Happiest Countries 2023

The Grim Reason Why Finland Is the “Happiest” Place on Earth

 

Slate can editorialize all they want, but I'd rather believe my eyes and ears and the relationships I have with people who actually grew up and live there. Maybe I'm just friends with those that don't fit the mold, but the article doesn't jibe with what I've actually experienced being there.

 

I spent a month in Australia. Wasn’t blown away by it and was glad to get back home. But the handful of Aussies I got to know were lovely people.

 

I was blown away by the several weeks I spent in Finland. To the point of considering Helsinki as a potential destination for my retirement (in about 15 years). By comparison, I spent more than a month in England about 5 years prior to my first Finland trip. Some neat stuff and nice people, but was very happy to get home.

 

And so you see how subjective these surveys may be. I mentioned the IPSOS surveys that rank the Chinese as far and away the happiest. There is also a survey in which most of the top ten happiest are in Latin America.

 

Oh I don't argue how subjective these surveys are. All I can do (all anyone can do really) is to think for themselves and make their own educated decisions.

 

So much achievement happening in those green highlighted countries. That’s what we should inspire to be.

 

Excellent question.

For some reason these characters in "The Great Race" come to mind when I think of two of the right wingers who regularly post and rank in tandem on Too Hot.

O and Bluke no doubt, will rate it OT, or as he sees fit...

 

From the article:

“…based on data from sources like the Gallup World Poll, leveraging six key factors: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption.”

I think your query is a loaded question. The first factor (and why Finland is so high) is because of “social support”. Social support reduces anxiety of day-to-day — particularly health care; however, there is a strong argument that social support also leads to a citizenry not pushing for a better life and having a risk based approach to entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, countries with socialized medicine like the UK is not higher. With regards to the US, we are a socialist country that continues to dance on a fence. Blue state opinions in the survey may have skewed results versus red states. Perhaps CA on its own would be much higher and the rest of the US lower. It would be nice to see the data.

 

So we rank in the bottom quartile on first world countries but above true shitholes like Russia and Yemen. Noted. You have a remarkable inability to think your posts through. Perhaps you have a meme for that?

 

Wasn’t a good place to be during Zero Covid. But it doesn’t matter what I think ...

 

Shithole subway in Russia. Compare to NYC ...

 

Survey was on happiness. Achievement not necessarily correlated.

 

Nah, pretty sure you would still be miserable.

 

In an earlier post I stated I was happy but happiness is an internal event not an external event.

 

Fake News... still peddling race-baiting?

 

Oh, so #15 is actually #1 in your book?