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Given the demographics of the Nordics (and the oil wealth in Norway), shouldn't we expect the Nordics to have a GDP/hour worked far in excess of the U.S.? The fact that they don't is interesting.
What if we only looked at U.S. workers of at least 25% Nordic descent and reran the comparison? I think we'd see Nordic-descended U.S. workers far outstripping their peers in Nordic countries in terms of GDP/hour worked.
I think we should always be careful using Nordic countries as comparisons. "Let's take a look at these high-IQ, ethnically homogenous, high-trust societies. Now compare them to the United States!".
Norway does outstrip the U.S. in GDP/hours worked because of oil, at least in the 2016 data.
If Danish Americans have higher productivity than Danes it could be due to American institutions and increasing marginal returns on hours worked. It could also be that Danish Americans, as members of a much larger society with a wider range of IQ's can primarily occupy managerial and technical roles, where a larger share of Danes in Denmark end up mopping floors, waiting tables and taking care of kids because there isn't a population of low IQ people to do it for them.
I'll grant the Nordics aren't a perfect comparison class but what country that has achieved a major reduction in hours per worker is? Just going off Wikipedia's Labor Productivity & average hours worked list Germany has a GDP per hour of 68.85 vs. the US's 73 but 1300 hours per worker vs. America's 1,765. The UK has a much lower GDP per capita 54.35 but much closer hours worked, 1670. France has 68.63 GDP/hour and 1514 Hours worked.
OP is proposing a highly non linear relationship between hours workers and productivity. No one has reduced hours worked to the 20 hour work week (~1000/year) but within the range of hours per worker we see internationally the countries with the fewest hours worked have pretty high productivity. If you assume there is even a linear relationship than Europe is a bunch of sleeping giants economically that could increase their GDP by 20% overnight by skipping summer vacation.
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