I vaguely recall reading before that happiest countries had increased suicide rates because if everyone around you is doing great and you're not, it increases feelings of shame and hopelessness, that there's something wrong or broken with you specifically. If life is tough and everyone is struggling, it sucks but feels less personally damning.

Anecdotally, the most depressed times in my life were when circumstances were objectively fine and I still couldn't manage to feel any less than terrible. Like, "This is as good as it's ever going to get???" Ironically having actual problems gave me both something to attribute the bad feelings to, and hope that I would feel better once I resolved the problems.

The science has spoken: the only way to be happy in Western society is to kill yourself.

[dead]

The training goes the other way in the US. Politicians, advertisers and the media all have a stake in telling you how unhappy you should be and it's surprisingly effective.

Dr. Frank N. Furter

Xenomorph Queen

That's an argument from authority, essentially saying that it is not possible for such a group to have released nonsense data. One can believe the data was gathered according to strict principles but still believe that the data gathered is nonsense due to errors in self-reporting.

I might report higher happiness right after lunch than right before lunch. I might be happier right after getting a kind text from a friend than before. Or after having sex. Or after watching a funny video. Or after petting my cat. Need I go on?

Any one of those and more could be the singular reason for a 7 instead of a 3 in a given report. There are too many confounding factors to draw any meaningful conclusions from the reports.

You shouldn't use it to compare other nations, but compare the same nation to it's prior years to see a trend.

I think the "death of despair" stats are a fairly significant marker of overall unhappiness. Look them up.

I don't think this survey tells us anything at all. Happiness is hard to define, personal, and capricious. It's better to not have studies than to have pretend science that people mistake for real science.

Maybe not going bankrupt because of medical expenses as the only first world country with universal healthcare? When it comes to the hierarchy of needs, not dying because of unaffordable or unavailable healthcare I’m sure ranks near the top.

There is no objective measure where the median American is better off than the median European.

I’m saying this as a born and bread American citizen who is fortunate enough to be on the better side of the economic divide.

> This is another article in a long tail of anti-American and anti-Western content that has been cropping up online for about two years now. It's getting to be a very popular subject.

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Sweden

5. Netherlands

It's just an interesting assertion you're making, I suppose.

For example?

If you are also including this article.. I mean, it's not anti-western and I can't even see how it's anti-American. It's reporting survey results.

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