Forbes on the happiest nations

Forbes:https://www.forbes.com/2011/01/19/norway-denmark-finland-business-washington-world-happiest-countries.html#2597e80e472e

“…What’s the most prosperous country in the world? Norway. What’s it got that the rest of the world doesn’t? The biggest bump comes from having the world’s highest per capita GDP of $53,000 a year. Norwegians have the second-highest level of satisfaction with their standards of living: 95% say they are satisfied with the freedom to choose the direction of their lives; an unparalleled 74% say other people can be trusted.

Cynics (particularly those leaving comments on Legatum’s excellent website) say Norway’s ranking is a fluke, that it’s a boring, godless (just 13% go to church) homogeneous place to live with a massive welfare state bankrolled by high taxes. Without massive offshore reserves of oil and gas that it exports to the world through state-controlled Statoil , Norway’s GDP would be far smaller.

And yet joining Norway in the top 10 prosperous countries are its Scandinavian sisters Denmark, Finland and Sweden, with equally small and civilized Switzerland and the Netherlands also in the club. None of these countries are blessed with great hoards of oil and gas.

So what gives? What do these prosperous European nations have in common that can somehow explain their prosperity? Being an electoral democracy is almost a given–of the top 25 most prosperous countries, only Singapore and Hong Kong aren’t.

Being small helps too. Big countries have so many disparate groups (ethnic, geographic, civic) vying against each other that it’s hard for true social cohesion and trust to emerge, and harder to maintain high levels of safety. Among countries with populations of more than 150 million, the United States ranks highest, at No. 10.

What else? They are all borderline socialist states, with generous welfare benefits and lots of redistribution of wealth. Yet they don’t let that socialism cross the line into autocracy. Civil liberties are abundant (consider decriminalized drugs and prostitution in the Netherlands). There are few restrictions on the flow of capital or of labor. Legatum’s scholars point out that Denmark, for example, has little job protection, but generous unemployment benefits. So business owners can keep the right number of workers, while workers can have a safety net while they muck around looking for that fulfilling job…
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