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It's hard to compare Nordic countries to U.S. because they are small. Take Notch. If he sells a billion bucks worth of minecraft to American schoolchildren an
by vasilipupkin 13y ago
It's hard to compare Nordic countries to U.S. because they are small. Take Notch. If he sells a billion bucks worth of minecraft to American schoolchildren and pays taxes on that in Sweden - that can be a substantial boost to Swedish coffers. Americans can't very well raise enough revenue by exporting to Sweden.
- merraksh 13y agoNumber should be used in both ways. If the US have a population k times that of Sweden, there are k Notch-likes with possibly k times the revenue of Minecraft, hence k times the potential taxes. The revenue might be considered equal as both Sweden and the US export to the rest of the world (another fallacy of your argument was that Sweden exports to the US and the US only exports to Sweden).
- vasilipupkin 12y agoYes, if Notch-i-ness scales linearly with population, then I agree with you. So that's the crucial assumption here.
- twoodfin 13y agoI'm reminded of this purported exchange: A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either." Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7%, half the U.S average. Economists Geranda Notten and Chris de Neubourg have calculated the poverty rate in Sweden using the American poverty threshold, finding it to be an identical 6.7%. http://www.newgeography.com/content/001543-is-sweden-a-false-utopia http://www.newgeography.com/content/001543-is-sweden-a-false... Anyway, I look forward to this falling off the front page ASAP.
- collyw 13y agoMaybe because they were all well educated?