Education and Income
Posted by Moonage on 05 Dec 2005 | Tagged as: Fun with Numbers
The Top 20 most educated countries are:
| EDUCATION | PCI | |
| Norway | 1 | 3 |
| Finland | 2 | 22 |
| Australia | 3 | 18 |
| United Kingdom | 4 | 19 |
| New Zealand | 5 | 38 |
| Sweden | 6 | 25 |
| Netherlands | 7 | 21 |
| Belgium | 8 | 17 |
| Iceland | 9 | 12 |
| Denmark | 10 | 11 |
| France | 11 | 24 |
| Germany | 12 | 23 |
| Spain | 13 | 36 |
| United States | 14 | 4 |
| Portugal | 15 | 52 |
| Switzerland | 16 | 9 |
| Ireland | 17 | 13 |
| Canada | 18 | 16 |
| Austria | 19 | 15 |
| Italy | 20 | 27 |
However, as the chart shows, they don’t seem to be the most productive countries. Although Norway’s education seems to amount to something, most of the rest of the Top 10 drop substantially when converting education to production. It doesn’t get much better in the Second 10, with the United States and Switzerland bucking the trend to any substantial degree. For all the arguments that education is failing in the US, some other countries have an even more valid argument since their education system takes longer ( read more expense ) and isn’t producing anything more tangible for their society than the British Virgin Islands, who don’t even rank in the top 111 in education, but scored #1 on per capita income. Although the US can do better in education, I think a lot of countries have some serious questions they need to be asking themselves about what their education dollars spent is producing. It’s certainly not income ( which IMO, is THE primary indicator of productivity ).
3 Comments »
on 05 Dec 2005 at 6:26 pm 1.Bryan Kerwick
said …
What really makes this chart interesting is when you change PCI from gross to net. That is what really counts. If you make $100.00 an hour and I make $8.00 an hour but your tax rate is 95% and mine is 28%, who would you rather be? Also, the cost of living factor jumps way up for the European countries because they have terrible food production which is protected by insane tarrifs. I’ll take the US thank you.
on 05 Dec 2005 at 6:31 pm 2.Moonage
said …
I like to start with a teaser and then dig a little deeper if it leads anywhere. I just found it odd that some countries spend a lot more time in education and don’t seem to have anything to show for it.
on 06 Dec 2005 at 1:06 am 3.Bryan Kerwick
said …
Go here and see the tax burden carried by these European countries. You will be required to couple the income tax with the consumption tax to get an idea just how stupid socialist policies really are. The 95% figure in my arbitrary argument was damn close to the right number.
http://www.finfacts.ie/Private/tax/taxationeuropeanunion25.htm
Besides being taxed to death, the Europeans are rather lazy as compared to Americans relative to productivity per capita. 35 hour work weeks with 6 weeks vacation doesn’t get the job done, especially when they get taxed into poverty.