"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Apparently, despite what the libs believe, the world is happier than ever:

People in most countries around the world are happier these days, according to newly released data from the World Values Survey based at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Data from representative national surveys conducted from 1981 to 2007 show the happiness index rose in an overwhelming majority of nations studied.

“It’s a surprising finding,” said U-M political scientist Ronald Inglehart, who directs the World Values Surveys and is the lead author of an article on the topic to be published in the July 2008 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. “It’s widely believed that it’s almost impossible to raise an entire country’s happiness level.”

The 2007 wave of the surveys also provides a ranking of 97 nations containing 90 percent of the world’s population. The results indicate that Denmark is the happiest nation in the world and Zimbabwe the unhappiest. The United States ranks 16th on the list, immediately after New Zealand.

During the past 26 years, the World Values Surveys have asked more than 350,000 people how happy they are, using the same two questions.

“Taking all things together, would you say you are very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not at all happy?” And, “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?”

Combining responses to these two questions, Inglehart and colleagues constructed an index of subjective well-being that reflects both happiness and general life satisfaction.

In the 52 countries for which a substantial time series is available (covering 17 years on average), this index rose in 40 countries and fell in only 12. The average percentage of people who said they were “very happy” increased by almost seven points.

I would be very curious to see if the happiness trends moved strongest right after the collapse of Communism.

One of the things that I am always struck by is the yawning chasm between how the world is and how it is perceived.  The world is more peaceful, more prosperous and better fed than it has ever been.  Yet if you listen to the media, we’re on the edge of destruction.  The other day, I heard Limbaugh commenting about just how much of our news broadcasts consist of speculation and projections of the future.  Global warming, debt, terrorism, famine, etc.  I guess we have to look to the unknown future for our bad news since today’s news is generally good (and hence boring).

I guess I’m part of that.  Despite being optimistic and generally good-natured, I mostly blog about things that annoy me.  But in a way I illustrate the point.  In another age, I would have blogging about smallpox epidemics, pogroms, lynchings and cities burning to the ground.  That I have the luxury of complaining about fireworks fines is a sign of just how good the times are.