Richard Florida of CityLab.com knows what's up when it comes to the correlation between the amount of metal bands a country has and how well-off they are. Florida published an article alongside his Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander, who is Swedish, delving deep into their research and citing other works such as Mark Ames' Black Metal Nation: What do Norwegian Dirtheads and Richard Perle Have in Common? and Florida's own research from two years ago where he noticed Scandinavian countries had a lot of metal bands (and now noticing how well they're doing financially).
The findings are simply put in one setence toward the end of Florida's research where he says "what we found is that that the number of heavy metal bands in a given country is associated with its wealth and affluence." A more elaborate explanation can be found below.
"At the country-level, the number of heavy metal bands per capita is positively associated with economic output per capita (.71); level of creativity (.71) and entrepreneurship (.66); share of adults that hold college degrees (.68); as well as overall levels of human development (.79), well-being, and satisfaction with life (.60).
The bottom line? Though metal may be the music of choice for some alienated working-class males, it enjoys its greatest popularity in the most advanced, most tolerant, and knowledge-based places in the world. Strange as it may seem, heavy metal springs not from the poisoned slag of alienation and despair but the loamy soil of post-industrial prosperity. This makes sense after all: while new musical forms may spring from disadvantaged, disgruntled, or marginalized groups, it is the most advanced and wealthy societies that have the media and entertainment companies that can propagate new sounds and genres, as well as the affluent young consumers with plenty of leisure time who can buy it."
Let's get metal, America! Our economy depends on it!
[via MetalSucks]
