She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes;
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies;
And she only reveals what she wants you to see;
She hides like a child
But she’s always a woman to me…
— She’s Always a Woman, by Billy Joel, 1977
For what it’s worth, Thursday March 20 was World Happiness Day. If you’re like me, you were too depressed to even notice.
But people in other countries are still experiencing happiness. Is that luck, or talent? We don’t know.
The new report was released on March 20 (which was World Happiness Day, as mentioned) and it takes into account six (6) key factors that impact happiness: social support, income, health, freedom, generosity, and the absence of corruption.
The first internationally-recognized World Happiness Report was released in 2012, just as we were coming out of the Great Recession. If they had surveyed only Wall Street investors, they probably would have ended up with a positive report, but a lot of us working stiffs had recently lost our homes to foreclosure, or in a divorce. Hard to be happy when someone else is living in your house.
Things continued to improve, however, until an unfamiliar virus leaked out of a lab in China in 2019. That sort of put the kibosh on everyone’s happiness for a few years.
But people in the U.S. ought to be feeling pretty happy, now that the federal government is finally getting fixed. All the federal employees who’ve lost their jobs might not be happy, but those of us who voted for Donald Trump are finally seeing the swamp get drained… much more quickly than we could ever have imagined.
But of course, we still have to deal with the 2024 World Happiness Report, published by University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent editorial board. (You have to watch out for those independent editorial boards.)
Last year, the report looked for the first time at how people of different ages — in different generations — are getting on. Apparently, they found that “those born before 1965 are, on average, happier than those born since 1980. Among Millennials, evaluation of one’s own life drops with each year of age, while among Boomers life satisfaction increases with age.” That works for me, because I was born in 1964. My ex-wife was born in 1968, which explains a lot of things.
The winner for 2024 is, once again, Finland, taking the trophy for the eighth year running. Measures such as “generosity, income, freedom of choice, and life expectancy can explain why this country keeps coming out on top.” For example, in Finland, people expect lost wallets to be returned. With the money still in it.
I’m not sure most Americans could even find Finland on a map, but that probably just adds to their sense of happiness.
I suspect most Daily Post readers are interested mainly in the United States, and how we rank in comparison to Mexico and Canada, since those two countries will likely become U.S. states in the near future. (The report didn’t rank Greenland, sadly enough. But maybe it’s included in ‘Denmark’ for the time being.)
The U.S. was ranked 24 out of 100 countries. Not too shabby.
However, we used to be ranked 11. The new report gives us the worst ranking we’ve had since 2012.
Our poor ranking for 2024 seems to be related mainly to bad grades for “Freedom”. Whatever that is?
Mexico was ranked 10, and Canada got ranked 18. So I vote to annex Mexico first, as a new state, and see how that works out — before letting Canada in. (I have no opinion about Greenland.)
Unfortunately, the Oxford intellectuals are basically comparing the U.S. to Finland. We would appear to be a lot happier if they would compare us to, say, Ukraine or Gaza.
I was not at all surprised to find France ranked 33, worse off than the U.S. As they well deserve.
As some readers may be aware, a French politician recently argued that we should return the Statue of Liberty to France. Specifically, this politician was a member of the European Parliament.
Politician Raphaël Glucksmann seems to think the U.S. is no longer worthy of the monument.
“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” he told supporters earlier this month, who then applauded. “We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home.” (But he said it in French, so only certain people could understand him.)
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt retaliated on Monday, saying that Donald Trump would “absolutely not” return the Statue. She probably knew the Statue would be even less happy in France. As indicated by the UN survey.
But if Lady Liberty is truly a woman, she has a mind of her own… as songwriter Billy Joel reminded us in his hit song, ‘She’s Always a Woman.’
She’s frequently kind, then she’s suddenly cruel
She can do as she pleases, she’s nobody’s fool…