Does socialism equal happiness?

I got quite a bit of feedback from my last column, the one in which I mourned the apparent demise of our great nation. I came very close to rewriting that piece because I thought the tone might have been overly pessimistic, but apparently lots of other people are feeling the same way I am right now. I think we’re all looking hard for a silver lining to the cloud that is hanging over us and we’re just not finding it.

A few of the people who wrote to me wondered what I might do if the country really does go into the tank and stays there for the duration. Would I give up and search for greener pastures in some other country? In my case that’s very unlikely for a lot of reasons, at least in the short term, but it is an interesting question to ponder. If you decided to leave America, where would you go?

Since I’ve never actually travelled outside the United States, I have a hard time coming up with a reasonable answer to that question. But I’m not the type of person to let a lack of knowledge and experience stop me from expressing an opinion on a subject, so I decided to take a look at the various surveys that have been done in recent years that ranked countries based on the relative happiness of people who live there to see if any of them stood out.

One country seemed to keep coming out on top in most every “happiness index” I could find. According to the vaguely scientific polling I was able to compile, the happiest spot on the planet is Denmark. Now if you’re like me, your knowledge of Denmark can probably be summed up by saying “that’s somewhere in Europe, isn’t it?” But if this is as close as we can get to heaven on earth, maybe we should look into this country a little more closely.

Right away I have to warn you that if “socialism” is a dirty word to you, you aren’t going to like Denmark. They believe in very high taxes and lots of big government programs there. The average “Joe the Plumber” in Denmark ponies up about half his income to the government. That’s the bad news. The good news is that education (all the way through college), health care, child care, elder care, and a whole lot of other goodies are provided for every citizen.

That’s all well and good, but of course like any socialist country there’s a price to be paid for all that “evening out.” Everybody has enough, but nobody has a whole lot. People don’t go to Denmark to seek their fortune. They really have a different way of looking at life in a place like that.

I believe that for someone who was born and raised in America it would be hard to get used to a way of life that is that laid back. America has always aspired to greatness. From the very beginning, people came here to do big things. They came to found churches, to make their fortunes, to achieve.

I believe that spirit is still alive today, and that is what is making our present situation so hard to bear. We’re not used to managing our expectations. A fall is always much worse when it comes from a great height.

Nevertheless, it appears that we may be on the road to being a lot more like Denmark. If we elect a guy who wants to “spread the wealth around” and who believes that health care is a “right”, it is likely that we’ll be moving a lot closer to that socialist ideal of a government that is very large, very expensive, and very involved in every aspect of the lives of its citizens.

I just don’t know if it’s going to make us happy.