With the help of economic thinker Garett Jones, Reihan explores why "Scandinavian-Americans are about 50% more productive than Scandinavians":
One has to assume that Scandinavian Americans are meaningfully different from Scandinavians, e.g., they’re descended from immigrants who presumably had higher risk-tolerance than those left behind, which could have an influence on economic outcomes. But this suggests that Danes and Swedes *might* do better under a more work-friendly tax regime, with “do better” understood as “engage in more productive economy activity,” which is of course different from doing better in some spiritual sense.
The Dish 