
Why Are Some Countries Rich and Others Poor? - fern12
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017/09/01/why-are-some-countries-rich-and-others-poor/
======
sumedh
As someone who migrated from a developing country(India) to a developed
country(Australia) and observing the difference in quality of life of average
citizens among the two countries, I always wonder why politicians/dictators
from developing countries who can also observe these differences ever wonder
that the average people in a developed country are living a good life so why
not just copy what the developed country is doing and apply the similar
policies back home to improve the lives of their own citizens.

~~~
emrahayanoglu
Because controlling people, who are struggling in their life, are much easier
by dictators. Even with religious activities, dictators can make citizens pray
for him. if politicians allow you to have lots of chances, then you'll start
criticizing and want more. More improvement on life conditions gives you less
control on citizens.

I'm Turkish living in Switzerland, I can say that it is the same shit in every
developing country and i can ensure you they won't be developed due to the
facts that i mentioned above. We need really high numbers of citizens to break
the borders.

~~~
donquichotte
Also, corruption. This is anectotal, but in the countries I've visisted, which
include a hand full of ex Soviet republics, the median quality of life seemed
to be negatively correlated with the amount of corruption.

~~~
egeozcan
I'm also Turkish, and believe me, when you have a dictator with his troll
army, sucking the life out of the whole country, you'll wish you had the
typical corrupt but manageable government from the 90s. The types we have
these times would stand next to a kilometer-long list documenting their
illegal business and say "we did what needs to be done for our great country"
and everyone would cheer while you make escape plans. Hi from Germany(the risk
of being falsely labeled as a teenager won't stop me: I<3🇩🇪).

------
LeonigMig
No mention of colonialism or imperialism here. Not the whole answer, but part.

~~~
hasenj
Japan and Germany were completely devastated after WWII, on a scale we have
never witnessed in our lifetimes, yet they rose out of the Ashes.

So no, it's not colonialism.

It has to be something less visible. Something that a country like Afghanistan
for example severely lacks.

You might point to dictatorships, but I would point to South and North Koreas.

South Korea was ruled by a brutal dictatorship _for decades_ , in a way not so
different from Egypt today. Yet that did not stop it from developing.

Even North Korea fares a lot better than many third world countries that have
little to no enmities with their neighbors. I suspect the only reason North
Korea sucks is because of the pressures/blockades imposed on it by the US
(mostly for historical reasons).

~~~
sddfd
After WWII, the US invested /massively/ in Germany. Also, many people were
trained in some profession, so even though everthing was destroyed, they knew
how to rebuild it.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Same with South Korea, which actually made a lot of money during the Vietnam
war, as did Japan. Japan trade with Zeus boomed at that time, and Korea
supplied 300 000 mercenaries. Before that North Korea was faring better
economically than the south.

------
wheresvic1
I'll save you all a click:

The article answers the question with the following two points:

\- lack of strong institutions

\- trade barriers

It provides an example of North vs south Korea in defense of the theory.

It's a ridiculously simplistic synthesis in my opinion.

~~~
imperfect_cat
This criticism is always so weird. What should the article - not thesis note,
ARTICLE - have been: 10 times longer?

It is almost like people expect comprehensive, bulletproof writing in under
1000 words.

~~~
aninhumer
The criticism is not that the article should be more comprehensive, but that
the title implies that it is.

------
wallace_f
Economists can sometimes be the equivalent to the priests of the past--
basically making justifications for the ruling class.

I was once passionate about economics and public policy... If we are to be
honest about it, at some point you just realize that the world is much less
nice than I imagined, and it's that way because of people's greed.

That's not to say there aren't a fair good number of decent people out there,
but those people are rarely found in powerful positions; and if they are, they
are still susceptible to being corrupted.

~~~
andriesm
The beauty about free market economics is, it doesn't depend on people's
niceness to maximize productivity, capital utilization and consequently the
aggregate standard of living of a country. Supply and demand, and pursueing
self interest will achieve all of this in the aggregate despite any localized
exceptions.

~~~
mvc
All those good things like maximizing productivity, capital utilization etc
are theory based on markets with perfect competition. How many "free markets"
satisfy all the assumptions made about perfect competition?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition)

~~~
wallace_f
Yea, exactly. But with effective regulation, we can get closer to perfect
competition, or at least remedy the market failures that are inevitable.

To go on a bit of a rant--ufortunately it appears the trend is going the other
way with Big Gov allied with Big Business, out of control banking empires and
MIC, made possible by never-ending low interest rates and easy money policies
from the Fed that mask it all.

Don't belive me? Real cost of living has increased to where 2 incomes are
required for many to just keep their heads above water to afford what their
parents had, despite more education and working longer hours. We have never
ending wars, 26,000 bombs dropped last year, and the longest war in history
and it was never even approved by congress. Our most popular media outlets
tell us we need this so we have jobs[1].

1-[https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-
worried-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-
defense-contractors-will-lose-jobs-if-u-s-stops-arming-saudi-arabia/)

------
AstralStorm
I "like" the use of North Korea as example of bad institutions and not of
effect of embargoes. Likewise South Korea definitely did not receive (and
properly used) foreign aid. /s

The article clearly contradicts itself on the point by showing how ineffective
Qing dynasty policy reforms were in China while later even bigger changes in
communist China worked.

And definitely does not address anything related to USSR or rise of the USA.
Or further back, British empire. (Each employed very different policies was
successful for a time.)

And then you have to look even further back...

Conclusions are therefore a joke toy model.

~~~
dba7dba
> Likewise South Korea definitely did not receive (and properly used) foreign
> aid.

South Korea did receive quite a lot of foreign aid from US, UN.

South Korea is the only nation to transition from receiver to giver in
international aid.
[https://poldev.revues.org/1535](https://poldev.revues.org/1535)

~~~
khuey
The '/s' at the end of that line denotes sarcasm.

~~~
dba7dba
Learning something new lol. No seriously. I missed it.

South Korea really did have the Greatest Generation. Those who were were
adults during the war and those born around that time. Really.

------
F_r_k
I recommend everyone interested in this subject to read "Why Nations Fail: The
Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty" by Daron Acemoglu

It's a great book that tries to explain why.

~~~
cinquemb
I came across this 36 page lecture[0] with the same title in by another person
with the author, for those who want some insight without buying the book.

Interesting to read, and it seems like it comes down to:

    
    
      - Because they have extractive political and economic institutions.
    
      - These are difficult to change though they can be successfully challenged and altered during critical junctures.
    
      - The roots of modern world inequality lie in the emergence of inclusive institutions in Britain and the fruits of this - the industrial revolution - spread to those parts of the world that had similar institutions (settler colonies) or quickly developed them (Western Europe).
    
      - Other parts of the world languished with extractive institutions which have persisted over time and thus remain poor today.
    

With caveats of:

    
    
      - History is not destiny.
    
      - Effective reforms towards inclusive institutions possible.
    
      - But it often necessitates a minor or major political revolution.
    
        Two examples:
    
          1 End of Southern equilibrium in the United States
    
          2 Botswana
    
    

I think I was drawn to this part in the lecture and started thinking about
what modern day analogous of this could look like (Jamie Dimon's position on
crypto-currencies as of late [specifically bitcoin] as modern day Sultan wrt
firing employees trading such [and other well politically entrenched financial
institutions around the world], DPI on internet networks by various nation
states from blocking easy access to information, etc) :

    
    
      - In 1445 in the German city of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press based on movable type. Spread rapidly throughout Western Europe.
    
      - In 1485, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II issued an edict to the effect that Muslims were expressly forbidden from printing in Arabic.
    

[0]
[http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/channels/publicLecture...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/slides/20110608_1830_whyNationsFail_sl.pdf)

------
sus_007
As a citizen of a developing country (Nepal) which has been haunted by its
unstable politics, I'd still like to (partially)advocate that even less-
developed nations(at least some) have invaluable resources (mostly natural)
that the urbane nations can't renew for themselves. For instance, here in
Nepal, there's a massive open market for tourism due to the remarkable
landscapes(mountain ranges, "Everest", geographically blessed I'd say) &
ancient cultural heritages(sacred Hinduism & Origin of Buddhism). Had there
been a proper salutation of foreign indulgence in exploiting the resources
over here, Nepal would have done much better. Hence, the political mayhem has
led our country nowhere productive. :(

------
Melchizedek
One important factor could be differences in intelligence.
[https://infogalactic.com/info/IQ_and_Global_Inequality](https://infogalactic.com/info/IQ_and_Global_Inequality)

~~~
zimzim
For the past century raw scores on IQ tests have been rising; this score
increase is known as the "Flynn effect," named after Jim Flynn. In the United
States, the increase was continuous and approximately linear from the earliest
years of testing to about 1998 when the gains stopped and some tests even
showed decreasing test scores. For example, in the United States the average
scores of blacks on some IQ tests in 1995 were the same as the scores of
whites in 1945.[61] As one pair of academics phrased it, "the typical African
American today probably has a slightly higher IQ than the grandparents of
today's average white American."[62]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence)

IQ is a culture thing not a brain thing

------
smithmayowa
I like to think that countries that are rich have figured out things about
themselves that they have and are really needed by the rest of the world, and
so they provide those services to the rest of the world for a price and use
the proceeds from those services to develop the infrastructure and well-being
of their country; for instance a very important well-being improving task is
diversifying their economy, this they do to protect against unforeseen shifts
in the global market.

The summary of this is that rich country figured out low hanging and easy
fruits of services(for them that is, as if it was easy for others they could
not hope to sell such services.) they could provide for a fortune and use
those proceeds from those services to chase after high hanging fruits of
services they could deliver to the world as those one's usually require
intense capital.

Poor countries therefore either have not figured out services they could
provide for the world or they have figured it out but are not investing the
proceeds from it in the infrastructure and well-being of their country, being
a Nigerian I would say most poor African countries are poor not because of the
former but the later due to corruption,tribalism,e.t.c.

------
mc32
Wasn't there a significant divergence in fortunes as economies transformed
from resource based to value added economies?

Around the turn of the XX century, many struggling economies today were on par
with middling countries in Europe.

Think Czech, Finland, Hungary, Polen, Japan. Brazil, Mexico, etc., were
competitive with them back then, but now, the latter are seen as basket cases
of mismanagement. And empire and colonialism didn't give even Japan aby
advantage till the 30s, arguably one could say that sapped their vigor. On the
other hand LatAm had become independent from Iberian powers while inheriting a
system of government (not the best but arguably better than monarchies), yet
with the exceptions of Chile and Uruguay, the rest have underperformed.

~~~
kbart
Strange that you name Finland in a "basket cases of mismanagement". It is in
world top20 by GDP/capita and often cited as having the best school system in
whole world[0].

0\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/wef-ranking-of-best-school-
sy...](http://www.businessinsider.com/wef-ranking-of-best-school-systems-in-
the-world-2016-2016-11/#9-japan-56-1)

~~~
distances
> Strange that you name Finland in a "basket cases of mismanagement"

You misread the comment, that's not what they claimed.

------
bronz
economics as a field seems to be poisoned with fuzzy thinking. this guy says
that the division of korea is an experiment that shows the results of
communism vs capitalism, essentially, and then concludes that the lack of a
free market in NK is the reason that it is very poor. is it not relevant that
north korea is currently and has been for quite some time the target of heavy
sanctions by the united states and its allies? a centralized economy is
perfectly capable of performing as well as a decentralized one, provided that
it is centralized well. pointing to this implementation of a centralized
economy does nothing to advance the argument against the viability of
centralized economies.

this guy says that the output of people is what determines the wealth of a
country. this confuses me a little because isnt it true that if all the
countries in the world were filled with productive people, there might not be
enough demand for all of their services? would a large chunk of people not be
left behind? and, according to my introductory economics textbook, if such
demand exists that every person on this earth can be employed at a high
salary, would that demand not have already been naturally met in this global
free market of nations that has existed for some time now? and lastly, here in
the united states, a very rich country, most people have relatively
meaningless jobs. people are wildly overpaid for the work that they do here in
many cases. there are professors of womens studies and social network or
engagement experts who are paid a lot of money to essentially do nothing. i
would be happy to be corrected.

~~~
whb07
I gather you're of the belief that the economy is like a pie of fixed
proportions to be divided rather than an ever changing pie which can grow
bigger every year with productivity ?

I once read a wonderful thought experiment on the Mises page about a Dorothy
sized storm. Imagine a tornado swept by and grabbed a large number of hard
working and smart people randomly and placed them in a random town.

While people are temporarily shuffled, the brain surgeon(or some highly
skilled technical person) is forced to pick up another trade like carpentry or
any other less technical job in the meantime to provide and be productive in
this new economy/town. The storm swept up and carried him elsewhere and so is
temporarily stopping his highly skilled activity to become productive in some
other one.

The same is to be said of the economy at large. People are shuffled due to
many events and will never be at "full" productivity due to unforeseaable
events, for example, a bad weather event. Jobs come and go. Same goes for
industries. Even more so for trends.

------
erikb
Not just that nobody's helping and their system may be outdated, more powerful
players are playing to keep them weak and use them as pieces in their
competition with each other. The more powerful countries also don't really
have an alternative, since stopping to compete means becoming weaker oneself,
and helping others become stronger doesn't guarantee that they wouldn't become
a new competiitor at the "big table".

------
bolololo1
Most rich countries are rich because they build their wealth on free labor
(slavery), and this countries include USA, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, etc.
Some are really poor because they've been exploited by the countries mentioned
above (Africa and former German, British, Belgian, French colonies). Some are
poorer because they've been destroyed by war multiple times (Poland).

~~~
Supernaut
This is an absurd generalisation. The only nation in your list that benefitted
greatly from slave labour is the USA, and even that period is over a hundred
and fifty years ago. Furthermore, the civil war that was waged to end slavery
ultimately brought economic ruin to the southern States that had relied on
slave labour.

In the post-WWII era, the countries that have prospered have done so because
they have enjoyed stable government and long periods of peaceful relations
with their neighbours. This allows for an educated populace, fruitful use of
their natural resources and human ingenuity, and remunerative trade with other
nations.

~~~
eesmith
You write: "The only nation in your list that benefitted greatly from slave
labour is the USA".

Quoting
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#Triangular_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#Triangular_trade)
:

> By the 18th century, the slave trade became a major economic mainstay for
> such cities as Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, engaged in the so-called
> "Triangular trade".

Further details from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade)
:

> Bristol and Liverpool merchants became increasingly involved in the
> trade.[92] By the late 17th century, one out of every four ships that left
> Liverpool harbour was a slave trading ship.[93] Much of the wealth on which
> the city of Manchester, and surrounding towns, was built in the late 18th
> century, and for much of the 19th century, was based on the processing of
> slave-picked cotton and manufacture of cloth.[94] Other British cities also
> profited from the slave trade. Birmingham, the largest gun-producing town in
> Britain at the time, supplied guns to be traded for slaves.[95] 75% of all
> sugar produced in the plantations was sent to London, and much of it was
> consumed in the highly lucrative coffee houses there. ...

> By far the most financially profitable West Indian colonies in 1800 belonged
> to the United Kingdom. ...

> It has been estimated that the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian
> plantations created up to one-in-twenty of every pound circulating in the
> British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution in the latter half
> of the 18th century

~~~
Supernaut
Thank you for your excellent reply. I stand corrected that regard.

However, the fact that the period to which your refer is some 250 years in the
past supports my wider point that it is specious to claim that the the wealth
of current-day first world nations derives from the historic use of slave
labour.

~~~
eesmith
Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"?

How many years does it take for the benefits of slavery to disappear? I think
it's far longer than you do.

British slavery meant more income to the government, which lead to a better
navy, which lead to the ability to defend the triangle trade. A better navy
helped advance British imperialism. How might Trafalgar have turned out with a
weaker British navy?

British control of sugar production was built on slavery. But even once the
slaves were free in a legal sense, the black population of ex-slaves was still
at the bottom of the social ladder. The white landowners kept political and
economic control for generations, and the profits went to Britain.

In the US, institutionalized racism, not just in localized Jim Crow laws and
sundown towns, but also in federal policies like redlining, prevented
generations of blacks from getting the same economic benefits as whites. (See
Richard Rothstein's “The Color of Law”; interview at
[http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-
history-...](http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-
how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america) .) I know less about British
history, but I do know how many thought the "Anglo-Saxon race" was above all
others.

You earlier wrote: "Furthermore, the civil war that was waged to end slavery
ultimately brought economic ruin to the southern States that had relied on
slave labour."

I don't think you appreciate the full impact of slavery on the US or British
economies. Quoting
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Agitation_against_slavery)
:

> slavery was entwined with the national economy; for instance, the banking,
> shipping and manufacturing industries of New York City all had strong
> economic interests in slavery, as did similar industries in other major port
> cities in the North. The northern textile mills in New York and New England
> processed Southern cotton and manufactured clothes to outfit slaves. By 1822
> half of New York City's exports were related to cotton

and from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History)

> By 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, cotton accounted for almost
> 60% of American exports, representing a total value of nearly $200 million a
> year.

Even though slavery was banned in the British Empire, Britain still profited
from slave labor carried out elsewhere. The cotton mills of Lancashire
produced a huge fraction of the world's processed cotton. You know where that
cotton came from? The forced labor of American slaves.

Quoting now from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine)
:

> When the slave-owning Southern States of America demanded secession from the
> United States of America and declared war in 1861, the cotton supply was
> interrupted at first by a Southern imposed boycott and then a Union
> blockade. The South's thinking was that it could force British support
> through an economic boycott. ... Of the 1,390,938,752 lb of raw cotton
> 1,115,890,608 lb came from America.(80 %) ... Confederate flags were flown
> in many cotton towns.

Britain's economy profited from American slavery even until the 1860s, and
they knew it.

~~~
Supernaut
> Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"?

Yes, I do. I concede that you have demonstrated that economic benefits from
slave labour continued to accrue to the UK economy until the 19th century.
However, it is simply not true to flatly claim, as did the OP, that "Most rich
countries are rich because they build their wealth on free labor (slavery)".

~~~
eesmith
And the French economy. Quoting from
[http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-
invol...](http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-
involved/europe/france/) :

> French traders were heavily involved in the slave trade. From 1721-30,
> French ships took 85,000 enslaved Africans to the plantations in the
> Americas and the Caribbean. In the 1730s, they carried more than 100,000.
> Altogether, about 1,250,000 enslaved Africans were taken by French ships.
> Even after France abolished the trade, 500 French ships continued slave
> trading illegally between 1818 and 1831.

Quoting now from [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-
confronts...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-confronts-
slavery-a-demon-of-its-
past/2016/05/28/0bf61b3e-2128-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html?utm_term=.febc40e755e0)
:

> In the 18th and 19th centuries, France was among the major European slave-
> trading nations, capturing and selling an estimated 1.4 million people
> before leaders outlawed slavery in 1848.

> The country’s coffers grew rich from colonial conquests in Africa, Southeast
> Asia and the Caribbean, where slave labor generated the commodities that
> French merchants then sold in Europe.

> When metropolitan France finally outlawed slavery — a generation before the
> United States — liberation brought freedom only in theory for many blacks in
> French territories overseas.

> “Slavery was abolished, and the old slaves became citizens,” said the
> historian Frédéric Regent, a renowned expert on the French slave trade.
> “They even elected deputies. But the plantation economy continued with the
> same masters, who then became ‘employers.’ ”

> “What was different between that and slavery?” Tin asked. “Nothing.”

> This form of economic subjugation overseas persisted well into the 1960s,
> when France, crippled by two world wars, lost its former empire. Many argue
> that the injustice persists today in the form of socioeconomic disparity
> between young whites and blacks, increasingly confined to peripheral suburbs
> and low-paying jobs.

> “It’s from slavery that we have the discrimination we have today and the
> racism we see in France today,” said Myriam Cottias, a historian and member
> of the government-sponsored foundation, in a telephone interview from
> Martinique.

> “It’s not yet totally done in France. France has many, many institutional
> links to slavery.”

Yet again, even though slavery was officially abolished, the "economic
benefits from slave labour continued to accrue". Even to the present.

~~~
Supernaut
I note that the examples that you cite above are all nations that were
relatively wealthy to begin with. They did not suddenly lift themselves out of
poverty in the 17th century by enslaving Africans. Rather, their advanced
technology and capital resources enabled them to dominate and exploit other
populations, either through slave trading or colonisation. In doing this, they
did further enrich themselves, true, but to state that this shameful period is
actually the wellspring from which these nations' wealth derives in the 21st
century is dramatic overreach.

~~~
eesmith
My objection is to your statement that it's absurd.

I agree that it's an exaggeration, and even that it's wrong, but it's not
absurd.

The further back in time you go, the more the framework changes. How did those
nations become relatively wealthy in the first place?

How much was due to serfdom? Combined, of course, with the new political
philosophy which centralized absolute power for the sovereign.

(As
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_the_Abolition_of_Slavery)
helpfully points out, the United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the
Abolition of Slavery also prohibits serfdom.)

But by doing that, the problem is that most areas in Europe had serfs. I think
in Europe only some of the Nordic countries did not. (On the original topic,
Sweden's era as a great power was funded by its copper export, and not from
slaves or serfs.) And many cultures had slaves or participated in the slave
trade, including those that weren't great powers, so slavery, serfdom, and
other forms of forced labor are not really diagnostic.

Do you have an idea of how much of the those nations' wealth derives from
slavery? I don't think it's an easy thing to answer. It's clearly not "zero".

------
alborzmassah
Why don't countries just merge or join each other? Doesn't all the division
simply create more fear and us VS them.

~~~
tanto
To put it a bit colorful: Because in the Game of Nations many people want to
be King. To have many Kings you need many Kingdoms. Also Unity makes you
strong and usually your enemies will do whatever they can to divide and
conquer.

~~~
mantas
More like people don't like when people from far away try to enforce seemingly
stupid laws. Having a vote that actually matters is awesome.

The other question is how those tiny kingdoms organise into bigger structures
to have economy-of-scale, while still retaining their sovereignty on internal
matters.

------
js8
I think it just happens randomly, and here is the answer about the mechanism:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyHVwUe66qw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyHVwUe66qw)

------
meric
Why are there bigger numbers and smaller numbers?

------
bluetomcat
Ahh, productivity. You'll be highly productive deforesting your lands, I'll be
highly productive in selling pop-culture to the entire world. I get wood and
you get obese. Deal?

------
jamesmattis
There must be a definition of rich and poor. It should not be devised by
looking at the wealth. It should be devised by looking at the living
standards, education system, environment, law and order, equality, zero
racism. And where people can live an anxiety/depression free life. Where there
is welfare, care, love grows everyday for each other.

~~~
imperfect_cat
Sadly, that defines one race countries. No racism possible when there are no
races but one.

Personally, I think this definition is bad because it progress free. Anxiety
free is has no scale. If you are massively anxious I. Country A, and mildly
anxious in B, both fail.

Need to rethink this.

~~~
tim333
There still seems a fair bit of racism in mostly one race countries, say Japan
for example. There seems less in widely mixed places, say London or Singapore.

~~~
nostromo123
Yeah, London, where not being of the "correct" religion can get you killed in
some areas! (I know, religion is not a race, etc....my point is that mixed
places are not necessarily more tolerant)

