U.S. hits new low in World Happiness Report

Germany lower that the US ? That is a bit questionable to me.

It's a few spots higher than the US this year.

This year it looks like Germany is higher on the scale. I am surprised by Mexico being really high.

Actually two.

They have standards.

High crime, high taxes, stagnating economy. I am surprised Germany landed this high on the list.

I would be surprised if their ranking would be increased if any of these were addressed.

I'm surprised that Germany is that high... it's decent in summer, miserable the rest of the year

What high crime? I'm assuming we're using the US as a reference here given the audience of this site.

It's not all about finance. From my recent visits to Mexico everyone there seems much happier and friendlier than in the US and Europe. It was honestly quite striking. I have no theory what causes this (maybe large families?), but it was really quite obvious.

It's mostly people just rating their own lives, which leaves it open to people in different cultures reporting the same actual happiness differently. In some cultures, saying you're happy is bragging, so people understate. In others, rating it low is complaining, so people report overly happy.

I see World Happiness Report as primarily a measure of what's considered the most socially acceptable way to discuss happiness across cultures. In the USA, people often brag about how miserable they are, for example.

Crime isn't high. No real risk of random violence in my experience (unlike the US, e.g. >weekly school shootings etc.). Taxes and economy, they aren't good right now true.

Why? Germany has been in a sustained economic decline now for many years and has seen the shuttering of manufacturing and skyrocketing housing costs.

Americas mistakes are not as unique to us as Europeans keep telling themselves.

It seems this is self-reported. And we Germans certainly wouldn't admit that we're living pretty good lives overall. There's always something to complain about.

I have an unsubstantiated theory that people in Latin America largely realize their institutions are completely broken or ineffectual, thus they and their local community are on their own in life. Thus it is pointless to be angry about a lot of things people in other places are angry about (corruption, government, immigrants, prices, corporations, etc) because it's a total lost cause, it's not like they could vote it away even if they tried. The end result is their sphere of worries basically are constrained to their immediate family, work, and community all of which are things they not only have control over but actually probably will care about them.

> From the 2000–01 to 2021–22 school years, there were 1,375 school shootings at public and private elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 515 deaths and 1,161 injuries.

1,700 people out of ~50 million K-12 students in a 22 year period.

.003352% chance of injury or worse over 22 years. And now I realize the denominator should be bigger because it doesn't count faculty/staff or college students.

There's no reason to live in fear of school shootings. (But there should still be much greater gun control.)

I think only concentrating on those that were shot or injured ignores the impact of being exposed to gun violence, especially during formative years in a situation where it's in the building you're in and results in the death or injury of your friends. Hundreds of thousands of people in the USA have experienced being in a school shooting event.

I also think that it's fair to think about other examples of exposure to violence and not just the Parent's example of weekly school shootings. Speaking of gun violence, I'm not sure I know anyone personally in the USA who haven't been impacted by it, whether that's knowing someone who was hurt, having to lock down at work or home, having to drive a different route home because of an active shooting, or just hearing it and then hearing the sirens. Of course, these are not all equal, but it's interesting to think about.

When there is a school shooting, you should count everyone in the school as deeply affected. Maybe the district.

From wikipedia it looks like there's 13,000 school districts in the US - so 1 in 10 (!!!!) has had a school shooting in the last 22 years. Am I doing this right?

You are assuming that each school shooting is in a separate district in the calculation. That is not necessarily the case, especially with some large school district serving many more students than a small rural district.

But I agree with you that it affects the school and community deeply, even in surrounding communities. I live in Texas, and the whole state was deeply affected after Uvalde. A relative's school got evacuated a few weeks later out of what happened to be a false alarm, with the relative forced to exit the school hands above their head to show they didn't have a gun. They were on the complete other side of the state, probably like a 6 hour drive away.

Mexico is finally shedding their neoliberal order and getting stuff built and people taken care of (instead of foreign investors). President Sheinbaum has like an 80% approval rating.

I'd say far worse. So much US discourse is about school shootings, that it's clear it's affecting people far outside the school districts themselves.

It's affectional national politics.

Thank you for your service sir