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Brandon Berg's avatar

Also, education is an input, not an outcome.

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Mike Hoy's avatar

Education is also an output and measure of a developed human society.

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Brandon Berg's avatar

It's not even how much people know, but how much time they spend in school. As measured, it's purely an input.

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IHSalvator's avatar

Good one.

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Nadim (Abolish NDIS and EPBC)'s avatar

Instead of years of education they should measuring IQ or some other cognitive measure. It's like instead of life expectancy you measured the number of hospital visits.

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Michael Magoon's avatar

I think HDI is useful for comparing developing nations, but there is not enough variance between wealthy, western nations to make HDI a useful means of comparing the USA and Scandinavia.

And, yes, I have lived in both places.

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Daniele Vecchi's avatar

Many people praise Scandinavia, in particular the leftist media (Danish are always the happiest) and the OECD. The problem is that only migrants from the Middle East are moving there and now even less because the scandies governments are realizing that their welfare systems can’t afford families with 5-6 kids. Taxation is astronomical, public healthcare abused, and wealth inequalities in Sweden are not too different from the US. Governments have realized these are problems and are dialing back but many dreamers have not realized it yet. So they dream of Scandinavia but after diligencing taxation, services, Etc…they stay where they are.

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Nadim (Abolish NDIS and EPBC)'s avatar

The main problem isn't the kids but the culture.

When you had Protestant work ethnic ingrained into your population, social stigma against unemployment and laziness ensures people work hard even when welfare state is very generous.

Now Arabs are something else. You can live off government handouts your entire life and get no shit from your family or community.

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