And in the midst of that is down to one final bank which if it collapsed is worth something like 20x the gdp of the nation in holdings.
So maybe the Swiss are waking up to how much more delicate their situation may be.
I see World Happiness Report as primarily a measure of what's considered the most socially acceptable way to discuss happiness across cultures. In the USA, people often brag about how miserable they are, for example.
Americas mistakes are not as unique to us as Europeans keep telling themselves.
Oops.
This one I am not familiar with. What's the latest development here?
Many US states are larger than multiple EU countries combined.
Nordic countries are also not on the top of the list.
This is basically just a list of developed countries where people can afford luxury medication.
Here's a report of the countries with most antidepressant users in the world 2024 (https://ceoworld.biz/2024/05/12/revealed-countries-with-most...):
1. Iceland
2. Portugal
3. UK
4. Canada
5. Australia
6. Sweden
7. Spain
8. New Zealand
9. Chile
10. Belgium
This report lists OECD countries but excludes the US. If the US were included, the report suggests the US would be among the top (either highest or second-highest) in terms of DDD per 1,000 inhabitants.
"Nationally representative samples of respondents are asked to think of a ladder, with the best possible life for them being a 10, and the worst possible life being a 0. They are then asked to rate their own current lives on that 0 to 10 scale."
Or equally lack of envy or discontent.
Gun violence regardless of position is still always in the news, and the party in power has no intention of doing anything about it.
The political elite actively shun science.
Tech billionaires are all licking the boot - so the hopes some had that those with money and large corporate entities would keep the government in check are long gone.
Politicians actively endanger our international relationships with the entire world. Everybody in the world looks at us like a laughing stock.
The elite actively welcome and cheer for AI taking peoples jobs.
The economy is shit meanwhile our leaders lie to our faces about how tariffs and their own economic policies work and pointing at wall street gains meanwhile the majority of Americans don't invest in the first place.
Our rights are being stripped. Military/National Guard is actively deployed in the streets in places, and there is threat of deployment in other places (hint left leaning places). Any speech not aligned with the presidents values is criticized and threatened at a national scale.
Politics is just a reality TV show made for clicks and our current leaders are basically the equivalent if children bickering. "Transparency" is completely gone - they ran on transparency and then immediately flipped, who coulda seen that coming.
There is literally nothing to be happy about here unless you're already rich.
I never understood that. What is the point of amassing all that money and power if you have to grovel to terrible people?
While the quality of life really is objectively better with children, the secret to these rankings is probably the calibration inherent in the question. Finnish people just don’t have high expectations. Every positive development is a welcome surprise.
Americans are primed to want it all and seem to constantly compare themselves against unachievable standards on social media. “The American Dream” is more illusionary than ever. Everybody is a temporarily inconvenienced billionaire. This can be positive when it produces a drive that builds things, but it seems to mostly produce unhappiness right now because it’s so out of balance.
Yes but that calibration is also the secret to happiness.
You’re just covering up the real truth: Finnish happiness is a result of everyone having access to a sauna :)
Mina rakastan löyly, haluan saunassa nyt!
(What I hope I said: ‘I love throwing water on the sauna rocks and the experience of the resulting steam, I want to go into a sauna now’)
———————
On a more serious note, do you think the ever present threat of Russia and obligatory military service affects the expectations of Finnish people? Meaning, there is an actual tangible threat bordering Finland, which last invaded just 86 years ago (and forced Finland to ally with a country we won’t name so they would emerge from WWII independent, only Norway and Finland managed to achieve that, every other European country bordering the USSR was behind the iron curtain)
Do you think that keeps Finnish people’s expectations more grounded? Or is it something else entirely?
that's not really a secret or calibration issue though, that gets to the core of what happiness is, a relational property between expectation and reality. It's not an objective measure like income or height.
I don't think the notion of an 'objective' quality of life even makes a lot of sense. Quality of life is always measured against some concrete alternative, not against some abstract scale or points based system. Two people are going to have very different attitudes towards some way of life purely depending on what direction they come from.
No? The true hallmarks of totalitarianism are a lack of political competition (usually due to repression) and the state controlling “all aspects of society, including the family, religion, education, business, private property, and social relationships” [1].
Ancient Athens was a famously political society. It was not totalitarian.
* Major terrorist attack in israel; its obvious we care way too much about this random country on the other side of the planet but even so i can't see that impacting people's happiness this hard.
* general populace now knows LLMs exist and may someday potentially perform jobs which were previously thought to be immune to automation but i would expect this to be offset by the people amazed by this technology.
* It's becoming increasingly apparent that our then-current president might actually suffer from a more serious case of Alzheimer's than reagan did; simultaneously it is becoming increasingly apparent that the only viable alternative is going to be trump again.
#3 is the only one that sort-of makes sense but I have doubts that people are this invested in presidential circuses on a personal level.
That combined with little to no hope that either political party will do a damn thing to fix it (Democrats at least have some politicians who actually want to, but they are stymied by their own leadership, never mind the problem of not having any real national level political power currently).
I base this on experience with some of the 'happy' cultures on the list. However, I would be interested in knowing whether HN members from Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and the Netherlands (to name the top 5) agree with this concept or not.
Actions speak louder.
It's not starving, not having healthcare etc that makes you sad so much I think as thinking others are getting it while you are not, or believing that someone is pulling something over you rather than the situation being in your hands. If you think you're doing the best you can and your own success or failure is up to you, it's hard to be particularly sad about the situation compared to someone in another position.
tromp•58m ago
mensetmanusman•55m ago
throwawayq3423•44m ago
mothballed•41m ago
Saddam Hussein was obviously a murderous psychopath, albeit one who held tight enough reign to mostly subordinate the other psychopaths in the area, so you can ask the question about our culpability in switching that trolley onto a new set of tracks.
tsunamifury•28m ago
mothballed•21m ago
wmeredith•49m ago
brap•41m ago
nenenejej•34m ago
False
> and significantly outnumbered by people who want you dead,
False
> and have almost succeeded in doing so very recently,
False
> not mentioning settlements, seizure of land, imprisonment, precious campaigns on Gaza strip, apartheid, etc...
Beijinger•37m ago
myth_drannon•28m ago
baw-bag•26m ago
roughly•22m ago