Columbia University’s Earth Institute has recently publicised their “Happiness Report” concerning the happiest people in the world. The Danish professor, Christian Bjørnskov from the University of Aarhus (Denmark), has subsequently summed up the perhaps surprisingly simple causes for general happiness in a nation.
Denmark has again landed at the top of the world.
If you believe in the ordinary leftist explanation, that happiness in a population comes from the re-distribution of material wealth, like taxing the rich and giving to the poor, you’re apparently off- track. Research does not support this notion.
Material wealth is perhaps an underlying fact, but as the aphorism goes: “If I have to be sick, I prefer to be a rich sick, rather than a poor sick!”
Three specific condition appear to be really significant; Trust, self determination and political freedom and stability.
In Denmark 70% of people indicate, that they implicitly trust other people. The international average is a miserable 27%.
94% of people asked thought they could change their lives if they wished to do so, indicating a high level of personal freedom. Again the international average trails at a mere 65%.
According to the professor, it is a major mistake to believe in the political big brother games, that have as an objective to create happy people through a manifesto of intervention, usually found in the blocks to the left.
It is more important to create the framework that supports the two first conditions. This can best be done through a stable political system, that ensures the individual’s ability to choose the life he or she wants – with an ability to change if the choice didn’t work out.
In short: Reasonably well off people in a stable and hands-off political society with strong norms of trust are the most happy.
In a way this is not a surprise to me.
In my career as a Management Consultant I always emphasised, that lots of research indicated ‘Trust’ in the Leaders of a company to be a necessary condition for success.
Surely, ‘Trust’ is not there by default – it has to be generated, earned.
This goes for politicians too!
But once there, it is incredible what a company – and a country – can achieve.
This lesson leads to some serious questions.
How come that muslim countries around the world experience mass emigration, violence and internal unrest? If the underlying conditions for happiness are general (self- determination, stable political hands-off regimes and trust) then that answers the question. An environment, where everything in life is dictated, where deviation is severely punished and half the population (women) are subservient to, and dependent on, the other half, does not seem to promote happiness.
And even more so: How about the attempts of the EU massively to grab power over people’s lives, issuing decrees, standards, directives and laws from a central ivory tower while eliminating the people of the member nations’ right to determine their own destinies?
The research of Columbia University’s Earth Institute seems to have proven beyond doubt that the EU, in particular the Spinelli Group, is on the way to create chaos and unhappiness.
Think about that when you vote next time, e.g. 2014 and 2015 in the UK and Denmark.
There’s still time to get it right.
Better off out – UKIP.
PS – UK is nr. 22 - - - - -
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