Happy and Healthy countries, what can we learn from them, or can there be a comparison of the US with such small populations?

10 Happiest
The report ranks 156 countries across six factors including GDP, life expectancy, social support, generosity, freedom and corruption

Finland
Norway
Denmark
Iceland
Switzerland
The Netherlands
Canada
New Zealand
Sweden
Australia

https://www.forbes.com/sites/duncanmadden/2018/03/27/ranked-the-10-happiest-countries-in-the-world-in-2018/#5e2ead8973e9


10 Healthiest Countries

Spain
Italy
Iceland
Japan
Switzerland
Sweden
Australia
Singapore
Norway
Israel

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-healthiest-countries-in-the-world-2019-2

Iceland, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, and Norway made both lists.


These are relatively small countries. Maybe we could divide into two or more countries and have better results ... lol.

It would be very interesting to understand a lot of the whys? For instance, Australia may be a small country in terms of population but the geographical size as compared to the population is very large. That is a characteristic we see in a number of states in the US. On the other hand, Japan has a small geographical area and a large population.

As for happiest, most of those 10 countries have a lower per capita per square mile. That means each person has more space to themselves, more individual freedom, less stressful lifestyle, and a higher physical and self reliant demand on each resident.

A very telling way to analyze this would to do a state by state comparison in the US. One of the issues relating to health is the availability of emergency intervention care. In a big city, the highest level of trauma care is only 10 minutes away from most of the population. You get out in the rural areas and it is over an hour away by air ambulance. BIG difference!!! In the big city, you have a car accident and the ambulance will most probably be there in 10 minutes; in the country, it may take several hours before anyone even knows there was an accident.

When you use national averages for anything in the US, you are not telling the true story. We are a very large and diverse nation that often makes "average" statistics very misleading.

I also believe there are many long term cultural issues that effect your lists. The cultural behaviors that have been handed down generation to generation have a significant input to both conditions.

I completely agree the comparison is uneven at best. I wondered if, at most, there were still SOME things we could incorporate which are held in common by these other countries. And of course, healthy is less debatable than 'happy', which is tied as well to cultural expectations and norms.

some challenge you raise!! Well beyond the political pundits, sound bytes, most of the electorate, and the politicians. Even when we dissect all the little pieces, it is still difficult to figure out. For instance, GDP was part of one of those. Do we look at GDP per resident and say that indicates the productivity of each person or do we say that is an indication of our investment of capital for production, or do we say the GDP per person is an indicator of how well each person should be living? Isn't all of these in varying amounts the impact of GDP? Shouldn't we also relate the GDP per person to what their expected lifestyle is and the cost of that lifestyle? If you expect a simple lifestyle and that makes you happy and the GDP of your country easily yields that lifestyle for all, then you have more than enough GDP to support your population. On the other hand, if you expect a much better lifestyle even if the GDP of your country is the same, you will be unhappy.

We can look at this same concept in our country. If I live in a peaceful, scenic area and can do what I want to. If I have adequate (to me) shelter, decent food on my table, and comfortable clothes to wear shouldn't I be happy? What it takes to make each person happy is something each individual decides. If you took a family from Central America asking for asylum and gave them the above, I think they would be very happy and content. Others from a different background and life experiences would be very unhappy!!

You touch on what makes politics a complex discussion. Because there are so many factors in just about any debate.

One of the biggest problems in politics that I see is the "all or none" approach that the political parties use. The longer we battle with that mentality, the longer it will take to make any progress on our problems. When we all start to support an incremental approach focusing on those parts where there is either common ground or the differences are not impossible to overcome, we will make progress toward a solution. I'm interested in seeing solutions not meaningless sound bytes!