I'm not quite sure if this is backroom material or not (i.e. how controversial it is) but I thought it was interesting. I was looking something up on wikipedia when I noticed this map, rating countries on their score on the U.N.'s Human Development Index, a rather complicated means of determining living standards that takes into account things like GDP per capita, education, life expectancy, etc. It's not perfect, but as the wikipedia article notes, it's better than the old method of just looking at GDP per capita.
Does anyone else find some of the results surprising? For example, that Germany and the UK are in the second tier (although with the latter very close to the first). Things also seem to have changed since I was in college, since Japan has shot up to 8th (although, finishing the article they were in first once in 1991, must have hit a slump in the late 90's when my geography book was written). Brunei in the top 30 was a pleasant surprise.
I'm not sure this is really debate worthy, but I thought it was kind of interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
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