Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands are the happiest countries in the world, according to a Gallup Poll scientifically designed to measure how content individuals are with their lives.
All five are wealthy countries, proving that money helps buy happiness. All five also provide the basics of life for their citizens, proving that nanny states can create a sense of well-being.
All five have universal health care, for example. All five have a balance between work and leisure that favors happiness. The average work week in Denmark — the happiest country in the world, according to Gallup — is about 38 hours.
Denmark provides Danes a mile-long list of benefits — and has a level of taxation to match. Danes pay more than 50 percent of their income in taxes. Upper level incomes aren’t set by the government in any way other than taxation, but their society’s goal is to have each worker feel important and valued. Garbage collectors live middle income lives, just as school teachers and journalists do.
Danes who talk like social scientists say they live in a post-consumerist society, meaning that shopping and consuming take a lower priority than friends, family, social events and pleasurable interaction with others do.
Danes say they have a great deal of trust in government, from local to national, and in those around them. Observers in this study discovered that mothers would leave the babies outside in a stroller alone while buying groceries and park their bicycles unlocked. Danes, and other Scandanavians, can afford cars but many ride bikes because they enjoy the exercise and take an interest in lowering the production of carbon dioxide.
Scandanavians aren’t the only happy people in the world. Canadians came in eighth. The United States and Austria were tied for 14.
IT SURELY is no coincidence that the world’s happiest citizens have the highest level of trust in their governments and their fellow citizens. Confidence that those in charge have the good of the nation in mind makes for happy citizens.
When Americans listen to their public officials asking for support they hear partisan trash talk. They learn that those in the other party are thieves, incompetents, closet nazis, socialists, liars who are certainly not be trusted.
So why is it a surprise that a large majority of us think our country is sliding straight down hill, picking up momentum?
The remedy is to be found in any mirror. Politicians say what they do because their pollsters tell them that’s what the people (that’s us, folks) want to hear.
Vote against trash talk and trash talk will stop. Vote for calm, fact-filled, reality-based proposals for action, and that’s what you’ll get.
And the level of American happiness will begin to rise.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
