I'm afraid it's basically junk. Once you get past the basics like "access to safe water" and "deaths from lead exposure" you're in highly subjective territory.
"Access to justice," -- does this take into account the fact that in some countries this is available only in principle, for those who can afford to spend $100,000+ on lawyers to pursue a civil case?
"Public sector corruption" -- how is lobbying and the regulatory/corporate revolving-door handled? This can be significantly worse than old-fashioned cash-in-a-briefcase corruption. (Which sometimes has a salubrious effect: https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-uses-of-corruption)
That PDF you linked doesn't really explain anything; as you mentioned things like "access to justice" isn't really defined well enough, but that link contains the sources it used for these figures.
For justice it used https://v-dem.net/ – I didn't really look beyond this and in to the methodology of V-Dem.
Re: life expectancy; I think that's too simple. Saudi-Arabia scores better than e.g. Latvia and a number of other eastern-European countries. Last I checked Latvia wasn't in the business of chopping up troublesome journalists in embassies or preventing women driving a car by law because their fannies can't handle it. Syria, Russia, and North Korea all score higher than Indonesia and a number of other countries which certainly have issues, but not Syria, Russia, or North-Korean style issues.
I agree. There an indefinite number of contextual nuances and cultural/political particularities that do not let themselves be captured by this type of analysis. Or at least it is only possible up to a certain point
From what I have seen in my travels, having low corruption is probably more important than for example being a democracy for the general wellbeing of average people. I am growing to believe this may in fact be the single largest factor determining how much opportunity and prosperity a country has.
Yeah, but how would you define corruption? Does it include lobbying, regulatory capture, the revolving door, inviting Federal justices on all-expenses-paid vacations where the catch is that they must oblige to listen to your lectures on political economics...?
You go to the nicest places in a country, some fancy rooftop in the posh neighborhood of the capital city for example, a place where a round of drinks costs more than the average wages for the people living there, you talk to the people there, in a normal country you'll discover there are a lot of smart and ambitious people who have well paid, high skill jobs requiring a lot of education and training. In a corrupt country you'll find the same smart and ambitious people but now their jobs will be things that don't appear to pay that well and not require too much like being responsible for issuing building permits or something. On your way home the police stop you and hassle you until you pay a "fine" to be paid on the spot in cash. Maybe you pay it (and be sure to get a receipt so the next cop knows you've already paid), maybe you haggle for an hour or two until they get bored and move on.
This will prevent the country from developing their most valuable industries, these countries will suffer massive brain drain both to other countries and also internally as their best and brightest end up competing for jobs that could be performed by low level staff.
Type 2 Corruption: American Style
The government allocates 3 billion dollars for an infrastructure development project. This is already twice what the project should cost compared to similar projects in other countries, but the labor unions still find ways to bloat the project more, adding all sorts of rules and stipulation that empower their members to do things like play games with overtime where people alternate weeks to be "unavailable" and introduce delays that everyone gets paid for. Various groups trigger environmental reviews and refuse to compromise unless the project is expanded to include things they want. To the surprise of no one, the final cost of the project is more than twice what was originally allocated and completed 10 years behind schedule. In addition some key features needed to be cut, leaving the final product a shadow of what was originally envisioned. When election day comes, the unions push hard for their benefactors. The city is effectively completely controlled by a single party and with less to differentiate candidates in the eyes of the average voter, this support has a decisive effect. Everything is debt financed and the burden is kicked down the road for the next generation to figure out.
This is definitely a huge drag on the economy and quality of life, but by itself does not fundamentally derail the direction of economic activity like the first kind does.
I'd rather the second kind if I had to choose, but both are horrible. In the US it seems that people can only see corruption in the opposite party that they are in, which is very much by design in my opinion. Most of the issues that animate political discussions in the US are in fact intentionally selected to draw attention away from these issues.
Being able to pay for private lawyers is unjust. At the very bare minimum, a fair legal system is a legal system where everyone has the same resources to litigate.
Interpretation: If you’re poor or middle class, Western and Northern Europe is the best place to be, as the government will take better care of you.
If you’re rich (as in $1m+ annual compensation)…maybe the US if you’re interested in paying lesser taxes and keeping more of your money. You’ll pay insurance and education costs out of pocket but you’ll end up with more post-tax income in your pockets than your European counterparts.
If you’re born in Nigeria like me, start weeping because your healthcare budget is $6 per person annually (no, I’m not joking)…haha
US is also far better if you are middle class and want to accomplish things. It’s not a coincidence that pretty much all the successful ambitious startups are in the US, and not in Europe.
> US is also far better if you are middle class and want to accomplish things
I worked my way up to (maybe upper-)middle class and wanted to accomplish things. Not only would this not have been possible in the U.S.A, what I wanted to accomplish wouldn't even have been termed an accomplishment there (it was happiness and contentment).
> It’s not a coincidence that pretty much all the successful ambitious startups are in the US, and not in Europe
It certainly isn't, but that likely means something else to me than you. So far, those "successful ambitious startups" have messed up quality of life, and maybe even global politics.
It's not a co-incidence that that I see "FUCK OFF GOOGLE" stickers everywhere I walk here.
I keep seeing this. I don't get it. You are Swedish too, right?
One, why do you think startups are so good to the avarage person?
Two, Spotify, Ericsson, SAAB, Skype, Thepiratebay, our military in general (we are country of 10mil and we build 3 jet plane models, our subs, and cruisers are renowned) and ofc IKEA. :))
They were all startup mentality once.
Plus how many people really start their own companies. More importantly, WHEN they fail, and they WILL, how will you survive in the usa without massive private savings as there is no safteynet?
It's not just entrepreneurship. European countries are notorious for safeguarding people against mistakes at the cost of everything else. Safeguarding not just meaning 'you can't fall deep into poverty', but also 'we will give you the means to stay at your current level'. That's how you end up with young people earning median household income unable to get a semi-decent apartment while Joe with a family of 4 making the same amount could never afford his current home, but passed the checkpoint before the bar got raised too high.
Great if you're established or the economy is flourishing where you want it. Not so great if important sectors are dwindling and you have yet to establish yourself.
Not in the near term. But in the long term it does: as you can see in the OP historical economic growth is essentially the variable that explains current standard of living.
One of the amazing things from a western perspective about the less developed world is being able to buy a full course of antibiotics without a prescription for a few dollars.
In the US you'd need an appointment, insurance paperwork or no insurance and then the actual meds might be $50-$80, if your doctor insists on prescribing the latest pharmaceuticals.
Not everywhere 'Western' is like the US. Saw my GP a couple of weeks ago and got prescribed antibiotics. Full course was < 10 AUD. No insurance necessary.
In France (and probably the rest of the EU, at least the countries I visited) you cannot get antibiotics freely. They need to be prescribed by your MD. And usually generics.
Cost is 1€.
Whether they are prescribed correctly is another story (France used to be very into prescribing antibiotics for everything, this changed in the last 20 years)
Generics are generally pretty cheap. There are some indications that US doctors are incentivized to prescribe patented meds. I know I've received them when I strongly suspected a generic would have been fine.
>These analyses included several types of prescribing decisions, finding that physicians who received industry payments were more likely to prescribe drugs made by the companies that had paid them over alternatives, had higher prescribing costs, and prescribed relatively more brand-name products over generic alternatives. The positive results of these studies spanned a broad range of physician specialties and drug classes.
In France generics are compulsory (there are some exceptions), otherwise you have some problems with the reimbursement. This is not strong enough but at least this is something.
The pharmaceutics have to provide a generic if it exists, even if the prescription is for another drug (except if the MD explicitly states that the specific drug must be used, with an explanation and they have to report this)
My ex-gf had a condition that needed to be treated with antibiotics and at the time she was between jobs. The doctor made a few calls and her out of pocket for a full prescription was $5.
As a Swede I used to feel this way too, at least to some extent. But then I came to need the system for a period, and that has radically changed my view. It’s not so much that the healthcare and benefits you get are limited, I can accept that. It’s that these systems are full of nasty people who take advantage of their power to satisfy their own psychological needs, at the expense of the vulnerable (read: me 5 years ago).
Now I just have an uneasy feeling of being half-enslaved: I have to pay 60-70% of all the value I create into this system, and if I do fall seriously ill I could very well die on a park bench.
Sadly my conclusion is that I have to get out of here. I don’t think I could take another iteration of this without succumbing to bitterness.
Before you judge me think about the Fundamental Attribution Error: yes, I’m not exactly like you as a person, but more importantly I have information you probably don’t have (i.e. what it’s like to be at the bottom of this kind of society).
One more important difference: It’s terrible to die on a park bench because you can’t support yourself and other people won’t help you. But in my mind it’s worse to die on a park bench because the state extracted 60-70% taxes from you, and now won’t give you even a small portion of that back. To me that’s just inhuman…
I think this is what may be hard to understand if you haven’t experienced it: if you fall far enough in Swedish society you are essentially dehumanized.
>It’s that these systems are full of nasty people who take advantage of their power to satisfy their own psychological needs, at the expense of the vulnerable (read: me 5 years ago).
As a fellow Swede, elaborate?
If what I am going to healthcare for is REAL they take very good care of you. They know when it's serious or not. If you waste their time, gtfo.
That’s only true when they can identify with you. If you have very REAL health problems (e.g. drug addiction or serious mental health issues) you are essentially dehumanized.
Same in the Netherlands. I look around and think "yup, that's why I'm paying taxes".
What I can't fathom though, is what what goes on in England. They pay just as high taxes, and it looks like a dump. Broken roads, rubbish strewn everywhere, take-your-life-in-your-hands "healthcare system", soul crushing training camps posturing as schools, I could go on, but it's essentially every aspect of life. This has nothing to do with Brexit either, as it's been like this since I can remember, going back 30 years.
I moved from a (nominally "first-world") country off this list to a country on the list (first class first-world) near the turn of the century; although I won't rule out moving back, it would have to be an extremely sweet deal to be enticing: I consider myself, not an expat, but an immigrant.
Let me ask, do you have a job with the countries median or average salary? Or you have a western job salary, and therefore you can live it up? Did you bring all your gadgets, pc, laptop, phone etc or did you buy those in the country or ?
What I mean is of course you will have it better in a third world cheap country if you come in with a western salary or even western tools already bought in from elsewhere.
Perhaps I wasn't clear: I immigrated to one of {AT, CA, CH, DE, DK, FI, IS, NL, NO, SE}, none of which are third world cheap countries. (and average salaries are also high in my home country, it's just that those [mean] high salaries, for whatever reasons, do not translate to [modal] high quality of life)
For sure. And that is how it should be. I absolutely love Norway and think that it is a beautiful country. But I also couldn't ever imagine living there because of the weather. So perhaps "quality of life" has much more to it than socialized healthcare and benefits. No?
TLDR: Love Norway and think they're doing it right. But also think that these rankings are broken.
With "quality of life" I mean that I don't feel like I have to protect myself from my peers. Kids growing up poor still get an education. Kids (mostly) have access to some sort of activity keeping them out of trouble. It's not perfect, but it's something.
With regards to the weather: "Winter depression" is a real thing for many (including me), and the health care system is still far better with physical issues then with mental issues.
But there is a safety net in place. When I broke my shoulder in 2017 I did not loose any of my income, and it didn't cost me anything in the hospital (with some exceptions). Still, I would prefer not to break the shoulder again. :D
I live in one of the top four countries on the list. When ongoing EU self-aggrandisement at times reaches unbearable proportions, I like pointing to the other three. Those dysfunctional, non-EU hellholes Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland.
Yes, it does have an element of bragging, but Northern Europe, and particularly the Nordics, do very well and there is no purpose in trying to hide that.
What is interesting to me is that much of what the Nordics do is widely known and freely available to copy for other countries. But they rarely seem to want to, even when they can afford it. Some of what the Nordics do, like free healthcare for all, is expensive and requires strong governments with little corruption. But much of it is - like education the Nordic way - is not necessarily more expensive than the way they do education in Southern and Eastern Europe.
For the vast majority of Americans, turning the US more into a Scandinavian style social democracy would mean an improvement of life. But they don't seem to want it.
For most Southern and Eastern Europeans, taking hints from Scandinavian education with less focus on root learning and grades, and more acceptance - even encouragement of making errors - would increase their kids' chances. But they still spend significant time having kids memorize old poems or historic facts, and they still punish errors and grade even little kids. And most parents seem to want it that way.
I base this on what I read in US media, and what I gathered from having lived in the US, in a Nordic country, in a Mediterranean country and in an Eastern European country.
US Government was on the same trajectory as North European governments from 1930's to 1970s. Then US took radically different path.
> For tax years 1944 through 1951, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 91%, increasing to 92% for 1952 and 1953, and reverting to 91% 1954 through 1963.[39] For the 1964 tax year, the top marginal tax rate for individuals was lowered to 77%, and then to 70% for tax years 1965 through 1981.
I do wish we could all be less tribalistic and take things at face value.
We do many things well in Europe that means many countries here have a high quality of life. You are free to look at that and make those changes in the U.S.A. if you would like the same benefits.
If I come across things that I think the U.S.A. does better, I don't think "oh, those show-off Americans", I wonder why we don't do it as well here.
Having lived in both the US and Canada I could see the difference very clearly. Poor Canadians have it much better than equally poor Americans.
I don’t know what’s the income level that divides better/worse but there are fewer innovative companies and slightly higher taxes so net salaries are relatively lower in tech and other STEM fields.
I still think it’s a good trade off since the society is better off as a whole since its quite common for humans to fall into hard times due to external factors beyond their control.
I have traveled to several countries across the world. Rich, poor and middle income. And I noticed that happiness has a low correlation with how rich the country is or how much the government provides for its citizens. It seems to be much more nuanced than that.
For example Nordic countries rank among the happiest in the world. Yet, anyone who has lived through a cold dark nordic winter will tell you a different story. Similarly, you visit a poor African village and you see people who are somehow genuinely happy and content.
I’ve lived through my fair share of tropical non-winters and cold dark winters
I’m convinced the latter being a time of brooding is just an urban legend. I’ve met a small handful of people who look at winter this way, and every single of one of them switched their mindset if you addressed the actual issue (loneliness itself)
When I do encounter that sentiment. It often seems that person:
1.) lives in a fractured and isolating suburban community, doesn’t know their neighbors, doesn’t leave their house much
2.) grew up in a sunny tropical climate, and is still adjusting to winters
A huge amount of folks in group 2 eventually grow out of it
Folks in group 1 are often unhappy in most places. It feels to me the problem there is moreso their location and lack of community vs the winter. Because they cheer right up when they find a community to enjoy winter with
Growing up in the suburbs of the US South. Huge swathes of people I knew were unhappy with not a single cold breeze flowing by. Have a strong suspicion their unhappiness was the lack of community in their life and not the season
Cold is manageable. But darkness... I mean if I had no other choice, I'm sure I'd manage just fine. But that is like saying if I make an effort and earn enough money I can afford great healthcare anywhere in the world.
> Yet, anyone who has lived through a cold dark nordic winter will tell you a different story.
Anecdotal, but if you're taking Vitamin D, skiing in the forests, enjoying hot chocolate, and alternating between working hard and playing (video games?) hard, the winter can actually be very enjoyable.
I remember before I felt this way, but I think a lot of winter complaints come from people who aren’t adjusted/aware of the rhythm of the year and its associated opportunities.
True. But one has to make an effort and in my experience most people get depressed. And I don't blame them. A few weeks of snow is amazing. But after the third month of snow and shoveling the driveway, most people break.
I noticed about the same in my travels. The happiest people were among the poorest. The difference seemed to be the people - a person surrounded with 10 friends and family members telling stories and jokes doesn't need much. A lonely person making 300k a year can buy it all, but always needs something.
100% agree. It seems money can't buy happiness. And neither can socialized benefits. There is a lot more to life and happiness than what these polls seem to care about.
Come on over. I'll host you in California next winter. Or perhaps we could travel to Sydney in Jan. My sister has a huge house there so the stay would be free. If you still prefer dark/cold winters, I'll buy you a beer. Otherwise you will owe me a beer. Deal?
I'm not saying that summers are bad, I'm saying that winters are fine. Sure, there's SAD which affects some portion of the population, and some things do wind down and we live in different ways at different times of the year. Personally I don't like scorching heat, but I do enjoy the long nights - a definite benefit of being up north!
But you were implying somehow that we're lying on these rankings or what? That winter is so bad it somehow cancels out the fact that we are, a lot of us, largely in freedom from fear and want, to quote your Roosevelt, in a way that is fairly unique in this world? I promise you that it is real.
I don't know what winters in CA look like exactly as I've never been there (probably depends where in CA too, it's a big place), but I lived in the tropics for a few years and I kind of missed European winters. Being too cold isn't brilliant, but being too hot isn't either. I like the alternation between things – kinda breaks stuff up.
Also some food or drinks somehow never taste quite the same in hot temperatures. Red wine is a good example.
I’ve lived for a long time in both Nordic climates (born in Russia, raised in Canada) and southern climates (Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico). I don’t feel absolute temperature affects my happiness levels long term at all.
When it’s a gloomy rainy day, ya I might feel a bit down. But my wife loves those days. She feels cozy. So it’s really subjective.
But long term the baseline changes quickly and I don’t care if it’s winter or summer. I feel equally happy in both conditions.
My experience also. I'd put the weather, cuisine, and the beauty of the environment (either natural or man-made) very very high on this list; health care and education are great I guess but I really don't know how "happy" this makes people on a day-to-day basis.
I've lived through two such cold dark winters, one of which was spent partially above the Arctic circle (24h darkness). I loved it! I wish it could be that way year round. Looking forward to many, many more.
I'm afraid it's basically junk. Once you get past the basics like "access to safe water" and "deaths from lead exposure" you're in highly subjective territory.
"Access to justice," -- does this take into account the fact that in some countries this is available only in principle, for those who can afford to spend $100,000+ on lawyers to pursue a civil case?
"Public sector corruption" -- how is lobbying and the regulatory/corporate revolving-door handled? This can be significantly worse than old-fashioned cash-in-a-briefcase corruption. (Which sometimes has a salubrious effect: https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-uses-of-corruption)
For "how well does a country provide?" this is perhaps a more useful sorting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...