As a result of their tax rate and size of government? That's ridiculous. Denmark is wealthy and comfortable because it's full of Danes. I bet you Danes in the US are even wealthier and more comfortable than Danes in Denmark.

jsankey 16y ago
To be honest your point seems completely vacuous (far more ridiculous than the point you are responding to). It appears to reduce to "Danes are magical - I think". What makes Danes special? Is this not related to the sort of government they would create and support?
- mixmax 16y ago
  "Danes are magical" I can assure you we are not.
  - citrik 16y ago
    Some of them are ;)
- rubashov 16y ago
  They are high time preference and relatively high IQ. These are the features that distinguish the various ethnicities that build pleasant societies.
  - ArturSoler 16y ago
    I guess you meant to say that they have low time preference.
VBprogrammer 16y ago
Because America is the greatest country in the world people outside America couldn't possibly be happy with the way they do things?
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  To be fair, in the few cases where I've seen good data, most groups do better in the US than in their native countries. For instance, Asian Americans have average income of $65,000. Japan, the richest country in Asia, has average income of about $40,000. Japanese Americans also live 2 years longer than Japanese. Swedish Americans are also considerably richer than Swedes, as I discovered today: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-one-picture.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-o... Like it or not, ethnicity plays a big role in many social measures. The US is very diverse, and certain groups drag our averages down (groups that are very small in Europe and Asia).
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Yeah, but that's a self-selected group. People who are capable of moving their families to another country to pursue a career are more likely to be successful. Similarly people who grow up in poor, backwards communities (trailer parks and projects, meth and crack), tend to wind up poor and backwards. Maybe I'm a reactionary liberal but I have an easier time believing that than the inherent genetic superiority of the danes (oh and that's just SO close to certain ideologies I'm always wanting to accuse the Tea Party of harboring). Wanna see something really cool? Look at a satellite image of Denmark. It's almost entirely farmland, with little spots of ultra-dense village or city every so often. No suburban wasteland. I'd be 20% happier just for that.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Swedish Americans are the descendents of lower class agricultural workers who left religious repression in Sweden between 1860 and 1910. In the case of Japanese Americans, they are descended from manual laborers who left Japan between 1882 and 1924. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_Unite... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American#Immigration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American#Immigration In any case, I don't get how you could read either of my factoids and suggest I was pushing genetic determinism. Clearly, some environmental factors are important. For example, living in the US rather than Sweden or Japan seems to cause people to earn 50% more money. Using US health care rather than Japanese health care seems to increase life expectancy by 2 years (no, I don't actually believe this latter point). But on the other hand, ethnicity does also seem to have some measurable effects. Asian Americans beat whites on most social measures in spite of the head start whites had. Feel free to call me a racist tea partier if you like.

jsankey 16y ago

To be honest your point seems completely vacuous (far more ridiculous than the point you are responding to). It appears to reduce to "Danes are magical - I think". What makes Danes special? Is this not related to the sort of government they would create and support?

mixmax 16y ago
"Danes are magical" I can assure you we are not.
- citrik 16y ago
  Some of them are ;)
rubashov 16y ago
They are high time preference and relatively high IQ. These are the features that distinguish the various ethnicities that build pleasant societies.
- ArturSoler 16y ago
  I guess you meant to say that they have low time preference.

VBprogrammer 16y ago

Because America is the greatest country in the world people outside America couldn't possibly be happy with the way they do things?

yummyfajitas 16y ago
To be fair, in the few cases where I've seen good data, most groups do better in the US than in their native countries. For instance, Asian Americans have average income of $65,000. Japan, the richest country in Asia, has average income of about $40,000. Japanese Americans also live 2 years longer than Japanese. Swedish Americans are also considerably richer than Swedes, as I discovered today: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-one-picture.html http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-o... Like it or not, ethnicity plays a big role in many social measures. The US is very diverse, and certain groups drag our averages down (groups that are very small in Europe and Asia).
- jbooth 16y ago
  Yeah, but that's a self-selected group. People who are capable of moving their families to another country to pursue a career are more likely to be successful. Similarly people who grow up in poor, backwards communities (trailer parks and projects, meth and crack), tend to wind up poor and backwards. Maybe I'm a reactionary liberal but I have an easier time believing that than the inherent genetic superiority of the danes (oh and that's just SO close to certain ideologies I'm always wanting to accuse the Tea Party of harboring). Wanna see something really cool? Look at a satellite image of Denmark. It's almost entirely farmland, with little spots of ultra-dense village or city every so often. No suburban wasteland. I'd be 20% happier just for that.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Swedish Americans are the descendents of lower class agricultural workers who left religious repression in Sweden between 1860 and 1910. In the case of Japanese Americans, they are descended from manual laborers who left Japan between 1882 and 1924. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_emigration_to_the_Unite... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American#Immigration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American#Immigration In any case, I don't get how you could read either of my factoids and suggest I was pushing genetic determinism. Clearly, some environmental factors are important. For example, living in the US rather than Sweden or Japan seems to cause people to earn 50% more money. Using US health care rather than Japanese health care seems to increase life expectancy by 2 years (no, I don't actually believe this latter point). But on the other hand, ethnicity does also seem to have some measurable effects. Asian Americans beat whites on most social measures in spite of the head start whites had. Feel free to call me a racist tea partier if you like.