Suck it, capitalism

So, a new study shows that nations who are heavily taxed (akin to the American idea of a socialism) have the highest contentment factor. North Europe, who's taxes are famously as high as 2/3 of your income in some places, is officially the happiest place on Earth. Why are they so happy? Because you get what you pay for.

Linky-poo

My favorite bit:

I bet you can guess what a defining factor of all those others country's economies are

 

hey cool, we are in the top three

we cheated with drugs and hookers though

 

Honestly, whatever makes you happy. It's a proven fact that neither prostitution nor soft drugs hurt the country.

 

actually they do

France is always trying to give us a poor self-image

 

If they hurt the country, why is everyone so happy?

 

Which is actually good. The legalizing of this has been proven to decrease crime rates. People turn to the 'illigal' stuff a lot less then in countries where a gram of pot gets you locked up.

 

Only conclusion you can draw from this is legalising gay marriage makes a country happier.

Though australia (and new zealand...) is neither socialist or legalises it so i guess we are just naturally awesome (and can become even better!).

 

I am sorry Fenix but there is way more to this other than Government style. If you combine the populations of all of the countries in that article that are listed aahead of the U.S. you get aproximately 120 million people, the U.S. has aproximately 300 million people. Homogeneity is a bigger factor in happiness then anything else, and smaller countries are by definition more likely to be homogenous. What makes people feel unhappy is when they feel like they have got the short end of the stick. In smaller populations there is fewer extrema, fewer super highs to compare oneself to (people almost never think about the people less off than themselves).

The article you linked is just plain flawed in so many ways. Population and diversity of population are major factors in any article like this and the author didn't even acknowledge them. Before you start making claims as to how bad the U.S. maybe you should make sure your sources are solid first.

 

Whoa now LK. I never bashed on the US. Eleventh place is pretty damn good.

Personally, I couldn't care less about what color the guy next to me is. What I do care about is my tax dollars, and, more importantly, where they go.

It's not flawed in the least. The point of his entire article can be summed up in one quote:

We worry about war. We worry about the economic meltdown. We worry about crime rates. We worry about paying for that illness that's inevitably around the corner.

They worry about those to much lesser extent, in some cases not at all.

I suggest reading the article a little closer again, because in closing the author even states:

(Emphasis added)

It's not government style he's talking about, but rather what the government does. Don't be so quick to label me as anti-American and try to invalidate my views and links, it's unbecoming. I'm American, I love being an American, I just see quite a bit we could do better on.

 

You have labeled yourself as being anti-American Fenix atleast with the average crap you post (look at the title of this thread, then think about what most people connect capitalism to, and then tell me your not anti-American once you add this in with the majority of threads you post that aren't inane).

If you look though Denmark only has 5.5 million people. If anyone did a staistical analysis they would likely find a decent sized negative correlation between population size and GDP per capita. Denmark isn't in 5th because the workers are happy, they are in 5th because they are modern country with only 5.5 million people.

The answer is taxes actually, progressive tax structures are pretty much by definition the redistribution of wealth, and when wealth is redistrubuted everyone has a more similar amount of money, hence there is more homogeneity in a society. What the government does with our money matters, in fact if poloticians do things we don't like with our money they generally don't get re-elected. However, the general proccess and the redistribution effect of taxation matters more to the happiness of a group of people. For example, you have two groups of 10 people, in one group everyone makes 20k dollars a year give or take $500, the other group has 6 people making 30k a year, 2 40k a year, 1 50k a year, and 1 75k a year, which ones is happier? The intuition of most people would say the second group is happier, however psychological tests on the subject have shown that the first group is probably happier.

The article you linked is just plain wrong in its reasoning, it did correctly attribute the increased happiness to an economy that is socialistic (any high tax economy could work though), but its wrong about why the majority of people are happier.

All of the above doesn't mean I dissagree with the goal of the arcticle (to an extent), but I don't think deluding ourselves about why things work is a good thing. I also, don't think giving undue credit to a system that likely has flaws of its own is a good thing either.

 

How is crap to point out that other nations are happier? Why must you be so negative? Did it occur that perhaps I'm for the betterment of the American society? Of course not, because I'm an anti-American. Down with the red white and blue! Down with the USA! Ridiculous.

The GDP doesn't matter. What matters is each person, one by one, works more and earns less in the United States. Then, instead of having health care, education, and other social programs and incentives provided for them, they have to pay out the nose for them. The GDP is ONLY higher because we have more people. What the columnist is trying to tell is that countries that are happier generally make more money and pay less for needed things.

Couldn't agree more.

 

"Maybe it's time that we looked at taxes differently. We have to pay them anyway. So they might as well make us happy. If Northern Europe is any benchmark, the more we'd pay the happier we just may be."

As Im not American, I cannot make a very informed opinion about the situation on the US. But I can say that those who argumented that the ranking is not a very objective one because it doesnt take in account an importante factor such as population size are absolutely right (IMO).

But I think that not only population size is the only factor to be accounted for. Happiness of people has to be a very complex function, with many, many variables (Not only tax rate and what people think recieves for those taxes). Factors like quality of education, security, communication, among others take a primal role in this equation. Of course tax money has a huge impact on those factors, but so has the cultural background of the country. Im pretty sure that if Brasil had the same tax rate as Denmark, their people would not be that happy. Why? Because other factors in the "People Happiness Equation" differ radically between the realities of one country to another.

Although I get the idea the author of the article is trying to express, I think it has to talk more about other realities that go against this so called Tax Rate/Happiness correlation.

"Healthcare and other such social services aren't built into our system. That means we have to worry more about paying for things ourselves. Worrying doesn't equate to happiness."

Cuba AFAIK doesnt have to pay for health care, yet I dont think cubans are among the happiest people on earth (I dont think their the saddest either though).

 

The capitalist system itself is wrong, and despite anything people says it´s fate is sealed and it will someday dissappear, that time a socialist reign will take over. Taking into account that 2% of the population owns 98% of the planet´s wealth, while 25.000 people starve to death every day speaks for itself. I will not bore everyone with a long speech or argument unless someone wants it, so to make it short, I live in a 3rd world country, I have seen misery and despair more than anyone here, and that despair is brought to us by a combination of factors that are all based among the capitalist reigm.

With half the world living with less than 2 daily dollars, and millions starving, you can judge by yourselves, but when doing it think a little bit further than your own wealthy class of let´s say 400 million people that have enough wealth and opress the rest, think on the millions of people not being ever able to express their suffering due to brutal reprisals, censorship and the worlds imperialist scumbags that refuse to show the truth, that using media and other factors to maintain people opressed. For the sake of those people we need to make a change on this world now, and the first steep is to ensure the fall of imperialism and a fair distribution of the world´s wealth.

I believe in socialism because I belive in a better world, and I´m ready to defend my ideology to dead.

Patria o Muerte

 

Our very own forum revolutionista!

 

And he is as deluded as the rest. I am sorry to break this to you Edruken but your dream is never going to come to pass. People are inherently unequal. Anyone who is better than someone else in a given scenario has no reason to aim for equality between the two, in a world with limited resources it is all a zero sum game and no one wants to settle for equal when they have the abilities to take more.

There is never going to be a "fair distibution of wealth" because no one is going to agree on what "fair" is. The person who is better at something believes fair is being rewarded for his abilites, the person with lesser skill believes fair is everyone having the same.

 

topic title misleading, source is questionable, but still makes for good discussion. And for the love of god Edruken, if you don't like the US please keep it to yourself, don't see me bashing south america for any flaw i could find in its governments or the way the world views it.

Every time, in any country with a large population, there will be other races who won't get along with other because of some past conflict. If people never learn to pretend to like each and somehow work together nothing will advance, but i know that will never happen because the majority of people are as dumb as bricks. Oh well, thank goodness for the invention of the armed fighting force, otherwise know to most people as a military, to beat the living **** out them and get them back into line.

Wow kinda went on a rant there, and it made sense for once.

 

You can't base something of this magnitude off a single factor. Simple as that.

 

After looking over the survey details i think it is safe to say that the effect of high taxes does not factor in to any large degree. The test was aimed at finding out positives and negatives a person experienced in the last day. Some of the questions were
Did you enjoy something you did yesterday?
Were you proud of something you did yesterday?
Were you treated with respect yesterday?
No more than 1000 people were interviewed from each country.

If you look at the actual data a work-life balance appears to be more important (So i guess you could argue the incentive to work harder makes you unhappy...Low taxes ). The average work week in Scandanavia is no more than 37 hours while Americans work around 45 hours a week.

Low unemployment also seems to be a major factor (Which the OECD acknowledged). Denmark's unemployment rate is 2%. Norway's is 2.6%. The Netherlands is 4.5%. The U.S. unemployment rate is currently 9% (However kinda in support of high taxes... 101 economics leads us to believe Denmark and Norway have been able to artificially dropped their unemployment below a stable level).

We also can't ignore that Scandanavian countries have not suffered nearly as much as Britain, France and the US in the economic crisis.

As i stated before in my earlier (less serious) post Australia has fairly low taxes however we still scored well. Our unemployment is at 4.7% and China has saved us from the majority of the damage in the economic crisis.

 

1. diversity of population: you do realize that no major city in Holland has a ethnic group making up over 50% of the population? or for that matter 40%?

2. Size of population: if this increases happiness, you should get smaller countries, like split up the states. You cant say "we have the right to be happy cause we're big"


Also, you are probably right about this stuff upto a certain degree, i'm not denying that, but i dont think the influence is as severe as you say. What is far more important is how the media portray the government.

 

There are two classes of socialists in this world, the old conservative ones and the new liberal ones, I correspond to the second group, and have a way different point of view about a socialism reigm. The new socialist or revolutionary, does not attempt to completely cut off any forms of rational, critic or different thinking. Now, our socialism points down to the fact that everyone should be given the oportunity, and that the best cualified take them, as it´s a natural part of life, and it´s necesary for improvement. What we depise is that 80% of the world lives in poverty, while the other part drowns in wealth.

Due to human nature private proverty has to exist, at least to some degree, in order to help the motivational factor, what we´re against is Massive Corporations that plunder most of the world of its wealth through fear, opression and media control. There are always going to be people more capable than others, and those people then deserve better places, but always keeping them in line so they won´t amass that much wealth, become corrupt, arrogant and imperialist.

If through socialism I can achieve the goal of no more people starving to dead, everyone getting access to basic sanitary conditions, good health care, a proper education and access to a decent set of working conditions, dignity and the oportunities to get something better. You may think some of the points I said here are contradicting with communist or socialism ideas, but hell, I can´t write the whole doctrine here. maybe later on I will post a full doctrin here. If I can improve the living conditions of most of the world and bring down some of the wretched imperialists that opress our world. Hell, that is something worth fighting for, especially as I have seen and feel by myself the poverty and opression of my race by your so called justice paladins....

Patria o Muerte!!!