I was in a country as it was coming out of communism. Yugoslavia 1988. 1. --- everyone had a job. 12 men got up from drinking a beer and smoking at about 10 a.m. to sweep 1 tennis court before a minor league tennis match. Note... I found this shocking because as a 14 year old kid I swept 7-9 tennis courts by myself. 2. while in Yugoslavia I met tennis players from the eastern block. I can provide many examples of how communism sucked... but the one that stands out even today in my mind was the very good tennis player from romania taking shaking as a he gave a friend of mine a few dollars to buy levi's in italy on our day trip across the border. the take away - a. he and the other eastern block guys had no freedom to cross the border to italy. (please ponder that and what it means to be a commie and why they restrict travel and info and freedom) b. the economy in the eastern block sucked so bad and was so distorted there was a black market for levis. c. what he was doing could have gotten him and his family very punished. so yeah... it should not be trendy to be a commie. a person really needs to understand what happens to countries as the govt takes over. to all those on the left... you are supporting fascims not classical liberalism... you all are that duped.
Fair point. Still, the countries above us on the chart for the most part don't look like countries where people are not enjoying the nicer things in life.
What is noteworthy about the table is that the top 10-12 countries are all smaller, homogeneous countries without large underclasses of blacks or muslims. Either explicitly, in the case of countries like Switzerland, or implicitly, they have rejected the fantasy that "diversity makes us stronger."
I'd like to see the raw data in that chart. Every one of the figures is supplied by a gov't that has adjusted the hell out of it. Just like the US does.
I did search a little then I had to go take care of some stuff. Despite the world bank and ILO tracking employment information, they don't have what we were looking for. It seems they do track public sector employment. If so, we could get the private sector only ratio with the available info, but I'm not gonna do that atm. Also, the numbers ricter posted are a bit selective. The ratio for the entire eligible population changes the picture significantly, according to the world bank. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.TOTL.SP.ZS Here's the top ten from ricters list: Switzerland 65 Austria 58 Sweden 59 Iceland 70 Norway 63 Netherlands 61 Slovenia 53 Germany 57 Luxembourg 55 Czech Republic 55 United States 58 And who knew everyone had jobs in all these 3rd world countries? Seriously check out all the african countries with huge employment %. lmfao.
Respectful nod to a counter-argument without insult. : ) (I would suspect that much of Africa's story is probably about low productivity and large agricultural sectors.)