National Happiness
How happy are you with your nation?
National Happiness (NHR) is a function that has many inputs related to the well-being of a nation’s people. (If you’re not in the US, you can ask ChatGPT for your country’s NHR and how it compares with the average.)
As shown in the graph (which actually shows 101 – NHR on the x-axis), NHR correlates pretty well with the amount of taxes paid as a percentage of GDP.
The correlation is understandable since taxes can be used to fund social programs, access to health care, education, infrastructure, and institutions that contribute to the well being of the people.
Our (NHR, Taxes/GPT) = (24, 17%) means that the US ranks 24th in world happiness and that our Taxes/GPT is 17%
Access to health care and education are considered basic human rights in happier nations, but not in the US, where they’re available without restrictions only to the rich.
Those are two big reasons why our NHR is so bad.
We can improve National Happiness by fixing the problems of the people and raising taxes to pay our bills. Not by continuing to run huge deficits and submitting to Trump’s belief that government and taxes should be minimized.
It’s no surprise that Trump’s favorite autocracies are not happy places, Russia (66, 21% – Putin); China (68, 12% – Xi); Turkey (94, 17% – Erdoğan); North Korea, 100+, 0% (Kim); Egypt, (100+, 6%,el-Sissi).
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Trump’s a perp in history’s biggest scam by far. Our government diverted $50 trillion from the working class to the rich. Half the people have only 2.5% of the nation’s wealth. The American Dream is all but dead.
His continuing tax policy, tariffs, trade war, and budget cuts are making the situation still worse.
If we the people all understood that, hundreds of millions of us would be furious. We’d be messaging Congress by the millions.
Messages for Congress
- Immediately remove Trump from office
- Restore pre-Reagan income tax codes
- Levy a progressive wealth tax
- Enforce the 20th century protections for working class wealth
- Develop 21st century social programs
We could use the money to improve access to health care and education, fight climate change, increase social security, build infrastructure, support public health, FAA, NOAA, NASA, USAID, medical research, and pure science.
If there’s inefficiency, waste, or corruption we should deal with it on an individual basis and not risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Let’s go for it!
If our Congress members don’t act, we can make sure that their replacements will.
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