To be honest I think thats not a nearly throughout economic analysis.
To begin with, as noted in the article by having to pay more people, it removed some from unemployment. That as noted in the article basically halved the cost of the extra cost.
But hold on. Someone removed from unemployment doesn't just sit and look pretty. Unemployment benefits are usually nothing to write home about compared to an actual wage and where previously one could just subsist they newly employed individual could now Consume much more strongly. Consume in this case means buying tomatoes, buying starbucks, buying cinemas tickets, buying dresses and whatever. All this stuff moves the economy.
The question is then, has the economic impact of all this economy moving been taken into account?
Huh. That's actually fairly interesting! Myself I have noticed the following. I am someone who meddles around with both "artistic" stuff (3d modelling etc) and programming as a hobby/projects.
I have noticed that when I do the 3d stuff, I can usually tolerate music with lyrics, or for that matter even listening to documentaries, TED talks etc just fine. Everything slows down but progress is actually being made.
On the other hand when I do something programmy or for that matter even simple text based stuff such as "writing descriptions" I have noticed that I find music with lyrics utterly distracting.
Although the left/right brain thing is a bit of a myth, frankly it has been extremely clear to me that language neurons get to be dual-purpose components when it comes to logic stuff of a particular kind.
Great Work with the list! I can see it becoming a thing in the future!
I would add Douglas Adams & Terry Pratchett to your fiction category, although it is hard to quantify why. They are an amazing interplay of imagination, creativity & playfulness and by going through them, some of it rubs off to their readers.
In the case of Terry Pratchett in particular, some of the books are actually quite indirectly educational and as good as philosophical critiques on society and aspects of. Including: Authoritarianism, Government, Racism, Superstition, Charlatanism, Economics, Mortality etc etc.
Non-EU Norway is a 5 million nation sitting on a ton of oil. Which in turn takes that oil profits and puts them in a social fund, which reduces the main stressor of all socialistic systems (pensions). If you think that you will convince BP to do the same, good luck. Especially considering that there is nothing stopping you from doing the same already.
Switzerland, 8 million, is also landlocked in between some of the best EU nations, all of which trade with it in an EU-like agreement, including free movement, and its manufacturing economy abides pretty much to Every EU regulation. What this means, is that again nothing prevents the UK to have been Switzerland, other than, super politely put, the population's innate inability to be as productive, or imaginative in thinking useful products like the Swiss do.
Greece, which ironically is my original home country so I know Very well, is a corrupt mafiocrasy. (rather Russian like in fact) It would have failed IN or OUT of the EU anyway. This however is not the EU's fault, as evident by the fact that plenty of EU countries started worse than Greece, and are now better (better as in gdp/capita), including Estonia, Lithuania & Slovakia.
If anything, this disparity is able proof that EU nations actually have more than enough sovereignty to fuck or unfuck themselves as much as they want. Its just that every time something good happens politicians say "we did it" but every time something bad happens they say "totes the EU fault, holding us down!"
To sum up. You want to be Norway. Make a referendum to throw BP's profits in a fund. (Not that you have the oil reserve anyway) You want to be Switzerland, think of more useful chemicals rather than watching x-factor (I am not even kidding. Chemicals are one of the best Swiss exports apparently). You don't want to be Greece, don't just take EU development money and use it just for politician's villas, bouzouki and civil servants appointment for votes. Simples.
Because its all fun and games until the "majority" suddenly realize they can just say "oh, and also, how about we vote to take all the money of that 10% here".
There is such a thing as tyranny by the minority, and tyranny by the majority. The second is in fact much easier to do, since the first requires a modicum of power & ability for someone to keep himself in that position.
The minaret thing is irrelevant, as a minaret thing, but relevant as a right to construct the things you damn like thing upon your private property.
Maybe if they had money to spend, then they wouldn't be "unwashed" and in fact thus be part of an ever increasing economy. Unfortunately that would require an understanding of how an economy works, rather than a zero-sum mindset and collectivist hate of seeing "other" people have money who "don't deserve it" because their "birth coordinates were wrong", even if you were to receive exactly the same. Talk about self-destructive behaviour.
Letters maybe, but its not standard to represents genomes as dots. Thats just an "artistic" representation.