World's Happiest Countries
- Thread starter WATU2
- Start date
I was just in Amsterdam for a petroleum conference in 2014 for a week+ and I got the same feeling. People there were a lot more relaxed (I don't mean because of the weed lol). There just seemed to be much less tension in life when everything ran smoother. There was certainly still racial divisions that needed to be addressed. We asked various people what they thought of their social programs (school, healthcare, etc...) and they all said they loved them. They couldn't imagine not being able to afford to go to university (if you were smart enough).
They did say that the level of 'competition' and drive in their economy wasn't the same as ours. It just seems like Americans work themselves to death when we don't really need to.
They did say that the level of 'competition' and drive in their economy wasn't the same as ours. It just seems like Americans work themselves to death when we don't really need to.
True but the degree varies from country to country.
We were in Cuba last year, and we were struck by low well integrated it was. In 60 years it went from a corrupt, slave dependent oligarchy to a country where there are 17 different words to describe 17 different racial mixtures, all could be used in polite company.
My understanding is the net immigration from Mexico is a negative number: more Mexicans leaving than coming. OTOH I suspect most of the middle east would move here if they were allowed to.
For example, does this help explain why Germany with high wages, taxes and social programs is able to still be competitive in manufacturing?
Measuring happiness with metrics can seem arbitrary, but as you said it seems to support peoples' anecdotal experience as well. It also provides a means of tracking changes year to year.
As for health care being a measure, heath care is the biggest cause of bankruptcy in the US. We are having our presidential primary this weekend, so ads, testimonials, and interviews are flooding the airwaves. Huge topic for Bernie and HRC supporters is college debt. The last one I heard today was a woman saying that she had borrowed $20K for school, had paid back $35K in P+I and still owed over $30K. And she was now supposed to be saving for her kids college educations. She was not happy.
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So to be very clear, "No."
Here's what I posted: "Evidently high tax rates, government run health insurance and Bernie Sander's type of "socialism" do not destroy happiness in other countries"
"Socialism" and 'high taxes" etc. are thrown around by many here as self-validating negative terms or destructive influences. The point is that there are democratic, developed countries which have developed systems that their populations are happy with, and those systems may involve high taxes or government run healthcare or other elements that would be called 'socialism", particularly on this board.
The more general point is to point out the potential value of looking at how other countries deal with issues we face here. We might learn from their successes as well as their failures. The private sector does it; I'd bet that many of the companies that posters work for do it. Why shouldn't our government or we as a society do it? The world is a big place, and America does not have the sole patent on good ideas.
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This has to the most worn out thread ever. It adds to the list of things the government should provide a poorly defined happiness. The original post claims happiness has not gone up per Sachs. He did not even claims it had gone down.
This is a thread about nothing. Our government has promised us the right to the
PERSUIT of happiness. Only politicians promise us happiness if we do what they want us to.
This is a thread about nothing. Our government has promised us the right to the
PERSUIT of happiness. Only politicians promise us happiness if we do what they want us to.
North Sea oil may be a lot of things... But it is hardly on its last legs.
In comparison to previous decades it is. Declining volumes and substantial required Capex+Opex costs (in combination with the low oil prices) don't bode well for an aging off shore area. The North Sea is far from its glory days.
http://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil-gas/
Sort of. Just responding to posts that were already off topic, basically claiming that those countries weren't all that happy and implying that no one could be as happy as we are. Pointless. I should have ignored.
I'm sorry I've been checking the back posts and I cannot find where someone said that no one could be as happy as we are or implied it . I guess I just wasted my time looking for that post or it has been deleted . Maybe it just sprang up in the fertile ground of WATU's imagination.
Funny... A lot of the same things were thought about Saudi Arabia a few years ago, the deep GOM, and PBTX.
No one said that about Saudi. Their oil has always been cheap and easy to produce. The midcontinent was dying as well until horizontal drilling in combination with fracking came along. I can't speak for the gulf of mexico.
Actually they did. It wasn't too long ago that it was believed that Saudi had reached peak output and could no longer keep up with demand.
So .. Technology took fields on their last legs and made them viable again?
It would be in your best interest to say so if you lived there.
