Iceland, Luxembourg, Canada, United States, Finland, Australia, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands, Korea, Russian Federation, New Zealand, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Austria, Japan, Estonia, Switzerland, Slovenia, Denmark, Ireland, United Kingdom, Slovak Republic, South Africa, Israel, Spain, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Chile, China, Mexico, Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, India. (Data from 2009)
— EDIT: Added China per WT’s comment. (BL)
Korea meaning ROK, DPRK or both?
I’d have guessed “curling teams” but Russia is far too low and Australia is far too high by a dang sight.
My guess was going to be percentage of people whose mother tongue is the official or dominant language, in descending order, but Korea (if we’re referring to ROK) strikes me as likely to be nearly homogenous.
I also note that every one of the nations listed is significantly industrialized, but the PRC and Taiwan, also significantly industrialized nations, are absent completely. I wonder why?
China is between Chile and Mexico and was left off by accident.
Korea is almost certainly South Korea.
Thanks for adding China. Smart as it is, it’s hard to edit on the smartphone.
Winter Olympics medals per capita?
Everything I try to think of has the US as an outlier, since the top countries are Canada, Australia, the Scandanavian countries and Benelux, which would normally correlate with progressivism, and Luxembourg being second and Australia being high suggests against it being something related to winter sports.
Iceland topping the list and the fact that today is inauguration day suggests to me an answer having to do with political institutions.
An interesting theory. What Canadian political institution predates the United States?
Some variation on the name “Canada”?
I have no idea.
The monarchy. Maybe the seigneurial system (which, granted, doesn’t really exist anymore, AFIK).
Tuesday Hint: This is definitely a national think. Not the sort of thing that could be (meaningfully) broken down to US state, for example, or city.
Wednesday Hint: This isn’t precisely an economic figure, though developed countries are going to score higher, on average, than underdeveloped ones. The world average is between Portugal and Chile. The average among OECD countries is between Russia and New Zealand.
This is a per-capita measurement.
The World Bank website shows Norway ahead of Australia for 2009, with all other countries in the same order you have (assuming I am thinking of the correct answer).
My source shows Australia ahead by .07, but that Norway passed Australia in 2010, so dollars to donuts you got it. Does anyone want to go for second place?
My first thought after today’s clue was national debt per capita, but Portugal and Italy seem low, and IIRC, the other Scandinavian countries are doing okay in that column.
So — credit card debt per capita?
The answer is… Tons of Oil Equivalent. Though I would have accepted pretty much anything involving energy reserves. The source is the OECD, though I can’t link to it directly because it’s an app on my phone. Here is the data for 2010, which I didn’t use because it was incomplete.
My initial guess was largest number of blondes in the population until I saw Japan.