Where Are the World’s Happiest Countries?

w1z4rd

w1z4rd

Karmic Sangoma
Joined
Jan 17, 2005
Messages
52,146
Reaction score
8,340
Location
127.0.0.1
If you’re happy and you know it, you probably live in one of these countries. The U.N. has released a new list ranking countries in terms of happiness, based on Gallup polls taken from 2005-2011.

The top 5 are:

Denmark
Finland
Norway
Netherlands
Canada
There’s definitely a pattern here. Could it be free universal health care, pristine natural environs and generous paid maternity (and paternity) leave? No, it must be that these places are all kinds of cold. And Denmark wins because they have lots of sticky breakfast pastries.

So where does the U.S. place? Number 11, right below Ireland. Bhutan, which has championed the happiness index, was not included in the U.N. report.The unhappiest countries were Togo, Benin and Central African Republic.

The economists behind the U.N. report say our slavish dependence on Gross National Product (GNP) as an indicator of progress has got to stop. “GNP by itself does not promote happiness,” development economist Jeffrey Sachs told the U.N. conference, according to the Washington Post. “The U.S. has had a three time increase of GNP per capita since 1960, but the happiness needle hasn’t budged. Other countries have pursued other policies and achieved much greater gains of happiness, even at much lower levels of per capita income.”

Apparently a new patio set from Walmart just isn’t doing it for us anymore. (Unless, of course, it’s bigger than the neighbors’.)
Click to expand...
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/06/where-are-the-worlds-happiest-countries/?iid=nf-article-mostpop1

Wish we had such a well run welfare system like the top 5 happiest countries. Lucky buggers.
 
Would be interesting to know the root causes of those results.
 
Techne said:
Would be interesting to know the root causes of those results.
Click to expand...

All very well run welfare states. Most of the countries that follow them up are also welfare states. There is public health and education (all the way through to university), in most of those countries.

Welfare states are difficult to manage, but when its done right the results are epic.

Free countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World
They rate in the top most economically free countries in the world: http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
Most educated: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-10-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html
Healthiest countries: http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/07/health-world-countries-forbeslife-cx_avd_0408health.html
Peaceful countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index
Safest countries: http://voices.yahoo.com/top-5-safest-countries-world-685000.html

There is a common theme there if you look at the data.
 
Norway? Is that not the country where one unhappy person killed 77 people recently? The resentment is bubbling under in these 'happy' countries. They've had enough of their welfare systems supporting leeches.
 
VJB 449 said:
Norway? Is that not the country where one unhappy person killed 77 people recently? The resentment is bubbling under in these 'happy' countries. They've had enough of their welfare systems supporting leeches.
Click to expand...

Ironically, the person who killed all those modern social liberals, was a member of libertarian organizations, and quoted from the Austrian school of economics....

The resentment and bloodshed came from the right wing. Not the left. Even a country as progressive as Norway still has some remnants of the rotten right.

He is the vivid, brutal, expression of a bubbling right-wing political movement of the post 9/11 era, emerging not from fascism or neo-fascism or from “revolutionary nationalism”, but from the unholy marriage of Austrian School economics and paleo-conservative cultural identity Romanticism – think Goethe, Scifi/Fantasy novels, and von Mises spawn a child.
Click to expand...

http://www.alternavox.net/alterview...undamentalist-christian-he-is-something-worse

Ironically he was a Christian conservative as well :D
 
Last edited:
ghoti said:
Ironically, the person who killed all those modern social liberals, was a member of libertarian organizations, and quoted from the Austrian school of economics....

The resentment and bloodshed came from the right wing. Not the left. Even a country as progressive as Norway still has some remnants of the rotten right.
Click to expand...

The 'remnants' are growing.
 
I always admired the Scandinavia countries. Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland are a benchmark of how countries should be IMO.
 
This is the reason why they are happiest... http://www.altpress.com/news/entry/...l_bands_around_the_world_according_to_guardia

MetalBands.jpg
 
ghoti said:
All very well run welfare states. Most of the countries that follow them up are also welfare states. There is public health and education (all the way through to university), in most of those countries.

Welfare states are difficult to manage, but when its done right the results are epic.

Free countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World
They rate in the top most economically free countries in the world: http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
Most educated: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-10-most-educated-countries-in-the-world.html
Healthiest countries: http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/07/health-world-countries-forbeslife-cx_avd_0408health.html
Peaceful countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index
Safest countries: http://voices.yahoo.com/top-5-safest-countries-world-685000.html

There is a common theme there if you look at the data.
Click to expand...
Don't confuse correlation with causation. Correlation does not imply causation.
 
ghoti said:
Ironically, the person who killed all those modern social liberals, was a member of libertarian organizations, and quoted from the Austrian school of economics....

The resentment and bloodshed came from the right wing. Not the left. Even a country as progressive as Norway still has some remnants of the rotten right.



http://www.alternavox.net/alterview...undamentalist-christian-he-is-something-worse

Ironically he was a Christian conservative as well :D
Click to expand...
He called himself a Christian, he said he is “first and foremost a man of logic,” calls himself “economically liberal” and said “it is essential that science take an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings” and he is a fan of Darwinism. No doubt scientists, Darwinists, logicians, economic liberals, scientists and Christians do not want him on their side becase of his acts. The ideology that best describes him is an ethnic nationalist and here we can, in part, find a cause for his acts. That, and the fact that he is a crazy nut.
 
Techne said:
He called himself a Christian, he said he is “first and foremost a man of logic,” calls himself “economically liberal” and said “it is essential that science take an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings” and he is a fan of Darwinism. No doubt scientists, Darwinists, logicians, economic liberals, scientists and Christians do not want him on their side becase of his acts. The ideology that best describes him is an ethnic nationalist and here we can, in part, find a cause for his acts. That, and the fact that he is a crazy nut.
Click to expand...

Whats Darwinism?
 
Techne said:
Would be interesting to know the root causes of those results.
Click to expand...
Cross-reference with the Gini coefficient
The Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution (for example levels of income). A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has an exactly equal income). A Gini coefficient of one (100 on the percentile scale) expresses maximal inequality among values (for example where only one person has all the income).[3]

It has found application in the study of inequalities in disciplines as diverse as sociology, economics, health science, ecology, chemistry, engineering and agriculture.[4] It is commonly used as a measure of inequality of income or wealth.[5] Worldwide, Gini coefficients for income range from approximately 0.23 (Sweden) to 0.70 (Namibia) although not every country has been assessed.
Click to expand...
800px-GINIretouchedcolors.png


See how nicely it correlates with the happiness levels? (I'll leave the question of causation as an exercise for the reader):cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X