Reasons for economic success of certain religious, ethnic, and national groups...

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Some religious, ethnic, and national groups seem to perform better than others in areas of business, finance, and governance. A short list would be the Mormons, Jews, the Japanese, the Germans, and the Swiss. What is the primary reason why each group mentioned seems to rise to the top of the heap... no matter what problems they face?
 
This is for you Boss. Let's get ready to rumble. :)
 
Mormons: By virtue of being primarily American. Utah is actually only 33rd in terms of per capita GDP among US states.

Jews: A lot of their success is actually owed to usuary laws in Europe that were only applied against Christians, leaving a higher percentage of Jews to work with money. This obviously no longer directly affects anybody, but it created a culture of good finance among Jews. A cultural alignment (predisposition?) toward education hasn't hurt, either.

Japanese: Joining the Western Bloc following WWII and embracing free markets led to tremendous economic growth in Japan. A cultural emphasis on success also helps, which explains why descendants of Japanese migrants also tend to be successful in places they have migrated to.

Germans: The average citizen of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, who makes more than 14,000 fewer Euros on average than the average citizen of Hesse, may dispute that Germans are specially successful. Like Japan, the success of Germany has a lot to do with postwar politics, with the added complexity that a large portion of the country was pulled the other direction.

Swiss: Swiss banking and good trade policy sure help.


Mod note: I'm moving this to the Anthropology & Ethnography forum.
 
Some religious, ethnic, and national groups seem to perform better than others in areas of business, finance, and governance. A short list would be the Mormons, Jews, the Japanese, the Germans, and the Swiss. What is the primary reason why each group mentioned seems to rise to the top of the heap... no matter what problems they face?

I think protestant values (among others!) are very helpful for performing in capitalism:
- "God helps you only if you help yourself." This highly encourages sense of realism, pragmatism and efficiency, in extreme cases self-exploitation. Implicitly, the worth of a human being depends partially on his performance. This is a very strong motivation. It could be even used as justification for recklessness against low-performers to some extent.
- Austerity, which is exemplified also by the way how protestant churches compare to catholic churches (in south Germany and Austria the catholic churches are wonderfully flamboyant in colors and shapes inside, while northern protestant churches are rather "efficient").
 
Mormons: By virtue of being primarily American. Utah is actually only 33rd in terms of per capita GDP among US states.

Jews: A lot of their success is actually owed to usuary laws in Europe that were only applied against Christians, leaving a higher percentage of Jews to work with money. This obviously no longer directly affects anybody, but it created a culture of good finance among Jews. A cultural alignment (predisposition?) toward education hasn't hurt, either.

Japanese: Joining the Western Bloc following WWII and embracing free markets led to tremendous economic growth in Japan. A cultural emphasis on success also helps, which explains why descendants of Japanese migrants also tend to be successful in places they have migrated to.

Germans: The average citizen of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, who makes more than 14,000 fewer Euros on average than the average citizen of Hesse, may dispute that Germans are specially successful. Like Japan, the success of Germany has a lot to do with postwar politics, with the added complexity that a large portion of the country was pulled the other direction.

Swiss: Swiss banking and good trade policy sure help.


Mod note: I'm moving this to the Anthropology & Ethnography forum.

This is interesting but also rather complicated matter I would like to mention that 2,000 years ago Greeks, Romans/Italians and Chinese would be the countries to follow in wealth and development.

German barbarians (with their I1 and R1b) couldn't even do a dent on their road to today's prosperity. Their success started after Rome collapse, learning how to read and write, and securing stability in central Europe under one Holy Roman Empire. It was a nice kickstart.

Jews on other hand were already very successful anywhere around Roman Empire.

China was successful on and off. They are coming back again.
 
Germans: The average citizen of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, who makes more than 14,000 fewer Euros on average than the average citizen of Hesse, may dispute that Germans are specially successful. Like Japan, the success of Germany has a lot to do with postwar politics, with the added complexity that a large portion of the country was pulled the other direction.

True. The modern and highly efficient prussian state was a neighbour of Mecklenburg. Both are protestants, but Mecklenburg was always very poor, rural and backwards. Northern Germany in general is relatively rural. Otto von Bismarck, a prussian elite member and chancellor of the first german state once issued: When world ends, I'll go to Mecklenburg, because there everything is delayed by 50 years.
Today, the province of Brandenburg, which is the core area of former Prussia, is barely better off then Mecklenburg.
 
Mecklenburg when during the Swedish ruling was a quite productive region, they should have continued, Swedes. The Prussians have impoverished them.
 
Good point about Prussia. Prussia was never as rich as Germany in I1 and R1b, yet united and modernized Germany.
 
Mecklenburg when during the Swedish ruling was a quite productive region, they should have continued, Swedes. The Prussians have impoverished them.

I'm not aware of any swedish property in Mecklenburg except the town of Wismar and the parts adjacent to Pomerania.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Pomerania

Perhaps you mean Pomerania rather than Mecklenburg?

It might be confusing because today there is actually no separate province of Mecklenburg, only combined Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which denotes both, Mecklenburg and West-Pomerania together. But Pomerania has a different history.
Anyway, the wealthier parts of Mecklenburg and Pommern were mostly the coastal Hanse-towns Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifwald, Danzig (today Poland).
 
I did a mistake because of actual name Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, sorry. However though, Rostock (Mecklenburg), besides Schwerin and Wismar, the Swedes occupied the city twice, first during the Thirty Years' War (1618–48) and again from 1700 to 1721.

We, Swedes, have a strange relationship with the Mecklenburg we don't know why. :innocent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Mecklenburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_II_of_Mecklenburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_of_Sweden

My comment was not to be serious too.

The problem of Mecklenburg and Pommern today has nothing to do with the Prussians, God knows haplogroups, and the supposedly rural tradition of the region (although that region was very rich during the 15, 16, 17th centuries, more than Bavaria was then), it is due the despicable Stalinist system that annihilated the region after the pos-War.
 

Hehe, I didn't know that.

My comment was not to be serious too.

The problem of Mecklenburg and Pommern today has nothing to do with the Prussians, God knows haplogroups, and the supposedly rural tradition of the region (although that region was very rich during the 15, 16, 17th centuries, more than Bavaria was then), it is due the despicable Stalinist system that annihilated the region after the pos-War.

Well, maybe there were times when Mecklenburg was rich, but it was merely due to food production.
Take for example Saxony as a contrast: It was always an industrial center since the industrial revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Union), and also during GDR time it retained it's pivotal industrial role within GDR like Mecklenburg retained it's agricultural status. Now after reunification, Saxony is still industrial and Mecklenburg is still agricultural and touristic as usual. However, Mecklenburg is much more attractive as a place to spend holidays or retirement.
Bavaria (R1b heavy, catholic), was indeed very poor most of the time. It received federal help until 1980. It's great wealth today is a new phenomenon.
 
I expected English as one of most successful nation anyway one sees it, economically, culturally etc...I don't know the reason but I think they are smarter than others.
 
I almost put English into the mix Albanopolis. I wanted to stick with only five and I felt confident I could explain the Swiss relation to success so I went with them. I pondered over including both the English and the Chinese-- maybe I should have gone with seven groups.
 
My opinions on Switzerland's association with success:

1. Location, location, location. Mountains foster a community seperate and apart from the rest of Europe. Cooler temps at high elevation encourage industriousness and the country's neutral stance (made possible because of unique terrain) allows for a more stable economy.

2. Gun ownership-- active protection of national resources by capable and motivated population.

3. Strong gold-backed currency. Needs no further explanation.
 
My opinions on Switzerland's association with success:

1. Location, location, location. Mountains foster a community seperate and apart from the rest of Europe. Cooler temps at high elevation encourage industriousness and the country's neutral stance (made possible because of unique terrain) allows for a more stable economy.
By these standards Tibet should have the strongest economy, and what about other countries around the globe with tall mountains? On other hand England should be poor, and dominated by Scottland.
The higher town or village is situated the poorer it is. Unless it is a great tourist attraction in last 100 years.

2. Gun ownership-- active protection of national resources by capable and motivated population.
When was the last time they used their weapons? Besides they don't want to fight for anything harbouring neutral status for last hundred years.
It is more important to mention that they've enjoyed long stretch of peace without being ruined by wars. This helps a lot.
Their military spending per capita is one of lowest in Europe, therefore more money in peoples pockets or better social services.

3. Strong gold-backed currency. Needs no further explanation.
This doesn't matter. Keep printing money and you'll see huge inflation, regardless how much gold you keep in safe. It is not a sign of strong economy, well except the power to buy gold. Strong economy is production, production, production. Stop producing and you'll see effects like in Greece.

4. Conveniently you omitted their strong banking system (for centuries). It doesn't fit your understanding of strong economy. According to which Swiss people should be poor, because their bankers would be in possession of their money, stealing more every day, right?

5. Otherwise, culturally, Swiss are rather backward. They gave women rights to vote in 1971!!!
 
Aha, I knew I'd get the Tibet mention. It's very important to link all three of my reasons together.

If Tibet had armed, trained, and organized citizens (like we find in Switerland)... the Chinese may have had a different approach to their mountainous neighbor.

And the fact that the Swiss haven't had to use their "guns" illustrates that weapon ownership carries with it a form of deterence. Same reason the U.S. hasn't had to use nuclear bombs since WWII... other nations know we have them (alot of them), and will use if provoked.

**EDIT**
The gold backed currency is the reason their banking system is famed. Everyone gets real serious when gold is at stake. The fact that the Swiss were forced to pull back some of their privacy practices is due to geo-political shennigans which would require a dedicated thread.

Oh and Lebrok, the best part about their gold backed currency-- it protects the citizens from banker greed!
 
4. Conveniently you omitted their strong banking system (for centuries). It doesn't fit your understanding of strong economy. According to which Swiss people should be poor, because their bankers would be in possession of their money, stealing more every day, right?

By the way, this reminds me of Cyprus, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Cayman Islands, Andorra and Luxemburg. I guess culture or haplogroups will turn out to be less relevant for these countries at least.
 
Mormons: By virtue of being primarily American. Utah is actually only 33rd in terms of per capita GDP among US states...

To trace the reasons for Mormon financial success, I'm going to be in the uneviable position of disagreeing with Sparkey.

In my opinion, Mormon economic power comes not from being primarily American, but from being harassed, chased, and marginalized by the U.S. government.

continued

(I'm having to write these in chunks because I'm timing out, please consider this if your responding in real time)

So because of the "colorful" relationship between the Mormon community and the U.S. Federal government... the Mormons have been forced to adopt almost a prepper-type lifestyle. (Research Mormon food banks and Mormon food storage for verification.)

This arrangement between Mormons and their government has also given the followers of Joseph Smith a fundamental understanding of the relationship between currency and commodities... including of course gold and silver.

This sense of having to be independent from the government has contributed to and shaped LDS success.

But whatever they're doing, it seems to be working.
 
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To trace the reasons for Mormon financial success, I'm going to be in the uneviable position of disagreeing with Sparkey.

I understand your rationale for Mormon success, and it would make sense to me that marginalization could lead to a cultural promotion of financial success. But I don't think you've demonstrated that Mormons are a particularly successful group relative to their peers. Pew:

Pew said:
Mormons are slightly more likely to be in a middle income bracket than the general population; 38% of Mormons report earning between $50,000 and $100,000 annually, compared with 30% among the population overall in this income category. Mormons are slightly less likely than the general public to be in the lowest income bracket (26% earn $30,000 or less per year compared with 31% among the general public), but they are about as likely to make $100,000 or more annually as the rest of the population (16% and 18%, respectively). This places Mormons roughly in the middle of other religious traditions on the socioeconomic spectrum. Jews, Hindus and Buddhists tend to have more education and higher incomes than Mormons, while Jehovah's Witnesses and members of historically black Protestant churches and evangelical Protestant churches fall on the opposite end of the continuum.
 
Valid point Sparkey.

It looks like I'm going to have to give some evidence for this part of my arguement. But before I start digging, I will say beforehand this will be a challenging task because if the Mormon's do keep a substantial portion of their wealth "off the grid" in precious metals such as gold and silver-- citing internet sources will be difficult.
 

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