The organization Sustainable Development Solutions Network published a research yesterday about the happiness of 156 nations on the world. (Their article here.) At first look there aren’t big surprises, Finland is the happiest again and other Scandinavian, West-European countries are following. Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden. The first non-European countries are number 8 and 9, New Zealand and Canada.) (Full list on pages 27-29 in the PDF file here.)
The first non-developed country is Costa Rica, number 12. Then, the second and third, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, the 21st and 23rd.
Don’t use the average
What is really important in this research of 133 pages? You can look for your country and be sad or happy. What I find interesting that this survey isn’t only containing data about wages, wealth or Gross Domestic Product per capita, money and numbers. I’m not happy if the statistical average in my country is high but I can’t feed my family. The average income or wealth can be also high if the upper class is filthy rich but the 90 percent remains poor and hopeless.
This survey is measuring also other factors like “personal relationships”, “citizen security”, “health status/healthy life expectancy” or “personal perspectives”. Very important things in life you can’t measure exclusively with money and conventional statistics. I don’t want money if I die young, or if I can’t leave my house and go to the streets full of crime. All people want to feel some sort of progress, development and don’t want to get stuck on the same level forever.
Things money can buy
You can’t say this survey is futile because “you can’t measure happiness with money”. In reality, they aren’t measuring only the money. But, unfortunately, many factors are money related.
For example, rich countries mostly have much better health care and life expectancy, less crime and more security. It can’t be a coincidence that in the first 20-30 places almost all counties are rich, and on the last 20-30 places all countries are terribly, incredibly poor. (Haiti, Botswana, Syria, Malawi, Yemen, Rwanda, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, South Sudan – this is the last ten on the list.)
The dog and the caravan
Another lesson for me is: “the dogs bark, but the caravan goes on”. Nationalists, extremists, conspiracy theory believers, fake news–propagators, Putin-fans, Erdogan’s followers, bootlickers of any dictators and wannabe dictators, shut up!
Where do you want to live? - please answer my poll
Until your country is nowhere on this list, you have no right to be trolling and lying around about the developed democracies, the liberal, open-minded, modern European, North American countries. Those which are providing the best life level for their citizens on Earth. (And where most emigrants would like to enter happily, dozens of millions of them, by the way.)
Dictators are pathetic
Observe the numbers. No dictator could make his country a really attractive place to live. Only democracies could. See Russia, place 68, between Pakistan and the Philippines, two poor countries. Turkey, on place 79, only a little better than Greece (82), the latter after a heavy economic and financial crisis, austerity.
Countries like Chile (26), Spain (30), South Korea (54), Greece (82), Portugal (66) had dictatorships some decades before. Chile and Spain seem to be popular places, the others, in the middle of the list, not really happy. The Eastern European countries (Poland /40/, Romania /48/, Hungary /62/, three small Baltic states etc.) liberated from the Soviet Union’s oppression, are between ranks 40-70 approximately. That means, middle class or some better, not really happy places either. Dictatorships cause very long term damage, I think.
Germany, the country allegedly destroyed by immigration is on place 17, the “Great Satan”, the USA on 19. Not bad.
(Photo: Pixabay.com)