WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Economists searching for reasons why some nations are richer than others have found that those with a wide belief in hell are less corrupt and more prosperous, according to a report by the Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Bank of St. Louis.
Researchers at the regional Federal Reserve bank acknowledged the importance of productivity and investment in the economic process but looked at some recent unconventional efforts to explain differences in national prosperity.
The St Louis Fed drew on work by outside economists who studied 35 countries, including the United States, European nations, Japan, India and Turkey and found that religion shed some useful light.
“In countries where large percentages of the population believe in hell, there seems to be less corruption and a higher standard of living,” the St. Louis Fed said in its July quarterly review.
For instance, 71 percent of the U.S. population believe in hell and the country boasts the world’s highest per capita income, according to the 2003 United Nations (news - web sites) Human Development Report and 1990-1993 World Values Survey.
Ireland, not far behind the United States in terms of income, likewise has a healthy fear of a nether world with 53 percent of the population acknowledging hell’s existence.
I acknowledge the existence of hell. I don’t believe that the fear of hell is ultimately what sways one to right or wrong living. Isn’t there a high percentage in Saudi Arabia who believe in the abode of the damned, as well?
And there are quite a few rich ones over there–and probably quite a few “moral” ones, as well. Whether they’re the same ones or not is another question.
(If I recall correctly, lending money for interest is forbidden somewhere along the way in Islam. In theory, this should mean that there couldn’t be any Muslim bankers–or at least that they wouldn’t be considered moral.)
I didn’t really have anything useful to say on this topic, but I just needed a place to tell Walden that his avatars are getting cooler and cooler.
Belive me Tony, if you’d cleaned the blocks and windways of as many fippled instruments as I have, you’d understand…Frickin’ europeans smoke like you wouldn’t believe, gross.
