The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Nearly 75 percent of Finland is covered by forest, and all of it is open to everyone thanks to a law known as “jokamiehen oikeudet,” or “everyman’s right,” that entitles people to roam freely throughout any natural areas, on public or privately owned land.
After extensive traveling, I can say the best indicator of happiness is the amount of people per area who close their business on Sunday to eat lunch with their family.
While I don't doubt there are many truths contained within, I think it's also fair to recognise that in some respects, this is a highly prescribed version of "happiness". For example, it's telling that smiling and laughing do not form a prominent part of Finnish day-to-day life, as contrasted with plenty of less affluent cultures.
[1] https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2023/WHR+23.pdf
Now it's likely to be a coalition of 2 right wing parties?
In usa we have chosen to have high immigration and sacrifice social cohesion. eg: >40% of current child poverty comes from illegal immigration. [1]
I would absolutely choose to live in a society with high immigration than a xenophobic one.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/us/politics/child-poverty...
That's incorrect. Re-read the article you linked to.
> In usa we have chosen to have high immigration and sacrifice social cohesion.
The US started as a country of immigrants, one of this country's virtues, but there have been many attempts by a large portion of Americans to stamp it out. Thankfully it has survived.
However, being a much more heterogenous society has nothing to do with the lack of high social nets. These are not mutually exclusive.
The US is a "sink or swim" country where the quest for individual wealth is our predominant cultural "feature". That leaves you with a small cadre of extremely wealthy winners, and a large number of poor losers.
By the way, Finland has 7.5% percent of its population is foreign born - that's half than the 15% in the U.S. but not an order of magnitude less.
> I would absolutely choose to live in a society with high immigration than a xenophobic one.
Racism is basically xenophobia, and in the U.S. we have that in spades.
It's easier to roll out a generous social safety net when society is homogeneous, because you don't have people worrying about their tax dollars being used to fund The Others' lifestyle.
That's as much a function of class as it is race. In fact, one need look no further than highly homogenous states like Montana, Wyoming or W.Virginia (which have significantly less immigrants than Finland) to find a population highly opposed to taxation and social safety nets.
Take a look at the 10 states with the smallest percentage of foreign born population (which we can use as a measure of homogeneity): 8 of 10 are highly conservative/Republican with arguably the smallest safety nets at the state level. https://www.statista.com/statistics/312701/percentage-of-pop...
Perhaps the fact that Europe and Japan were destroyed in WW2 while the U.S. got a huge economic boost from it, contributed to their populations' desire for strong social nets at the expense of individual wealth.
immigration is not just foreign born population. immigrants and their children now account for one in five U.S. residents (65 million). 150k people immigrate to USA every month. These stats are just known immigration which doesn't account for unknown( or poorly accounted) number of illegal immigrants. This has been going on for a LONG time making USA one of the most diverse populations in the world. Most dominant group in usa is 56% of the population. 95% of finland is white, by comparison.
Do you really think it only takes less than a decade of immigration for country to fall apart from immigration? Even with this tiny immigration they have virulent anti immigrant sentiments with majority of people highly in favor of restricting immigration.
/s
(though I wonder if the poll accounts for country differences in how many people prefer to have any neighbours at all...)
here's another list: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-countries-fo...