American in Scandinavia

Got the following email from a friend living abroad;

Here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/08/denmark_and_swe_1.html

Thought I'd share this with you to get your input.

In short, the writer critiques Scandinavian (and Danish and Swedish in particular) living standards from those portrayed in the popular media. He claims that Scandinavian people are poorer, less happy and have blinds concerning their surroundings and taxation general.

My first reaction was amazed disbelief: surely this is a text from The Onion? After thinking about it a moment, I can see he has some good points, but ultimately they are all drowned by his inability to see the achievements and advantages of the Nordic model from its failures and differences to the American model.

Before going further into his points, I'd like to talk about his text as a whole. The important part of mr. Caplan's argumentation stems from the question of values. To understand his text, we must see that he is comparing what's good in America into how Scandinavia rates in comparison - but not vice versa. This of course is fair, if we are talking about certain singular datapoints - which has the fastest cars, for example? Cheaper gasoline? I'm sure you have seen this to be used in marketing texts: our product compared to competitor's mark X! Seeing the technique used in a text written by a professor into something I assume to be prestigious website with a high-brow reputation.. well, it is to be seen!

Of course, there are some things we simply can't argue with; how Scandinavia looks compared to Swizerland or New Jersey, for example. Apparently Caplan travelled the countries extensively and can make such arguments. I've never been to Denmark or New Jersey; I remember very little of my trip to Switzerland. Obviously Caplan has been to all these places, and feels that he can, with authority, say that this is indeed so.

What I find particularly amusing is his claims about the things that make life worth living; living space, car ownership, and meat consumption (instead of time spent with family/friends). He writes with sneer about people biking to work in rain, apparently ignoring several observations that you can make from this;

First, that a person who has stable income can surely afford a car of some condition.
Second, that biking to work is possible in the first place.
Third, that the biker assumes he is still in presentable condition once he gets to the workplace.
Fourth, that a people who regularly exercise tend to be healthier and thus, happier (that I'm actually linking to Fox should tell you how well-known fact this is!).
Fifth, the biker calculates that he can still fill all his social obligations even though his commutation time increases. In other words; even though he has less time to spend with friends after work, he will find a way to make up to it in other ways. Maybe he works shorter days or his friends are available at weekends

Meat usage seems somewhat strange on the list; surely this is a question of taste, values and history rather of money?

And so on. Caplan makes lots of assumptions that are understandable as personal opinions from a private individual (after all, we seldom form our views from "fairly balanced" pool of information) but rather less so from a professional blogger, who, I assume, was hired for his interesting and in-depth vision. This blog-post is a collection of knee-jerk reactions - mostly ones he had even before he left the States. He would have been interested in confirming these solely based on his earlier journal entries. There was no initiative to actually deny any of them...that is to say, contradict himself. Even though he might have walked in with an idea to go where the wind would take him, his hypotheses would have fast blinded him to any advantages to American system he may have seen, maybe even presenting them to him in negative light.

After all, few of us work very hard to make ourselves look like idiots.

A hint into his psyche can be found in this quote;

[About Human Development Index];

I can see giving equal weights to GDP per capita and life expectancy. But education? [...][I]n terms of the actual if not professed values of normal human beings, televisions and cars are a lot more important than books.

All