snowjeeper

lol, it's not an insult it's a fact. the dude can't reason worth a nickel.

killclimbz

Let's just not resort to calling him a "dumbshit". It's inflammatory at best.

snowjeeper

lol that is true. poor tony, we're talking about him in the third person.

Brimstone

How do you define happiness? All three have a much higher suicide rate than the United States and Japan (as Bryantp pointed out) has more than twice the suicide rate of the USA.

WHO: Suicide rates

bryantp

I live in Japan for one thing. I observe people here. I'm from the U.S.

The U.S. had cultural reasons banning suicide that are non-existant in Japan. That's like saying the U.S. has more ice cream so they must be happier.

Japan's a great life. Really. I will return to the U.S. but I don't regret one hour living here.

Their educational system is better, people are safer, health is better, infant mortality lower, health care superior, economy stronger - how far do I have to go with this?

Did I mention how good the snowboarding is here?

__________________
http://snowboardingjapan.blogspot.com/

snowjeeper

Top 10 Happiest Countries in the World | Travel Blog - Tripbase

Top 10 happiest countries in the world | Financial Jesus

Brimstone

I would question your source for ranking these countries. The ranking comes from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development whose motto is "For a stronger, cleaner, fairer world economy". I can make any ranking I want for which countries are the happiest if I get to choose what makes people happy. Obviously they see an environment where the government has more control over your life as a source of happiness and therefore it ranks higher.

I am just saying that a lot of things are subjective. If you take a group of kids who are supported by their parents and allowed to smoke pot and snowboard everyday and compare them with a group of kids who are working everyday to put themselves through school, the kids who snowboard and smoke pot everyday will score higher on the happiness chart as well.

Welfare states like these can rank high on a happiness scale because they take a lot of the things that make us worry and be unhappy out of the equation. People do not worry about their jobs because they are being taken care of by the government. These countries also have the added benefit of not having the racial and class warfare that divides America. Socialism works very well in these countries because they are small and have a fairly homogeneous society that likes the system. It really can be a great system on a smaller scale. (This is another reason that I argue quite a bit for states rights. States should be able to decide for themselves what is best for their citizens. In some places that would mean a more socialized state in others a more libertarian state might work.)

Also, to be fair, Denmark was in terrible shape in the mid-90s. They had 15% unemployment and were having trouble paying for all of their social programs. They cut unemployment benefits by more than half and have lower corporate tax rates than the United States. They have pulled out of their slump and that alone should create a larger sense of well being within the country.

MunkySpunk

From the guy who uses a weather channel celebrity with no training in meteorology and youtube as his source for denying cliamte change.

And let's not forget statistical data supporting evolution to deny evolution.

__________________
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

10/11 - 24, Smote on Feb 13

Brimstone

Considering that one report after another has been coming out about how global warming data was manipulated to achieve the desired outcome, you should probably stfu.


More links for you:

Climate Change - Professor Bob Carter

World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown - Times Online

True News: The Case Against Climate Change

Brimstone

I don't believe anyone is really denying that we are in and have been in a warming trend for quite some time. The video from the Australian scientist discusses this quite a bit. The question is whether or not this has been escalated due to human action. The other question is whether global warming is a bad thing. Historically, periods of warming even greater than today have been times of great prosperity.

I believe that the handful of researchers you talked about were the ones responsible for providing most of the scientists in the world the data for their models. I would think that if they were falsifying data it would be significant.