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Why Finland comes out on top on happiness and more
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Los Angeles Times
Posted: April 22nd, 2019
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ollila-finland-h...
When the U.N.s 2019 World Happiness Report came out last month, Finland ranked on top for the second year in a row. Small Finland about 75% the size of California with just 5.5 million people consistently trounces the United States and other developed nations on ratings of life satisfaction, health, safety, governance, community and social progress. The underlying reason Finns are faring so well is because we have a different mindset about success one thats based on equity and community. In the United States, happiness and success are perceived as individual pursuits, indeed, even competitive ones. In Finland, success is a team sport. While Finland is by no means struggling financially, its GDP per capita is lower than those of its neighboring Nordic countries, and much lower than that of the U.S. The difference is, in the words of Meik Wiking of the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, the Finns are good at converting wealth into well-being. The more equal a society is, the happier its citizens are. Finland is ranked among the most equal of all the 36 OECD countries. This ... helps support overall high levels of trust. Finns trust one another and, perhaps more impressively, they trust their government. And although Finns pay some of the highest taxes worldwide, there is a transparency to the Finnish system that many other countries lack. Every year the government makes public the tax data of all its citizens and corporations on what has come to be called National Envy Day.
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