Happiness is on the Wane in the US, UN Global Report Finds (theguardian.com) 382
From a report on The Guardian, shared by five anonymous readers: Happiness in the US is declining and is expected to continue on a downward path, with Donald Trump's policies forecast to deepen the country's social crisis. The US has slipped to 15th place in the World Happiness Report 2017, produced by the United Nations. The world's economic superpower is well behind top-ranked Norway, although it remains above Germany in 17th place, the UK in 19th, and France in 32nd. Norway knocked Denmark off the top spot as the world's happiest country, with Iceland and Switzerland rounding out the top four. The report's authors stress, however, that the top four are so close that changes are not statistically significant. The next tier of countries are regular leaders in international happiness surveys: Finland is in fifth place, followed by the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. The world's "unhappiest" countries are all in the Middle East and Africa: war-stricken Yemen and Syria feature in the bottom 10, with Tanzania, Burundi and Central African Republic making up the final three.
Sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funny. I don't recall the entire civilized world protesting President Obama, like they are with Donald.
Set logic (Score:2, Troll)
Civilized E Protesting & Uncivilized E Protesting !-> Civilized ^ Protesting != Civilized.
Anyway, it's going to be kinda hard staying happy when the elderly neighbors get taken away on stretchers for lack of preventative care. A tax break ain't gonna be much of a balm for that.
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I wouldn't call many Trump followers civilized. Neither is Trump. As for happiness, there are people who are unhappy in the US who can either illegally enter Canada as refugees, or legally move to Canada. In doing so, they will be removing unhappy people from America and, once they are in Canada and happy, add to the number of happy people in Canada.
Win - win.
Re:It's a good sign. Shows he's working for the US (Score:5, Insightful)
he's actually putting the interests of the USA before those of foreign nations
Sure, if our interests are cutting education funding, cutting the EPA, cutting elderly food programs, cutting women's rights, cutting healthcare, and increasing racism and military spending. Nothing will make America great again like a generation of stupid kids, sick and hungry people, and weapons.
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Those who value greed more than happiness, will be unhappy. Sad but true and note they will make all those around them unhappy too, that greed attacks the happiness of others.
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"Source of significant and easy funding?" So you're going to finally stop subsidizing Israel's war efforts? Hey, that could certainly incentivize Israel to finally make peace instead of faking it just enough to keep people thinking that maybe there's a hope in hell that Israel wants peace.
As for Trump's claim that Germany needs to pay the US more for defence, Germany doesn't pay the US for defence. Trump doesn't understand how NATO works. Same as he doesn't understand the difference between truth and lies.
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I'm sure he'll get around to all of that when he gets back from his taxpayer funded golf trips.
It is funny that the people that complain about Donald playing golf are the same people that complain when he stays at his desk and gets stuff done.
Personally, I think the more time he spends playing golf the better.
There was a famous meeting while Eisenhower was president to discuss sending American troops into Vietnam following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. He cut the meeting short and left because he had a golf game, and the troops never went in. If LBJ was more dedicated to his game, the Vietnam
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Wait, you think Trump is only staying in office for 8 years? Shoot, he's already taking a crap on everything else. I was thinking he was going to take a crap on presidential term limits as well. We may never be free of Trump! :-(
He's 70. And looks like he's up for an aneurism any day.
The bad news is that the real president (Bannon) might find another marionette to operate.
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Something stinks (Score:2, Insightful)
Happiness in the US is declining and is expected to continue on a downward path, with Donald Trump's policies forecast to deepen the country's social crisis
This line should tell you everything you need to know about the related article.
Look, I get it. Your candidate didn't win and it's upsetting to you. However, throwing little hissy fits every chance you get only serves to reinforce WHY folks had the temerity to vote for trump; the behavior of Hillary supporters ( and, let's face it, Hillary herself ) so
Re:Something stinks (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh and by the way I'd like to point out that Angela Merkel was called 'Leader of the Free World' by the press last week; that's about the worst black-eye the U.S. could possibly get so far as I'm concerned; the destruction of the credibility of the U.S. is now more or less complete. We're right down there, now, in the muck with so many African and South American countries, that seem to have a regime change every other week. It'll likely take many decades for us to fix our reputation, if it's even possible to do anymore.
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. We're right down there, now, in the muck with so many African and South American countries, that seem to have a regime change every other week.
Were that true, then Trump would have been disposed by now. So saying crap like this undermines your point.
Regardless, I can take this as the joke it is because in the 20+ years I've been voting I have never had a candidate worth voting for. They've all been horrible. Yet every damn election cycle we pretend they're some holy figure come to save us, only to say
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Get over yourself.
The only reason anyone ever called America the leader of the free world was ironically to point out how over inflated the american ego is.
The fact that you took this seriously just goes to show how delusional you really are.
Any credibility the US had was destroyed by bush and nobel peace prize bomber Barack Sadam Hussein Osama bin Laden Obama.
Re:Something stinks (Score:4, Funny)
What exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's not Amateur Night on Planet Earth anymore, things have gotten terribly, horribly real,"
Poor people are living longer, earning more, eating more, all over the world. There are fewer large wars.Sure there's a few existential problems around, but you are living in a very successful century so far as homo sapiens is concerned.
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That's often the case just before a huge (and I mean yuuuuge, folks) one breaks out.
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We've been in WWIII since 1998, and you claim there's fewer large wars?
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Re:What exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Poor people are living longer, earning more, eating more, all over the world
Not in the United States.
Life expectancy in the US is declining. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Also, real income went down in the 2008 recession, and have not recovered for anyone not in the top 2% of incomes.
Also, food insecurity is up by quite a bit among the poor.
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If you need a federal government to make you happy, your problem may be something entirely different and far deeper [youtube.com]
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Oh and by the way I'd like to point out that Angela Merkel was called 'Leader of the Free World' by the press last week; that's about the worst black-eye the U.S. could possibly get so far as I'm concerned; the destruction of the credibility of the U.S. is now more or less complete.
So lets pull out of Europe and see how this new German leadership goes. As near as I can tell they haven't been able to solve the Greek debt problem nor the Syrian refugee problem despite both having gone on for years. I'd say that their leadership record doesn't look so hot recently.
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Russia does not have the resources nor technology to conquer Europe. They can bomb us into the stone age, but so we can bomb them.
And why would they? They gain more from Europe by simple trade.
If the US pulls out from Europe, they basically lose the most important bases to attack/control the "middle east".
Pulling out of the NATO, well, then you probably need some new trade agreements, too. Lets see how long a Nimitz class carrier can operate without spare parts from Germany, rofl. (Less than 40 days ... for
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The "Greek Debt Problem" can only be solved by the Greek.
The "Syrien Refugee Problem" can only be solved by removing the terror regime in Syria. And killing IS(IS).
Why you think Germany or the EU had a magic button it just could switch to solve one of the two problems is beyond me. Germany or the EU per se has no "Syrian Refugee Problem". The total amount of refugees is about 4million. Over 3 million immigrated into the EU. The EU has now about 750 million inhabitants. So this is roughly 1 refugee per 200 E
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All that tells you is what the people polled think, not what the rest of the nation thinks.
Yes, and the people polled were the politically active conservatives. Your claim was that people who voted for Trump are now regretting their decision. No they're not. They're very happy with what Trump is doing.
They wanted illegal Mexican rapists deported. Illegal Mexican rapists are being deported. They're very happy.
They wanted TPP killed. TPP is killed. They're very happy.
They wanted conservative Supreme Court justices. Gorsuch got something like a 94% approval rate at CPAC. They're very happy.
They want
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Reminder: 'Politically active conservatives' are not the entire 300,000,000 citizens of the United States, and by the way only roughly HALF the country vot
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Considering the participation rate in voting it probably was just about 1/3rd ...
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So the nonsense that happiness is expected to trend downwards is...exaggeration at least.
Is it?
Hint: Are Trump's policies going to bring the USA closer to countries making the top of this report? It seems pretty obvious he is going in the opposite direction.
Re:Something stinks (Score:4, Interesting)
I didn't see in TFA any mention of *who* and how has forecast that Donald Trump's policies will deepen the country's social crisis. But I've noticed the sources The Guardian quoted in the past were those who forecast Hillary's victory and people like the Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman whose forecast was "if Trump wins the market will crash and will *never* recover".
Culture War Rages [Re:Something stinks] (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than argue about which side is the most evil/bad/mean/incompetent, let's agree the culture war in the USA is intensifying, which is a big source of tension in the USA for both sides. Remember, Texas talked of secession after Obama's election win.
Progressives want bigger gov't-backed safety nets and education opportunities, and conservatives believe that the private sector will make everyone's boat float higher if the gov't gets out of the way such that they don't need a safety net. (And there's also climate change, abortion, pollution, etc. etc.)
I believe heavy-trickle-down is kaflooey* in modern times, but realize I'm not going to change conservative minds on that such that both sides are stuck at an impasse, thinking the other side is getting in the way.
Perhaps it's time to split the USA rather than waste resources and anger on gridlock and seesaw politics.
* The benefits of increased economic activity from lower taxes and deregulation almost always have flowed UPward since about 1980, not outward. Automation, offshoring, and the death of unions changed things toward the 1% compared to pre-1980. Trickle down ain't work anymore; the TD model is broken and leaking oil.
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Exactly. Trends like that don't happen overnight nor are they accurately measured that way, so none of this is currently indicative of "Trump's America".
What grinds down people's spirits? -increased violent crime, rioting, racial strife, an increased welfare state, a stagnate economy, etc.. most or all of which worsened over the past several years.
Besides, this is from The Guardian. Might as well be posting something from Breitbart, if you wanted the opposite opinion. Not biased at all, nope... Now,
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The five anonymous readers were BeauHD, BeauHD,BeauHD,BeauHD and you guessed it BeauHD.
He's proposing massive tax cuts for the rich (Score:3, Interesting)
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Politicians continue to ignore the root cause and that is sky rocketing health care costs.
Meh... (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Sore loser" Trump? In what alternate reality are you living?
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"Sore loser" Trump?
Have you noticed that Trump just won't shut up about the 2016 elections?
In what alternate reality are you living?
The present. What about you?
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As a Maoist conservative, if there isn't a candidate conservative enough, you vote liberal socialist. Not very interesting
I vote moderates, I don't vote for extremists.
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Just stop with "I am really, really was a conservative that voted Clinton". No one believes you were a conservative ever.
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Just stop with "I am really, really was a conservative that voted Clinton".
That's what I did after being a Republican for 20 years.
No one believes you were a conservative ever.
Both Obama and Hillary are right of center if you examined their policies closely (i.e., co-opting the Republican like Bill Clinton did with welfare). It's one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders came out of the woodwork, why the progressives wanted someone more liberal than Hillary, and why the Russians interfered with the elections to get Trump elected.
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Translation: you're a fence sitter who doesn't care much as long as it doesn't impact you.
Nope. I voted in every election since 1988 when I came of age.
Re:Meh... (Score:4, Funny)
Irrelevant self-aggrandizement. You must be a narcissist. This explains so much.
According to Mayo Clinic: "Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism."
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/basics/definition/CON-20025568 [mayoclinic.org]
Uh, no. You're confusing me with Trump.
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Well, he is the president of the US, so he's kinda sorta important.
Being POTUS haven't stopped Trump from being Trump by sabotaging his own agenda with baseless accusations to sooth his insecure ego.
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Might wanna look at the way the nation voted last year champ.
I'm well aware of how the nation voted last year. Doesn't change my statement regarding the Republican Party.
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Nothing in your post history reflects anything other than firmly left of center in your politics.
As if my comment history on Slashdot is an accurate measurement of my politics.
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And your statement is proof that the DNC is dead.
The DNC is alive and well and looking forward to 2018, which might be a huge problem for the RNC if the Republicans do/don't repeal ObamaCare.
The arrogant billionaires appointed Empress Hilary [...]
Hillary was elected, not appointed.
[...] and never noticed that the blue collar democrats realized she had no values in common with them.
Have you seen the Trump budget proposal? Blue-collar Democrats AND Republicans are going to get rimmed to pay for right-wing priorities that have no basis in reality.
NO WAY! (Score:2, Insightful)
A culturally homogenized society is happier than a very diverse one where conflicts is bound to happen! NO WAY!
In other news water is wet...
Re:NO WAY! (Score:5, Informative)
Is that really true though? The report has an entire chapter on "The Key Determinants of Happiness and Misery", and the authors don't seem to think that multiculturalism is something that makes people sad. Why do you think that?
Japan and South Korea are probably the most culturally-homogeneous and highly-developed nations around. They sit at 51st and 56th place, respectively. Meanwhile Switzerland speaks four different languages and are the 4th happiest in the world. Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all of which are just as multicultural as the USA, are in the top 10.
I'd argue that Japan and South Korea's unhappiness comes because of, and not in spite of, their strict cultural homogeneity.
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To be fair in Australia it is a happy day when you get to work in the morning without being killed by some dangerous animal, angry weather, or the sun itself along the way.
I was happy (Score:2, Funny)
until I discovered how unhappy I should be.
Happiness is declining (Score:2)
And yet the cure is available online: https://www.youtube.com/playli... [youtube.com]
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And yet the cure is available online: https://www.youtube.com/playli... [youtube.com]
Here too. [wikipedia.org]
Hooray! MAGA (Score:2, Insightful)
Happiness in the US is declining and is expected to continue on a downward path, with Donald Trump's policies forecast to deepen the country's social crisis.
Make America Grim Again - or something like that...
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Make America Grim Again - or something like that...
Make America Greatly Depressed.
But...but... (Score:3)
But, we chose the entertaining choice! How could we not be entertained? Trump is the only person I can think of that would be more absurd as a president than William Shatner when in-character.
I think the problem might be the same with someone trying to make a sequel of the 1950's, without understanding it, and trying to fix that by just going completely over the top in terms of ambition, trying to make up for a completely broken budget process. It's entertaining in a sense - but sort of a sad entertainment.
The folks that supported trump did seem to do it out of a sense of ironic satisfaction rather than actually something they wanted.
Turns out though, it's not a sequel to the 1950's, it's actually a sequel to the Robber Barons, it just couldn't be marketed that way, because that's only ever been popular with a small audience.
Ryan Fenton
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Inflammatory headline (Score:5, Insightful)
A more fitting headline would've been "Happiness is on the wane in developed nations. Which might actually help explain the rise of nationalism in recent elections.
Re:Inflammatory headline (Score:4, Insightful)
A more fitting headline would've been "Happiness is on the wane in developed nations. Which might actually help explain the rise of nationalism in recent elections.
No, you're messing up the narrative! Here's how to spin this: Trump is causing a drop in happiness across the world, especially among Italians and Spaniards, who had such high hopes for Hillary Clinton. Just stick to the narrative, or people might start thinking for themselves.
Re:Inflammatory headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Trump isn't the cause, he's a symptom. People feel threatened, they get tribal and mean... and they tend to do stupid things that make the problems causing them to feel threatened get worse.
Trump was elected over economic fear. Fear of the 1% (whose frankly ludicrous levels of wealth get thrown in our face by the media daily... and those aren't even the richest tier of people), fear of foreigners stealing our jobs.
So... vote in Trump to keep out the foreigners and stop the 1%ers in Washington. Which damages the economy and it turns out the kind of guy you vote in to the top position actually wants to line his own pockets and those of his (significant) supporters... the 1%.
It's a global problem because the same socioeconomic forces are driving the same mob reactions around the world.
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Very good! Nice cut through the partisan, First World Problems [youtube.com] bullshit.
Trump may not make Americans happy (Score:5, Funny)
but he makes me really, really happy to be Canadian!
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One of the reasons Canadians tend to be happy, is they don't read the comments.
Try it, it works.
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I've vote/fight to join the USA in a heartbeat...
I guess we will be on opposite sides of the civil war.
Northern countries fare better (Score:2)
Even with climate of extremely cold winters, top 5 are all countries from cold climate. Yet countries that are gifted good climate are well behind. Looks like folks appreciate more what they got if it is scarce.
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That's because you will freeze to death in cold climates if you don't look out for one another.
Living in a place where a blizzard can strand you in your car tends to make people a lot more considerate of others. Just last week about 300 people got stranded on a highway in Montreal: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... [www.cbc.ca]
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No one remembers that ad ya old fart...
"Sips Bartles and James"
As usual, a garbage survey. (Score:2, Interesting)
article talks about many countries (Score:2)
so article talks of many countries, some with greater happiness drop than U.S.A., but oooo it's Trump's doing for USA?
tards
USA happiness index will rise (Score:2, Interesting)
The USA will rise again. Unfortunately, that's because the damage Trump et. al will do will damage lots of other countries so they sink. Basically, everyone will get more unhappy which will make the USA look less bad.
Slashing the State Department budget coupled with a crazy hike in military spending... you'd have to be stupid not to see that Bannon et. al. mean to lead the United States into war.
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It is well known homogeneous cultures, with as little income disparity as possible, report highest levels of contentedness.
The "most diversity makes things best" line of reasoning is never based in reality. Of course - the people screaming at the rest of the country for more diversity - Seattle and Portland - are some of the least diverse cities in the nation.
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Then again, if you get too homogeneous, you end up with hereditary diseases (i.e. asheknazi jews like me), or their intellectual parallels (i.e. every little crappy town out there, and to some extent the reason that the Seattle and Portland people are so disconnected from reality).
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Your argument relies on an arbitrary selection of the criteria, namely the top 10. If you expand it to the top 20, all countries which are not far behind the leaders, there are several quite diverse countries including the US and UK.
Pretty much all anti-immigration/white supremacy arguments are just this kind of abuse of statistics.
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Please visit Geneva. Because of the concentration of international organisations, it's one of the most diverse place in the World.
There is close to 1/3 of foreign living or cross-border working in Switzerland.
Switzerland certainly enjoy a stable political system in the World since 1848, and this is the most important point to me. The process of getting a new president is done every year in less than one hour without any glitch. Compare that to almost all others "democratic" counties, especially this time...
Re:TLDR: UN says more whites = happiness? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, maybe they just found a nice balance between capitalism and socialism, unlike the rest of the world.
Here in the USA, we are taught to "work hard and play hard", which is a recipe for getting worn out both physically and mentally. We have to keep up with the Jones' both at work and at home.
The "work hard and play hard" mantra could be said to be from the "protestant work ethic", or could be from plutocrat propaganda, being that working hard and playing hard gets the plutocrats the most profits: employees that work their asses off, then get home and spend their asses off on the plutocrats' hyped products and fashions.
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Re:TLDR: UN says more whites = happiness? (Score:5, Informative)
Or, maybe they just found a nice balance between capitalism and socialism, unlike the rest of the world.
For very socialist values of balance, at least here in Norway. According to the world bank we have third lowest Gini coefficient in the world, meaning our income is extremely evenly distributed by international standards. There is not a lot of really poor nor very wealthy people, with notable exceptions of course but looking at income stats if you divide into 10% slices the 80-90% slice make just under twice as much as the 10-20%. The best paid executives in Statoil, our huge mostly state owned company the CEO makes about $1.7 million a year. If you go to a similar foreign oil giant like say Schlumberger the CEO makes $18.6 million a year. Working at McD you earn ~$15/hour the first four months if you're 18-20, after that or from day one if you're older ~$18.50/hour. And you don't need health insurance or a 401(k) on top of that, the public healthcare system and public pensions are entirely adequate. Granted you can't directly compare prices, but you live okay on one "minimum wage" job. So at McD you make $35k/year and your average doctor makes $95k/year, the tax system makes the difference even less in practice. But we want it. And a very high percent of the population works, that helps. It's still an odd country.
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Cite some sources. Also, are you talking about immigration, or are you talking about ethnic roots. You don't even discuss trends. Your "quick looking" isn't terribly helpful. Also useful to a discussion about "happiness" might be how ethnic identities are perceived or maintained. Does the society lean towards a mosaic or melting pot? And how relevant is that? Seems a little more complicated than "quick looking" allows for. If you don't have the time to add actual data to a conversation, (like me), w
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Well, you can prove anything if you get to make up the categories, but seriously, lumping Europe with Asia? 60% of the world's population lives in Asia, and 15% of the world's population lives in Europe. So it's hardly amazing that if one of your categories comprises 75% of the people on the Earth that there there doesn't appear to be a lot of diversity. Your friends could include a Pakistani, Tibetan, Uygher, Eskimo, Finn, Scot, Basque and Serb and they wouldn't be a "diverse" group.
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So...the UN is telling us that the way to increase happiness in your country is to make it whiter and less diverse, then? Was the lead author a guy named Adolf, perhaps?
Actually, ethnic diversity has increased considerably in Norway in recent years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's been free falling since 2007.
No comment on who was the American President for 89% of that time...
Re:Oh no that sucks! (Score:5, Funny)
"I'll be so sad when they cut funding for useless nuclear fusion research, LOL, we don't need another chernobyl. We should spend the money on copyright protection instead, crack down on linux ripping off windows!"
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwvlbJ0h35A [youtube.com]
If you need a federal government to make you happy, I think your problem is far deeper than just who was elected President.
Re:Oh no that sucks! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's completely and utter non-sense. The U.S. Federal Government's primary reason to exist is to enable the pursuit of happiness. They help build roads which allow you to move from place to place, they create law enforcement frameworks so you have consistency across the union.
In more recent history they cleaned up the rivers and lakes that were so polluted they would catch on f'in fire. This hate of government bs is what got us where we are with our current President. It is stupid, government can does certain things well, there are certainly things it should not do as well. That is why we have a legislature and a Supreme court and even a President.
I hate this I got mine so screw everybody else crap. We are by far the richest country in the world and yet we are gonna make our children go hungry because we somehow can't afford to feed them? We are gonna kick millions off healthcare and discourage younger people from obtaining insurance and penalizing them if they get the balls to get try and get it so we are gonna kill more and more hospitals as uninsured people show up again.
Re:Oh no that sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's NO evidence they commit more crimes than the average population, and even less by some estimates. Most come here to work; they can commit crimes in their home country better because they know the language, if crime were their goal.
The crime angle on that is a Fake Problem. Bad Trump.
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There's NO evidence they commit more crimes than the average population, and even less by some estimates. Most come here to work; they can commit crimes in their home country better because they know the language, if crime were their goal.
The crime angle on that is a Fake Problem. Bad Trump.
Actually by definition anyone who is here illegally is a criminal. But ignoring that there is still a *huge* amount of imported crime. The usual lie is to group all immigrants together when looking at crime since the legal ones generally do commit fewer crimes. The legal ones pull down the average. The MS13 gang, ~70k strong in the US, is largely a product of illegal immigration. But keep preaching that they are all here to helpfully mow your lawn and have no downsides.
Immigration can be a net win (ie
Re:Oh no that sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, average population, period.
If T wanted to reduce crime in general, which should be the logical goal, he should ask, what's the best way to reduce crime per federal dollars spent? I've seen no evidence that spending more fed dollars on JUST illegal immigrants is more effective than spending on it on general law enforcement, such as more FBI staff, systems, and/or more cops.
He's just obsessed with "outsiders" as a personality quirk. It's not based on any sound crime-solving monetary/resource allocation logic or model. I don't think he'd have the patience to review any such study or model with a critical eye. By all appearances, it's his gut tribalism instinct driving his decision process, not math, models, and logic. You are welcome to demonstrate he has given crime-fighting resource allocation some real thought...
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Ahah! So it's not really about crime itself, but a political power battle to you. Your true colors are shining through.
And I'm saying this is why the Dems are so recalcitrant about stopping any flow of 3rd worlders into the US. Because they vote Democrat. Imagine if there were a magic portal from Fundieland, where productive safe white fundamentalist Christians were being persecuted and killed by evil atheists. So if we started taking Fundieland refugees and shoveling them by the millions into California, changing the voting demographics there to Republican, I guarantee all of this "refugees welcome" crap would turn around
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By definition they have committed more crimes than the average population by entering the country illegally.
It's not a crime to enter the country illegally, unless you have been previously deported. This, BTW, is why lawyers and other people who are picky about accuracy when it comes to legal issues call them "undocumented immigrants", rather than "illegal immigrants". That's not just a kinder or more politically correct phrasing... it's the most accurate description.
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