I went out with some friends last night and invariably the topic came around to Canada vs. United States, politically and ideologically. You know the drill, Americans are dumb...they have no clue about the world.
I am not exactly sure why this bothers me so much but it does. I guess because we use it to distract ourselves from the issues we have in Canada. With a little research I could probably find some statistics on education results between Canada and the United States but I am more of a results oriented guy. I decided to see how much better the smarter Canadians are doing on indicators of national intelligence such as innovation and productivity.
One commonly used measure of innovation is Patents Per Capita. Canadians produce 31 patents per million people. The United States produces 289. Ouch. Remember, this is per capita. Apples to apples the United States produces 10 times as many patents. In raw numbers this translates to approximately 100 times more patents. Damn, we's smart.
For the record this is how we stack up against some other countries.
Japan: 994
Korea: 779
United States: 289
Sweden: 271
France: 205
Russia: 131
Australia: 103
United Kingdom: 82
New Zealand: 75
Canada: 31
Italy: 13
Not exactly inspiring. This is a "back-of-the-envelope" argument so have at it as you will. Also this a leading indicator, how do we stack up in terms of productivity?
Here I will look at GDP/capita. In this measure we stack up better against the rest of the world. However, those "stupid Americans" absolutely dominate this statistic.
United States: 40,100
Canada: 31,500
Australia: 30,700
United Kingdom: 29,600
Japan: 29,400
France: 28,700
Germany: 28,700
Sweden: 28,400
Italy: 27,700
New Zealand: 23,200
Korea: 19,200
Russia: 9,800
If you want further reading on how we are trailing the Americans in terms of productivity and innovation there is plenty on the Strategis website.
So there you go. Poke holes as much as you want. Point me to Rick Mercer "Talking to Americans" to prove how much smarter we are. Just think that the Americans are laughing all the way to the bank. And for those who think there is more than just economic statistics, there is quality of life. Think about how much more government controlled quality of life you could get taxing another $10,000 per person. Estimate $3,500 more per person in tax revenue (just federally) and that's another $100 Billion. Oh too be dumb.
Update: Further to Shane's comment here are a couple of links to the issue of Hours Worked per Capita. First a reseacher from the University of Quebec in Montreal.
...in 2001 average hours worked was lower in Canada (91 per cent of the U.S. level), while the employment/total population ratio was actually higher in Canada (103 per cent of the U.S. level). With output per hour in Canada 90 per cent of the U.S. level, the overall effect of these three variables was to produce a level of GDP per capita in Canada that was 85 per cent of the U.S. level.
Second, a blog referenced a Wall Street Journal article.
...the increase in how much Americans work reflects two trends. The first is that the proportion of working-age Americans who work has risen as more women enter the work force. In other industrialized countries, that trend has been offset by higher overall unemployment, earlier retirement and declining work-force participation of young people. Last year, 71% of the working-age population in the U.S. had jobs, compared with an OECD average of 65%.
The second factor is that among Americans who have jobs, the number of hours worked per year has edged down only slightly in recent decades, whereas hours worked have fallen sharply for workers in other countries due to shortened work weeks and increased vacation and holidays.
As Shane correctly points out it is a tradeoff. You might say that the Americans work harder and the OECD works smarter. Maybe...Canadians work 90% of the hours and get 85% of the results (as claimed above by UQAM research). The CIA numbers above show 78% of the results. So the tradeoff isn't working. And I should also make the point, are we really working less? Many families are now two income families. So instead of two people splitting two jobs, you have two splitting three. But that is a completely different argument. As is the fact that Europe may be vacationing themselves to bankruptcy. That I will leave for another day.
