CDZ Happiest countries in world

[Militants]

News from CNN:

Fans of Denmark must be even happier than usual: Denmark has retaken the title of "world's happiest country," knocking Switzerland into second place.

Denmark and Switzerland were closely followed by Iceland, Norway and Finland, according to the World Happiness Report Update 2016, released Wednesday in Rome by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations.

Denmark won the title three of the four times the report has been issued, losing to Switzerland only once.

People in Burundi are the least satisfied with their lives, according to the survey of 156 countries, but residents of Benin (153rd place), Afghanistan (154), Togo (155) and Syria (156) aren't doing much better.

The United States ranked 13th in overall happiness, lagging behind Canada (6), the Netherlands (7), New Zealand (8), Australia (9), Sweden (10), Israel (11) and Austria (12). Germany came in 16th place, while other superpowers -- the United Kingdom (23), Japan (53), Russia (56) and China (83) -- were markedly lower.

Some countries that saw drops suffered economic and political turmoil -- including Greece, Italy and Spain -- while Ukraine's political trouble and violence likely caused a significant drop in happiness there.

World's happiest countries named - CNN.com

 

[Militants]

1.Denmark
2.Switzerland
3.Iceland
4.Norway
5.Finland
6.Canada
7.Netherlands
8.New Zealand
9.Australia
10.Sweden

The Ultimate top ten list.

 

[Militants]

Five countries with F-35 Joint Fighter dealings with the United States . .

 

[Fishlore]

It is no coincidence that these are the most socialized nations among the advanced democracies. It is also worth noting that quite a few of them have kings or queens as head of state, hereditary aristocracies, and a significant millionaire/billionaire class. They are also far better adjusted to modern environmental concers, have tiny murder and gun violence rates, no slum cities and no children with inadequate food. Their kids also get better educations. They all have universal, government regulated heal insurance as well.

With the exception of Norway and Canada, these successful nations do not have significant petroleum reserves. They are quite successful in export trade. Their government debt and taxes as a percent of GDP are in roughly the same brackets as ours. There is really only one conclusion: these countries are much better run.

I think most Americans would be shocked to learn how much better things are managed outside of God's Country. A few reality TV shows about the life of working class families in these countries would be a real eye-opener for most of us.

 

[Tank]

White countries

 

[Fishlore]

You forgot to add "few Jews." If you are going to wave your bigotry about, at least go the Full Monty.

 

[Tank]

Jews are good people

 

[320 Years of History]

It is no coincidence that these are the most socialized nations among the advanced democracies. It is also worth noting that quite a few of them have kings or queens as head of state, hereditary aristocracies, and a significant millionaire/billionaire class. They are also far better adjusted to modern environmental concers, have tiny murder and gun violence rates, no slum cities and no children with inadequate food. Their kids also get better educations. They all have universal, government regulated heal insurance as well.

With the exception of Norway and Canada, these successful nations do not have significant petroleum reserves. They are quite successful in export trade. Their government debt and taxes as a percent of GDP are in roughly the same brackets as ours. There is really only one conclusion: these countries are much better run.

I think most Americans would be shocked to learn how much better things are managed outside of God's Country. A few reality TV shows about the life of working class families in these countries would be a real eye-opener for most of us.

Bold:
I'm sure they would for so few Americans ever leave the country and most or all of what they "know" about any other place is what they see on television, and the majority of that has to do with the politics and government of the country, not what it's like to actually live there.

Off Topic:
Heck, in the PRC, the majority of my American colleagues spend more of their time in the expat areas than they do in the parts of town (towns having 10M+ people) that don't specifically exist to cater to Western expats. I've asked some of them why and been told a number of things, but the most common reply has something to do with their not speaking Chinese and (tacitly) being unwilling to learn how. God only knows why for literally everything in the expat areas is priced with regard to what the merchants think Western expats will be willing to pay, and I can assure you that they are willing to pay double or more what local Chinese are willing to pay for the exact same thing because it's still cheaper than what they pay "back home" pretty much no matter where home is.

For example, a room at the Ritz runs about what you'd expect one to cost -- several hundred bucks a night; an equivalent suite at a comparable Chinese brand hotel runs about $90 per night, less if one's client has a relationship with the hotel. For ~$6 one can buy two grilled chicken legs and thighs, grilled green beans, two ears of corn, grilled mushrooms, and a bowl of freshly made pasta soup with meat and veggies in it, enough to feed two people and still have enough leftover for one person to have a big lunch from it the next day, or one can go to KFC and get a meal for one and have no leftovers. In contrast, in Tokyo, I once (1990s) paid (because I had no choice by time the bill arrived) $72 for a chicken salad sandwich with cucumber and the crust removed from the bread, and a bowl of corn soup. It was and remains the best tasting chicken salad sandwich and corn soup I've ever had, but I also learned from that experience to pay attention to the prices when I'm in high end Tokyo establishments. LOL

I didn't speak Mandarin either when I first began to work in the PRC, but I speak it well enough to at least shop, go out to eat, or make simple conversation in bars and clubs. (It took about three weeks of immersion on the weekends and after work -- going out to eat, going shopping, meeting people in bars, etc. -- to get to just that point. It took longer to know what Chinese folks were saying in reply when it was more than yes or no. LOL) It's a super easy language to speak. Reading and writing it is a wholly different matter, but as an expat, one rarely, if ever, must do so. In fact, I can't think of any time I've ever needed to read Hanzi characters, and I know I've never had to write it.

A typical menu in a Chinese restaurant in China. (The prices are in yuan (元)/RMB; ~6 RMB = 1 USD.) The items shown are appetizers.

Here are some entree choices from a different menu.

Who needs to know what it is? You can see what it is in the picture. If you have to have a general sense, just point at the photo and ask a simple question (phonetic spelling, not actual pinyin):

• Beef -- 牛肉 -- Is it beef? --> Nyu-row ma?
• Chicken -- 鸡肉 -- Is it chicken? --> Gee-row ma?
• Lamb -- 羊肉 -- Is it lamb? -->Yang-row ma?
• Fish -- 鱼肉 -- Is it fish? --> Yu-row ma?
• Rabbit -- 兔肉 -- Is it rabbit? Tu-row ma?
• Duck -- 鸭肉 -- Is it rabbit? Ya-row ma?
• Pork -- 猪肉 -- Is it pork? Jew-row ma?

Looking at the above Hanzi characters, I bet that if I told you "row" means meat, and "ma" is just what you put at the end of a sentence to turn it into a question, you'd figure out the rest in no time and there's nothing at all prohibiting you from learning how to say each type of meat. The phrase for "is it?" is pronounced jer-sher... the "jer" sounding like "Je" of Jehovah and the "sher" of wisher. Just soften out the "r" a bit and you've got it.

The reason Mandarin is easy for Americans to speak is because there are only two sounds in the language that aren't found much if at all in English, that is, English as spoken by Americans who have good diction and pronunciation, regardless of their American accent.

 

[Militants]

Isn't China lucky with food ?? And Japan and United States.

 

[Unkotare]

... It's a super easy language to speak. ...
The reason Mandarin is easy for Americans to speak is ....

No, it's not. That is a ridiculously ignorant claim. People sometimes make absurd generalizations about languages until they actually learn more about them.

 

[320 Years of History]

Isn't China lucky with food ?? And Japan and United States.

I don't know if I'd call it luck. I will say that along with Japan, it's the only place I've been where I've never had bad food, even when I had no idea of what I was ordering.

I think experience has more to do with Chinese food than anything else. They've been, as a culture, feeding people for some 5000 years. You have to figure that in that time period, chefs and cooks have learned a thing or two about what tastes good and what doesn't. LOL

 

[Militants]

Thinks Japan have war all time in theirs history. Maybe lucky military in Japan and they can attack's Australia if they will or Malaysia or in South America but not United States still over the war between Japan vs United States last 70 year. But I ranked Japan in top ten strongest military of worlds military cuts. Maybe Navy can attack first or is it land forces in attack's ??

 

[Unkotare]

?

 

[Militants]

Yes, even the Army in this treat. United States is happy to won in Iraq 2003 and 2004 . .

 

[koshergrl]

They aren't the happiest countries in the world, unless suicide is the ultimate expression of happiness.

 

[koshergrl]

World suicide rates by country

Country Suicide rates per 100,000 people
Austria 13.8
Belgium 18.4
Britain 6
Canada 10.2
Czech Republic 12.7
Denmark 11.3
Finland 16.5
France 14.6
Germany 10.3
Greece 2.9
Hungary 21.0
Iceland 10.4
Italy 5.5
Japan 19.4
Luxembourg 9.5
Mexico 4.4
Netherlands 7.9
New Zealand 11.9
Norway 10.9
Poland 13.8
Portugal 8.7
Slovak Republic 10.9
South Korea 24.7
Spain 6.3
Sweden 11.1

 

[oldsoul]

1.Denmark
2.Switzerland
3.Iceland
4.Norway
5.Finland
6.Canada
7.Netherlands
8.New Zealand
9.Australia
10.Sweden

The Ultimate top ten list.

I wonder how many of those have a manufacturing or agricultural base large enough to support themselves. Canada maybe, I doubt the others have the resources nessicary. That said, we can learn alot about how to keep people happy, from these countries... Keep the people fat and dumb, they will be happy as long as they don't have to work too hard...
By the way, when was the last big break-through that came out of any of those countries? I would rather be a little less happy, but be able to defend ourselves, feed ourselves, and have a diverse enough economy to wheather most economic storms....
Just sayin'...Happiness is not the only goal worth striving for. Balance is the key...everything in moderation, including happiness.

 

[320 Years of History]

... It's a super easy language to speak. ...
The reason Mandarin is easy for Americans to speak is ....

No, it's not. That is a ridiculously ignorant claim. People sometimes make absurd generalizations about languages until they actually learn more about them.

That's not at all ignorant. I began working in the PRC in 2008 and taught myself how to speak it then. I don't ever have to speak it at work because I have a translator, but I practice here and there and I have learned to understand more and more of it. Mine (in this post and the prior one) are assertions based on the comparative ease with which I learned to speak Mandarin vs. that for learning French, Japanese Spanish, German and Dutch. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Just thinking one way or another isn't the only reason.

It may have escaped your purview, but over half the Chinese population is functionally illiterate, yet they can all speak Mandarin just fine. That alone suggests the language cannot be that difficult to learn to speak. I cannot say the same of functionally illiterate native speakers of English. Heck, I can't even say that of folks who presumably have learned to read and write English, so much of accurately communicating one's fully in English being dependent on correctly using tense, mood, case, connotation, person, punctuation (which doesn't always effectively convey the meaning carried by vocal intonation) etc. One need only look around on USMB to find ample evidence of that.

Additionally, there are scores of objective reasons why Chinese is friggin' easy to learn to speak.

1. Chinese, like any other language, is just made up of repeated patterns, which can be practised and learnt.
2. Verbs don’t conjugate in Chinese.
3. There are no noun cases in Chinese.
4. There are no ‘irregular’ nouns/verbs in Chinese
5. If you can learn whether a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter in another language, then why should remembering the tones for a word in Mandarin be any more difficult?
6. You don’t need to be able to sing to pronounce Chinese tones. (But being a good singer will help you meet people because karaoke is very popular in China, and lots of Chinese people can sing pretty well, especially considering that they are amateurs.)
7. All languages have intonation, you use it when you raise your voice to ask a question, therefore tones are not that difficult for anybody to use.
8. Even if you make mistakes with tones, people can generally still understand.
9. Like most other places on the planet, it is still perfectly possible to communicate even if your pronunciation is not completely right.
10. China has set down a standard for the language and pronunciation – Putonghua – which makes a learner’s life easier.
11. Tones are not hard if you copy native speakers and recordings as closely as you can, and build good habits.
12. Cantonese also has tones, but people just learn them by repeating and ‘getting used to them’. If you ask somebody from Hong Kong which tone a character is, they often don’t know.
13. Tones are actually very familiar things; it's just that in the West, we think of them as inflections and stress instead of as tones. Their actual implementation to convey meaning is no different than what we use in the West to say things like Polish and polish, or to convert a statement into a question by raising the tone of our voice at the end of the sentence.
14. Chinese teachers and broadcasters are tested for perfect pronunciation, so you have good models to learn from.
15. There is a standard system of Romanisation for Mandarin, Pinyin, used in all new dictionaries and courses. Pronunciation is easier to learn from the Roman alphabet.
16. There are many websites and apps with pronunciation audio, which makes it easy to practice problem syllables.
17. Pinyin follows a logical system, once you know it, you can pronounce any character.
18. There are fewer phonemes in Mandarin than in other languages.
19. Mandarin only has 4 tone contours, some languages have more.
20. Chinese people are very willing to speak Mandarin to foreigners (this is my experience), and are also very patient with learners. Tons of Chinese folks below the age of 35 know English too, but they are often not confident in their speaking skills when one is a stranger to them. With someone whom they know, they are more than happy to give it a shot, especially if one tries to use one's Chinese with them. Without exception, my Chinese colleagues and clients speak better English, by far, than I speak Mandarin.
21. The Chinese will encourage learners by complimenting even the most simple efforts to say things in Mandarin. I heard, "Oh, your Chinese very good" tons of times when all I said was "thank you." Interestingly, now that my Chinese is passable for basic daily life situations, I don't hear that so much. LOL Folks just talk to me like I'm Chinese now.
22. Even if you just know some basic phrases, numbers and vocabulary, it will get you a long way in China.
23. Once you start opening your mouth and practising Chinese, you will actually find that you progress in it very quickly.

The stuff above is just what I can think of quickly.

As I said before. To just learn to speak Mandarin well enough to do basic stuff -- shop, chat in bars, go out to eat, etc. -- it's very easy. If you feel compelled to have a discussion about art, religion and politics, well, that's going to take a larger vocabulary. If you want to read it, there's more to learn, and writing it will require learning to read plus learning to write it and practicing doing so.

 

[320 Years of History]

1.Denmark
2.Switzerland
3.Iceland
4.Norway
5.Finland
6.Canada
7.Netherlands
8.New Zealand
9.Australia
10.Sweden

The Ultimate top ten list.

I wonder how many of those have a manufacturing or agricultural base large enough to support themselves. Canada maybe, I doubt the others have the resources nessicary. That said, we can learn alot about how to keep people happy, from these countries... Keep the people fat and dumb, they will be happy as long as they don't have to work too hard...
By the way, when was the last big break-through that came out of any of those countries? I would rather be a little less happy, but be able to defend ourselves, feed ourselves, and have a diverse enough economy to wheather most economic storms....
Just sayin'...Happiness is not the only goal worth striving for. Balance is the key...everything in moderation, including happiness.

Bold:
Working too hard = often doing work one doesn't like to do.

When one likes the work they must do, one rarely minds doing it and even less often considers however much of it they do to be the same as "working too hard." I don't think anyone anywhere actually likes working too hard.

The trick, which isn't really a trick or something that's hard to accomplish, is to position oneself to get paid for doing that which one is keen to do in the first place. In my years of living, it seems to me that most people all but ensure they will have to work doing things they don't like to do. That despite the fact that in the U.S. everyone is, from an early age onward, afforded the opportunity to do the former instead of the latter. There are a lot of reasons why folks do that, but, IMO, very few of them are good reasons.

 

[Wyatt earp]

1.Denmark
2.Switzerland
3.Iceland
4.Norway
5.Finland
6.Canada
7.Netherlands
8.New Zealand
9.Australia
10.Sweden

The Ultimate top ten list.

And all of them rely on the US tax payers and military to protect them and their oil