[boyaka]

>Where do data for HDI computation come from? Life expectancy at birth is provided by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs – the UN Population Division; mean years of schooling are based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) educational attainment data and Barro and Lee (2013) methodology; expected years of schooling are provided by UIS; and GNI per capita in 2011 PPP by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

To me it sounds like a recipe for a miserable work life. The Japanese/Korean schooling systems are very tough and strict compared to other wealthy countries. Maybe this is why they became so wealthy? Also, this statistic claims to not be based on economic output, but it basically is. And in order get the highest economic output, that is going to require really hard work and a lot of rich people/companies/countries investing in you. Of course some countries have unfair advantages and don't need to work so hard.

[kyllo]

Yeah the system is basically optimized for "spend as much time at the office as possible" as a measure of productivity. Over a long period of time, with a lot of people, things do get done, but it's horribly inefficient. Meanwhile in a lot of other countries, hardly anyone even has an office to go to at all. Globally, the bar for productivity of human labor is really quite low.