Gallup pollsters went around the world asking people to define their personal state of being with one of these descriptive verbs: “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering.”
From the answers received, they rated the nations on a “happiness” scale.
The top five were Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Australia and Finland, in that order. The United States didn’t even make the top 10. We came in 12th. Only 59 percent of Americans said they were thriving.
Could have been worse. African countries ranked near the bottom. Only 1 percent of the people in Chad rated themselves on top of things.
People who say they are thriving usually have material things in mind. Are the Danes richer than Americans? Are the Canadians? Australians, Swedes or Fins? Not if measured by per capita wealth. But the Gallup people didn’t ask for facts, they were after feelings.
The five happiest countries, according to their own estimation, have several things in common.
— All of them are relatively small, population-wise, and have well-established and stable governments largely dedicated to managing their internal affairs.
— All of them have national health care systems, which remove an important threat to security and happiness.
— Of the five, only Australia and Canada have large armed forces and neither of them have significant numbers of their military personnel in Afghanistan or are involved in Libya’s fighting. None of the five spends a large part of its national budget on defense.
— All of them have social systems that all but eliminate homelessness, hunger and abject poverty.
— All are fairly homogeneous racially and culturally and place a high value on education and the arts and sciences.
WHILE GALLUP didn’t go there, one must also suspect that the political atmosphere in those five placid countries is far more conducive to national happiness than is the case in the U.S. of A.
In our beloved but beleaguered land, half of our country’s office-holders are shouting that the nation is going to hell in a handbasket, calling the president vile names, warning all who will listen that the only hope for a happy tomorrow is to throw today’s government to the wolves. It is no wonder that the average Joe will tell a pollster that he’s struggling, not thriving — that, after all, is what his congress-person keeps telling him.
We are, in short, not a happy nation because the outs think that the only way they can get in is to make their fellow citizens feel unhappy with things as they are. Kinda sad, isn’t it?
Emerson Lynn, jr.
