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Old 01-12-2018, 06:26 PM  
sarettah
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Join Date: Oct 2002
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Norway was once a shithole country. Then Norwegians emigrated to the U.S......

Interesting article:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...ut-we-once-did

Quote:
From 1870 to 1910 a quarter of Norway's working-age population emigrated, mostly to the United States. You read that right ? one-fourth of its workers left the country.

Back then Norway was quite poor. Wages were less than a third of what they were in the United States. And the wave of emigration out of the country quickly benefited those who remained. That's because it reduced the supply of workers in Norway, so those left behind could demand higher wages. And this helped narrow Norway's wage gap with the U.S. by 25 percent over that same 40-year period, putting Norway on the path toward its status today as one of world's most prosperous nations.

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.....those who left Norway came from "some of the lowest skilled families. They are coming from either rural areas or they are [the product of fathers holding] lower skilled laborer positions in cities," she says.

And on arrival in the United States these Norwegian immigrants remained at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Compared to immigrants from the 15 other European nations that contributed to this great wave of arrivals, "the Norwegians held the lowest paid occupations in the U.S.," says Boustan.

"They tended to be farm laborers. They were also fishermen. If they were in cities they were just sort of in the manual labor category ? what today you would think of as a day laborer."

"So when you look at the people leaving Norway you do pick up quite a bit of evidence of the poor, huddled masses," she says, referring to the famous Emma Lazarus poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.
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