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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think Norwegians are pretty damn modest all things considered.

They are the fourth highest per capita income in the world , higher than us, and the only ones higher are an oil emirate and two city states (luxembourg and Singapore).

They manage to do this while providing free university education and universal health care.  Their people manage to live a full two years longer than ours.

They are the top ranked country in the Democracy Index, so on the best measure of democratic performance they have plenty of bragging rights.

They are also ranked as the nation with the highest standard of living by another important index, (HDI).

Given how modest Norwegians are, I think it is a bit of a shocker.  And before you start criticizing me for being insufficiently patriotic, give it a rest.  I am not expressing opinions about their superiority or inferiority.

I was just curious about what country would have statistical bragging rights in the areas of economics, health, education, democracy, life expectancy, and quality of life.  This is the one that rises to the top of all of the lists.[/quote]

Have you ever even been to Norway? It's an incredible depressing, provincial and, except for some nature, ugly place. They are supposedly rich, but they appear poor in every respect. Their shop-windows (except for H&M and a few others) look like they live under communism; there is virtually nothing to buy. Everything is extremely expensive so their standard of living is objectively not that high. In the summer, daylight runs till midnight - haven't been there during winter and never want to be. Most shockingly of all for a presumably very successful welfare state, very aggressive beggars are everywhere.

I was there with an international (mostly European) crowd and virtually everyone was shocked how boring and small Oslo is. I don't care how well they score (and I am well aware that they do and, in fact, went there with pretty high expectations), there truly exist a limit to "statistical bragging rights". Put US aside, I would much rather live in Italy, France, even Turkey than Norway.[/quote]

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