Mar
21
2025

If You're Happy and You Know It…

… draw a smiley face on a balloon with Xd-out eyes, I guess. That's what (according to Getty) a Kashmir Kollege Kid did yesterday, marking (somewhat literally) the International Day of Happiness. Which was yesterday, sorry we missed it.

Also (not so literally) marking the day is the World Happiness Report, people who compare the world's countries according to the cheerfulness of their people. How do they do that?

Our global happiness ranking is based on a single question from the Gallup World Poll, derived from the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale (Cantril Ladder):

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

For those of us who just want a table with the results, well, here you go. Executive summary: the top five happiest countries are (in order) Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Least happy country: Afghanistan, and who could blame them?

The USA is all the way down in 24th place.

But (you'll note) there are supplementary rankings in other table columns. One is "Freedom". How we doin' there?

Ack! The United States is ranked in 115th place on "Freedom".

Interestingly, the #2 ranked country on "Freedom" is … Vietnam? That would be news to Freedom House, which summarizes Vietnam's "NOT FREE" ranking.:

Vietnam is a one-party state, dominated for decades by the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). Although some independent candidates are technically allowed to run in legislative elections, most are banned in practice. Freedom of expression, religious freedom, and civil society activism are tightly restricted. The authorities have increasingly cracked down on citizens’ use of social media and the internet to voice dissent and share uncensored information.

Overall, Yascha Mounk is not impressed: The World Happiness Report Is a Sham. Looking specifically at that question they judge happiness by:

The obvious problem with this question, commonly known as the Cantril Ladder, is that it doesn’t really ask about happiness at all. We know from many surveys that people tend to give very different answers to questions about what makes them satisfied with their life and to questions about whether they are feeling good in the moment. Having children, for example, tends to raise parents’ assessment of how meaningful their life is; but notably it does not make them report higher levels of happiness at any particular moment, including when they are spending time with their kids. At most, a ranking based purely on the Cantril Ladder could therefore give us something called a World Self-Reported Life Satisfaction Report—and it’s easy to see why such an honest title wouldn’t entice many journalists to write about it.

The less obvious problem with the Cantril Ladder is that it does not even do a good job of measuring respondents’ satisfaction with their own lives. When one set of researchers asked over a thousand survey respondents in the United Kingdom what they took the question to be getting at, the most commonly mentioned responses included “wealth,” “rich” and “successful.” As August Nilsson and his colleagues painstakingly demonstrate, some of the specific language in the question—such as the metaphor of the ladder and its emphasis on the “top” as well as the “bottom step”—primes respondents to think about social hierarchies. Their conclusion is sobering: “The Cantril Ladder is arguably the most prominent measure of well-being, but the results suggest caution in its interpretation—the Cantril Ladder’s structure appears to influence participants to attend to a more power- and wealth-oriented view of well-being.”

So if you're worried about the USA's poor showing in the report: don't worry, be happy.

Also of note:

  • I know I blogged this yesterday. But I can't resist excerpting another quote from George F. Will's recent column:

    In 2025, one party is prostrate before its Dear Leader, and the other is unembarrassed about pathetically waving a sign proclaiming “This is not normal.” This has become normal: In our two-party system, when one party drives itself into a ditch, the other swerves into the opposite one.

    If you're casting around for apt political metaphors, that's a pretty good one.

  • Friendly fire. Well, not that friendly. Rand Simberg isn't happy with some of the MAGA folk's loose space talk:

    It's a long and informative thread.

    Related quote: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” And lots of people think we're at war with the Other Side.

    And who came up with that gem? Quote Investigator has the story there. Spoiler: not Aeschylus!

  • Speaking of space. Rand's thread above isn't impressed with Boeing and its Starliner capsule, whose misbehavior made the non-"rescue" necessary. But never fear, taxpayer! Bloomberg reports: NASA Eyes Plan to Get Boeing Back on Track as SpaceX Alternative.

    After NASA’s marooned astronauts arrived home in a SpaceX capsule this week, the agency was quick to chart a costly and test-intensive future for the very vehicle that had left the crew trapped in space in the first place.

    Boeing Co.’s Starliner is undergoing analysis and upgrades, a test campaign slated for this summer and at least one additional demonstration flight that could cost $400 million or more — all to prove it’s a viable alternative to Elon Musk’s Dragon capsule for getting Americans to orbit.

    “We’re working hand-in-hand with Boeing as well on certification of Starliner, getting that vehicle back to flight,” Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew, told reporters on Tuesday evening.

    I understand the desire to have a SpaceX alternative, but how many times must Boeing screw the pooch before Uncle Stupid throws up his hands, says "Thanks for playing", and walks away?

  • I don't usually agree with CAIR, but… This might be an exception. NHJournal reports: Muslim Group Demands UNH Dump Former Biden Advisor Jake Sullivan.

    Accusing him of “failing up” and “cashing out,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations says there should be no place at the University of New Hampshire for former Biden advisor Jake Sullivan, and it’s calling on the university to give him the boot.

    Sullivan, who served as President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, was recently named as a senior fellow at UNH’s Carsey School of Public Policy, and the inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Kennedy School at Harvard. The 48-year-old Democrat is also married to first-term U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander, who is currently considering a 2026 run for U.S. Senate.

    The story links to CAIR's letter to the University Near Here. They are particularly incensed by his association with our Israel policy during his tenure. But also his role in the "catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan". But (apparently) only because that operation "ended with a U.S. drone strike that killed an innocent Afghan family."

    I'd have different reasons, but they have a point about his "fail up" appointment.