Denmark Is Considered The Happiest Country. You'll Never Guess Why

somebody please velociraptor meme this

 

As I have my skepticism but they have put forward a compelling argument backed by data. You are the one claiming that the Danes aren't actually happening yet have nothing but opinion to back it up.

So you have no evidence just speculation. The point is even with what you consider handicaps Denmark is doing pretty well compared to the hyperbolic language that you used. Have you considered that given the tradeoffs, of a well trained and hardworking workforce, a clean government and etc.. That companies might consider those worth doing business even with 52 weeks of leave?

 

HAHA WTF. You then agree with me and call it a handicap. How can you dare say such a thing without evidence rj?!?!?!?

Yes rj they may choose to still do business despite the handicap. All i sad was that it was a handicap. And since you agree it is a handicap then surely you must agree that businesses would be more inclined to do business in Denmark without such a handicap? or else why call it a handicap?

 

I said "What you consider handicaps."

 

SO you think businesses don't care that they are forced to give 52 weeks of paternity leave? you think it doesn't matter? Do i have that right?

 

Do they care? Probably they do but it's clear that they don't think it is a problem enough to not do business in Denmark like you were claiming.

Your argument is basically like someone saying the Rockets aren't going to win with Jeremy Lin because he can't play good D. Someone points out that the ROckets are winning. You come back and say they would win so much more without Jeremy Lin. The problem though is that Jeremy Lin has bailed this team out on a few occasions already and is one of the bright lights on offense. That is the tradeoff and so far it is in the Rockets favor.

Now hypothetically the Rockets might be winning all their games without Jeremy Lin but that is a hypothetical that is speculative. Either way the Rockets are still winning with Jeremy Lin and the Denmark is doing pretty well with 52 week paternity leave. Even a very conservative group like the Heritage Foundation considers they have enough economic freedom to be in their top ten countries.

 

my argument was that it discourages business and of course it does. You have provided no proof otherwise despite your clamoring for 'evidence'

I never argued they weren't economically free. bongman (and Sam Fisher) did. he called them socialist.

 

Denmark is way smaller in terms of population thats why socialism works there...and thats why it work in the USA....get a clue smh

 

**won't work I mean

 

Uh, that's the Netherlands, one of my favorite countries to visit. I enjoy Denmark, as well, but not until things warm up a little.

 

Whaaat? That's exactly what you said. You have no self-worth and therefore happiness if you don't earn things like food and health care.

 

Where's your "evidence" that maternity leave discourages business?

 

He said that? That's rediculous! Perhaps a small business could be impacted, not having a large staff to begin with, but they may have rules that provide exceptions/provisions for that. I really don't know the details of Denmark's policy, but as a father of two kids, one a senior in high school, and one just graduated from college and on his own, I can tell you that time at home with an infant is extremely important (in my humble opinion). My SO is a state employee who was able to parley many years of service with a lot of accrued vacation time, a huge amount of comp time (from working her ass off, a lot of it while pregnant), and an understanding boss into over 4 months after our first child, and about 3 with the second. I took over from there for months after that, and for both children.

It shouldn't require an elaborate, stressful, and convoluted plan to get a reasonable amount of maternity or paternity leave.

 

you do realize food and healthcare are needed to stay alive right? all you had to do was read the comment i responded to.

Where's your evidence forcing 52 weeks of paternity leave doesn't discourage business form setting up shop?

I said forcing 52 weeks of paternity leave discourages businesses from setting up shop. Not exactly a radical thought. forcing a business to do anything they could do voluntarily discourages business from setting up shop.

 

The point you made was about happiness, that it's derived from self-worth which can't be attained without earning food and health care. It's your argument and I've read it over and over again. I'll post it again.

I don't have to provide evidence for your claim. It's YOUR claim. YOU provide the evidence to YOUR claim.

Prove it.

 

What a shocker. A small, industrialized nation of a largely heterogeneous 5.6 million population is happy.

 

Sorry for the double post. Corrected "heterogeneous" to homogeneous.

 

Dudes. We're on the fifth page of this thread and nobody will bother linking the actual study? There are some interesting things to be debated here.

The 2013 World Happiness Report: http://issuu.com/earthinstitute/docs/worldhappinessreport2013_online

It's 171 pages, and the methodology used is illustrated in great detail.

Link to the press release:
http://unsdsn.org/happiness/

The paper goes into great detail to explain what statistics they use to measure these factors.

So: an immense, comprehensive study is conducted each year to measure the happiness of countries around the world. This study uses specific statistical methodology to determine a happiness score. The countries which scored the highest on this index are almost exclusively from northern Europe, with the exception of Switzerland.

To make an over-generalization of the political climate of Europe overall, on a sliding scale of right vs left governments, the northern countries are the furthest left.

Let's return this to the right vs. left flame war format this was meant for, but with a nice large paper full of statistics and facts to back it up. Allow me:

It's no coincidence that the countries with some of the most "socialist" governments have the happiest populations. As it turns out, universal healthcare and a large welfare state do not send a country on a slippery slope to a communist dystopia. Who knew. Oh. I did.

However, the study shows that the North American continent as a region is happier than western Europe. (They don't split northern Europe in this breakdown.) This is helped by Canada's #6 place just behind Sweden. Thanks, Canada. America is doing ok for itself at #17.

 

The majority of the debate in this thread is not about the actual study, but about a Huffington Post article that offers conjecture about why Denmark won. Yay. On top of that, the most interesting parts of the conjecture haven't been brought up yet, as far as I can tell from reading the thread. We're hung up on parental leave, bikes, and spinning weather. This is more interesting:

 

They're white, homogeneous and small; which means they're rich without needing to diversify to much into heavy industry, mutually trusting and respectful enough to share, and their government expenses are manageable enough to accommodate better benefits.