Germans among the unhappiest people in Europe | Hacker News Reader

Germans among the unhappiest people in Europe

ec.europa.eu

55 pointsvinni246 comments

Being German and having left Germany I have a suspicion why: they enjoy complaining too much. However that also raises an important question that is only brushed on in the Context: how do you control for a "cultural bias to complain". In a culture where negativity and complaining is frowned upon, you'd imaging you'd get higher scores -- even though the people don't actually feel any different from the ones that like to complain.

I'm not German, but don't the Dutch also complain a lot? They are even more honest than Germans in my experience. But the Netherlands are much happier in this index, so I am not sure this argument holds.

As a German living in NL: Same level of complaining, just much more attention to socialisation in general. It's more of a we mentality, in Germany you can live next to your neighbors for 10 years without ever having talked to them and the workplace can be a completely impersonal space. In NL everybody knows each other, private matters are shared freely even in the work environment, transparency, group responsibility and team building are highly valued.

Socialization is highly correlated with happiness. So maybe complaining is orthogonal here.

I am Dutch, and I agree the Dutch complain a lot. For example, when travelling, and looking for the right gate at the airport for the flight back home, it’s often easiest to look for the area where people look like they’re discussing the stern letter they’ll be sending the hotel management when they get home. Generally though, I think the Dutch are pretty happy, although I’m unsure how recent political developments will impact that.

Complaining while staying moderately satisfied is a uniquely British thing. But gosh, they also complain so much about everything.

We enjoy it, it's cathartic.

Hardly uniquely British; the French are always up for a good moan.

The french are more passionate though and their food and wine make up for it. The British moan without hope but they have a lower limit of how much despair they get into. It's strange.

Given the way things are going round here, I think we have much to complain about.

We don’t put that complaining into action though. A nation of boiling frogs.

I don't believe there is a reason to control for the fact that some cultures have more of a negative feedback loop than others.

With NK and Saudi Arabia existing, certainly it is okay to point out that some facets of culture are objectively better or worse than others on a variety of metrics.

As a German living abroad I use to say: Jammern auf hohem Niveau (complaining from high level)

Often the things they are complaining about are still better than in many other places, take healthcare as an example.

It's a positive and a negative.

It makes people less happy, sure.

But it's also the reason why German machinery has the good reputation it has. Because even if it works pretty great already, somebody will find a detail to "complain" about and improve it.

There is a tiler who lives in a region that houses engineers of companies like Audi and Siemens. Apparently these folks take their habit of being so extremely strict, the same habit that is the base for Germany's economic success and that creates high quality cars and other products, to their homes too. It ends up in requirements are so unrealistic that this tiler ended up not accepting requests from the employees of these two companies.

German source: https://www.donaukurier.de/archiv/audi-ingenieure-unerwuensc...

Does it make them less happy, or just appear to be less happy when compared to people who keep the same irritations inside?

It's also the neurotic ratchett driving quality improvements and optimization .

Or, to quote grandpa Simpson: "You only think you're happy, but you're not!"

Which country has an anti-complaining bias? I’m guessing it would be somewhere people are empowered to solve their problems. High purchasing power countries?

The US and UK used to both be kinda stiff upper lip countries in the 90s but now are full of complaining.

Does anyone have experience moving somewhere and noticing it was much less complainey?

I'm from the UK and currently living in Lithuania, and I'd say it somewhat has an anti-complaining bias.

In the UK people get upset and make a big deal about even the tiniest things. I read an article yesterday about someone who moved to a new area and got upset that a farmer kept their bins opposite their driveway (at the entrance to the farmer's land). They ended up in a court battle - which they lost - and had to sell the house to pay the legal fees.

Here in Lithuania there is an attitude of 'that's just the way things are, and there's nothing you can do'. So people don't bother complaining, as it's a waste of mental energy. I guess this comes from Soviet times, as with younger people it does appear to be changing.

Also from UK and live in LT. Totally agree!

I had a colleague from Lithuania who worked in the UK for a bit and was always impressed by the NHS here, mostly because she didn't have to bribe the receptionist with gifts and then the doctor with actual money, just to be seen.

I can't really even imagine this. What kind of doctor would be so?

I'm just passing on an anecdote that I heard.

I also found this:

https://transparency.lt/en/bribery-in-healthcare-sector-in-l...

In many of these countries you can make more as a barber cutting hair than relying on the official salary

I live in Iceland which has often topped the list of the happiest countries in earth, yet pople moan about everything over here.

Culture is just social technology. Common patterns and routines for behaving in certain situations or ways to interact with people.

It can be good. It can be bad. It can be useful. It can be deleterious.

If a specific piece of social technology is not serving you well, don't make that social technology (culture) your identity -- reject it and try to adopt different social technology.

everyone complains. it's not shown to be a major causation of unhappiness unlike social cohesion.

> how do you control for a "cultural bias to complain"

You can't. It's fairly likely these surveys are measuring things like that instead of actual happiness.

There's also likely variance in the rate at which people lie on polls: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29206289

I'm sure there was some bias here. Interestingly, Poland scored much higher despite also having a relatively negative mindset in its culture as well.

As Portuguese, I feel right at home in Germany in regards to the complaining part. :)

Obligadorisch Nicht in Ordnung..

Interesting because us Poles tend to complain all the time and about everything. I even heard this perspective from my German associates who are used to working with Poles.

I think it's worth noting that when you see Figure 1, with its 0-10 scale, Germany may be at the bottom of the cluster, but it's a fairly narrow, fairly satisfied, cluster overall.

I thought the same, though the difference is large enough to warrant scrutiny. Ideally Eurostat would have collected data for a few non-EU countries to compare against, but this doesn't fit within their scope as a Directorate-General of the European Commission. It's definitely in their interest to show that Europeans are happy.

Really awesome to see Romania at the top of this chart, happier than even Finland. After decades of living in misery under the Ceaușescus during the 20th century, Romanians deserve some time in the sun.

as a Romanian working in IT, living here is not that bad (if we ignore medicine quality, education and infrastructure, big cities included), but working in other domain with a much smaller pay and these downsides is ... hard. Idk how this report was made, maybe it's true, maybe not, maybe ppl are happy despite having small salary & poor infra/other things compared to the west, or maybe it's coping, but for me - I just hope to emigrate soon in a country with better infra & about same pay (Switzerland, NL, Austria, maybe Denmark(worse weather), or maybe something entirely different&chill like north Italy/south France or Barcelona(these are nicer for chillness but harder to get a good pay)

> I just hope to emigrate soon in a country with better infra & about same pay (Switzerland, NL, Austria, maybe Denmark

Do you put these countries in the same income bracket because you expect the cost of living to increase equally?

I would put Switzerland at the top since income will be higher even with increased COL. Nl is close bc of 30% tax for the first 5 years. Dn and Austria are close bc COL vs salaries are about the same, maybe some advantage in austria bc of better weather

It's because of alcohol consumption. /s

I would generally assume any happiness related metric probably isn't measuring what they hope to measure.

Lying about how happy you are is perhaps the most common lie. It's entirely normal to lie in response to people asking "How are you doing?" as a greeting.

If the methodology is asking people a happy German might say: "I can't complain", while a (hypothetical) unhappy person from elsewhere might declare everything to be "totally awesome".

If you ask people, these differences matter, unless instead of happieness you are instead interested in who uses which words to describe their situation.

Colour me surprised. A completely broken society on the edge of collapsing, where peer pressure forces you to speak and think how the media and politics wants, has the unhappiest people. A society where men aren't allowed to be men anymore and women aren't allowed to be women.

But nooo, it's definitely some other reason.

Germans are among the happiest people in Europe but they know how to mess with a survey in direct (rude) ways along with their highest praise being kann man nicht meckern

edit: actually looked at the graph now and I don’t think that’s gpt4, looks more like 3.5

In Austria we like to joke about Germany as a "failed state" sometimes, but in comparison it really does ring true. Maybe the country would be better off as a loose confederation instead of a federal union?

Hell, if Germany is a failed state in any regard, what chances do the rest of us have?

Germany is literally failing by its own hand. It killed its own industrial vocation and now it has to find alternatives. If that can be done it's still to be seen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com