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Comment by Alan_Dillman | Hacker News Reader

I was quite surprised that the Nordic countries have more reported billionaires per capital than Canada, despite the Nordic nations being —theoretically— less business friendly.

Example: Canada has about 1.08 billionaires per million people, while Sweden has 3.16. Norway, with its oil, performs more poorly, but still better than Canada: 2.69 billionaires per million people. Denmark is only slightly worse than Canada at 1.05.

Source of my information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_numbe...

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> less business friendly

Just hypothetically, which of these two made up countries do you consider more business friendly:

* Country 1 with low taxes and zero labor and environmental laws

* Country 2 with a highly educated work force and low crime but high taxes

Crime isn't really a big factor, I think (maybe excluding weird failed states and countries that are at war) and work force is easy to train if you can afford the initial investment.

Low taxes + low bureaucracy go a long way.

No fun being rich in a country where public infrastructure are broken e.g crazy congestion

Really? So instead of my business paying a lot in taxes I'll have to pay a lot for education. Doesn't really seem to be much of an advantage.

Reminds me of the many discussions about the "business-friendliness" of GPL vs BSD software. Usually the focus is narrowly on the business that wants to take the code and sell it or derivatives as proprietary software, not on the business customers who would be locked into the software as customers and would benefit from GPL protections of software users.

But for whatever reason, that framing seems very powerful and hard to dislodge. Probably because there's (at least potential) fat profits available to people who disseminate it. I guess the same is true of the "business friendly" policies of Republicans.

> the Nordic nations being —theoretically— less business friendly.

I've seen plenty of reports that listed the Nordic countries as the most business friendly. Taxes are only a tiny part of the equation, and the tax differences are not as big as often believed.

Denmark is consistently ranked either first or second in terms of business friendliness, trading places with New Zealand. The US is third.

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