That's not even true, though. The highest concentration of Scandinavian-Americans is is in North Dakota, where they make up 1/3 of the state's population, and have a poverty rate that is significantly above zero.

Actually they are a lot less of the North Dakota population[1] being 4.7% of the population.

For 2016[2], North Dakota had a poverty rate of 10.7 (10th lowest in the US). Of that 10.7%, 8% were listed as White.

Given this, I don't think a significant amount of Scandinavian-Americans in North Dakota are in poverty. I guess any number is not zero, but North Dakota is probably the wrong state to use for a demonstration.

1) http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/north-dakota-populat...

2) https://talkpoverty.org/state-year-report/north-dakota-2017-... https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/ND/PST045217#vi...

> Actually they are a lot less of the North Dakota population[1] being 4.7% of the population.

Your reference [1] says that 30.8% of the state's population reports Norwegian ancestry, and 4.7% reports Swedish ancestry. Overall that's pretty close to the 1/3 I ballparked for Scandinavian-American.

Opps, I forgot the Norwegian[1]. Well, 30.8% of 8% of 10.7% is a pretty low number and assumes that the 8% is an even distribution over the White poverty rate.

1) I might still hold a grudge over the damn lefse and not being told its was potato before eating it. I was not in good shape 30 minutes later.

I think you are misreading your source. You seem to be interpreting it as saying that 8% of people in poverty are white, but what it actually says is that 8% of white people are in poverty.

Assuming that the poverty rate is evenly distributed over the white population, then the poverty rate for Scandinavians would also be 8%.

I'm not misreading the source, else 100% of the people in North Dakota would be in poverty. The Native Americans are listed as 35% and that is not their percentage of the population.

Then why are you taking 8% of 10.7%? The correct way to interpret the statistics is not "10.7% of people are in poverty and 8% of those are white", it's "8% of white people are in poverty and that 8% overlaps with the 10.7% of all people who are in poverty".

That is an excellent comeback (by Friedman), but maybe it's something that sounds good but is in fact inaccurate.

Obvious counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swede_Hollow,_Saint_Paul

It's easy to jump to conclusions on why you'd post this quote here.. Instead, maybe you could expand on what this quote means to you (in this context)?

Does (s)he have to have a point? It's an interesting anecdote related (even if only tangentially) to the discussion at hand.