Joe Bennett: Why Finland continues to top the international Happiness Index & More News Here

OPINION

Some months in the past, as you little doubt recall, the United Nations printed its annual World Happiness Index and for the fifth time in a row, Finland got here top, carefully adopted by the remainder of
Scandinavia. And I, too, was puzzled. What occurred to Nordic noir?

Well, final evening I gleaned a nugget of knowledge that I believe might clarify it. I did the gleaning in that central sorting home of human data, the place the place all data comes to be weighed and aggregated and sifted till it beds down right into a form of mental compost out of which may sprout that lovely bloom we all know as the reality, with that place being, as you will have already guessed, the pub. There isn’t any finer establishment on God’s earth.

When aged not very a lot, I sat outdoors the Eight Bells in Jevington after my father had performed cricket, the door would open from time to time to emit gentle and smoke and nice gusts of grownup laughter, and it appeared to me then that right here was a spot value rising up for, and after I lastly got here to man’s property I discovered that I’d been proper.

What you be taught in pubs is the primacy of the current tense and the pleasure of firm and the significance of disinhibition. For who has not woken after an evening at the pub and cringed inside seconds of waking at the reminiscence of getting stated such and such to so and so? And what makes our innards shrivel with the horror of it, is that what we stated was true.

Where else does that occur? It occurs nowhere else. A great pub is a temple of honesty. Though I like the booze too.

Anyway, it was in the pub final evening that I realized a potential clarification of Finnish merriment. It lies in the approach they deal with wealthy individuals.

Rich individuals are an issue that refuses to go away. Look at Putin’s friends with their yachts the dimension of Panama. Look at Trump’s friends with their tooth and hair and staggering ignorance. Look at the vile American billionaire – a Trumpist, naturally – who has purchased New Zealand citizenship and now needs to pervert the panorama of Wanaka to go well with his ego. Look at the unlamentedly lifeless Epstein. Vile creatures are the lot of them and a pleasure to detest.

Worse, they keep wealthy. The world retains producing wealth and so they make certain increasingly of it sticks to their palms. They do not want it. They simply can not help themselves. It’s the greatest drawback of even democratic capitalism. It creates a plutocracy who’re very eager to preserve issues the approach they’re and have the cash wanted to make it occur. They purchase all the pieces they’ll, from political events to judges. And step by step, the gulch between the wealthy and poor inside a single nation grows so extensive they’ll not even see or name to one another. It just isn’t good.

A revolution is one resolution, however each revolution quickly reverts to the established order with a brand new and extra ruthless array of wealthy bastards. Is there one other approach? Well, evidently the Finns could also be on to one thing.

Now for 2 causes I’ve not truly checked that the Finns have put this programme into follow. The first is that I heard it in the pub so it’s true by definition. The second is that if by some probability it is not true, it is solely as a result of the Finns have not considered it but and as quickly as this column finds its approach there, because it so absolutely will, they’re going to instigate the programme on the spot. So if this is not reality you are studying, it is prophecy. It has to do with rushing fines.

We all pace. Once each few hundred occasions we’re caught and fined. Here the high quality you pay is dictated by the gravity of your offending. In Finland, it is dictated by the heft of your pockets. The wealthy pay greater than the poor in proportion to the distinction in wealth between them, and thus the high quality for every is equally punitive. It’s known as equity.

The splendid consequence is that when Pauper the Finn challenges his Russian mate Olly Gark to a drag race down the fundamental road of Helsinki late on a Saturday evening, and the police, having been tipped off by conscientious residents, swoop and arrest them each, P the F will get a high quality of some euro whereas the loaded Gark is required to fund the constructing of a completely new street system. No surprise the Finns grin.

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