What makes people happy?

Just watched this rather weird segment on Fox with a guy named Dan Buettner, author of a book called Thrive. Apparently the National Geographic Society funded Buettner's trips around the world as he sought the world's happiest places.

I was expecting a review of Disneyland. But Buettner's findings were very different.

So what did Buettner come up with? He discussed a few:

*  Some town in Denmark where Buettner says the government funds everything, so lawyers make about the same thing as garbage collectors and nobody cares about status.

*  Singapore, where the government makes it easy for people to buy property, so extended families all live together. And people like to socialize most with their parents.

*  Then, San Luis Obispo, Calif., where no one smokes, there's not much obesity, and everyone rides bikes.

Anybody else find this a little strange?

First of all, personally I'm not plagued with envy of the rich, and don't know many people who are. Being concerned with justice, I find it appalling that a lawyer would make about the same income as a garbage collector, but that's just me. Do believe Buettner has confused "justice" with "egalitarianism" though.

Second, my relatives are dead, but my mother lived me for the last 15 years or so of her life. I didn't own a house at the time, and still managed, somehow, to socialize with her. I mean, why does that require a government-funded house? And maybe Singapore has a different system, but our government helps people buy houses, and the overall impact on the economy has been completely disastrous.

Frankly, smoking, obesity, and bike riding seem like pretty weak criteria to judge somebody's happiness. I mean, really, those specific values are rather markedly characteristic of political correctness. Seems to me that those values are held mainly by the small far-left splinter group that supports the Comrade.

But perhaps this book may useful as a handbook about what the left regards as the criteria for happiness.

And it just goes to show, one size doesn't fit all.

Save the Republic.