Sweden would be a better comparison, with a GDP per capita of $53,442, which is about 50% higher than Italy's. Sweden is culturally very similar to Norway.
I have no doubt that certain cultural aspects of Southern Europe have a huge impact on their countries' GDP, long lunches and a more relaxed attitude towards labor (not to mention taxes and corruption!) among them. In Scandinavia, the Protestant work ethic is still deeply ingrained in the culture, and this shows.
Ah, sorry for the late reply here. This actually touches on something I've been thinking about recently. It's probably got its advantages and disadvantages on an individual level. You'd most likely be regarded as an attractive worker, but would at the same time have to be careful not to get taken advantage of. I think many who have this work ethic fall into the trap of the latter point, and that this is systematically abused some places. E.g. Scandinavia, where people pay _massive_ amounts of tax and at the same time voluntarily work unpaid overtime for low-pay public-sector jobs such as nursing, in a misunderstood loyalty to their patients.
And it necessarily leaves less time and space for non-work-related activities. So it meshes poorly with hedonism. But happiness can certainly come from fitting in with a role and excelling at something.
I deliberately didn’t compare to Sweden and Denmark because historically they are more technologically advanced they have achieved similar quality of living without oil (no offense to Norway). Norway on the other hand was a country of farmers and fishermen. Not much technological or industrial progress before the oil boom. Which is why I compared it to Iceland.
Isn't it pretty widely accepted that your IQ, at least as measured by IQ tests, aren't a perfect measure of your "intrinsic" intelligence; that environmental factors contribute to IQ test results?
If environmental factors do indeed contribute to IQ scores, doesn't it seem pretty plausible that lower GDP per capita, which results in changes to environmental factors such as education, might result in lower IQ scores, rather than the other way around?
It'd be interesting to read studies which investigate whether there's a causal link between IQ and GDP per capita, and if there is one, which one causes the other.
