The dark side of happy countries
Today, 2 April 2019, on 'veneziepost': “Happiness also influences voting. Where there is none, populists win”, by Alberto Mattioli.
“Italy 36th in the World Happiness Report presented at Bocconi. The Scandinavians are in the lead. The experts: 'Well-being conditions participation in political life and the choice of party'.”
With the following article we show you how happy Scandinavians are.
by Giulio Meotti, “The Sheet”
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland. Wellbeing rankings always reward them but why do happy countries have such high suicide rates? Numbers of a counter-history
Asked where the happiest country in the world is, we hear the answer that it is somewhere up there, in Nord Europa. Effectively, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland have stood out in all the world rankings of the most blessed countries for ten years now. Oslo has just displaced Copenhagen at the top of the United Nations happiness index. They are among the darkest and coldest countries in the world, so these very high rates of happiness must depend on the type of society they have built. “A country with sixty percent taxes and where everyone is happy to pay them”, as the Observer defined Sweden. Norwegian prisons are once “superior” to any other penitentiary on the planet. Another is the Swedish roads, the safest in the world. These five countries can boast the most cutting-edge school systems (Finland); an example of a secular society, multicultural, modern and industrial envied by all (Sweden); a colossal oil wealth reinvested in ethical causes (Norway); the most gender-equal society in the world and the longest-living men (Iceland). As the cabaret artist Magnus Betner wrote, we imagine Sweden as “a nation of beautiful people singing happy songs in elegant modernist apartments”. Or as the Telegraph's Judith Woods wrote: “We would all like to be Scandinavian!”. And progressives all over the planet would like it to be so, da Bernie Sanders a Paul Krugman. “If you want the American dream, go to Finland”, said British Labor leader Ed Miliband.