Democrats are still soul-searching about losing last month’s election. Was it the Harris campaign? The price of butter? The ASPCA vote?
It could be a little of all three. However, the fundamental reason is simple: The U.S. is the among the wealthiest countries in the world per capita, but the American people are not happy.
The Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, but the founding documents do say we all have an equal right to pursue it. The Declaration of Independence calls the right to pursue happiness inalienable and God-given. It’s one of the promises on which our government was built.
However, the government is not keeping that promise. On Nov. 5, exit polls showed that 72 percent of voters were unhappy with the country’s direction, while only 7 percent were enthusiastic. In 2016, before Donald Trump’s first presidency, the United States ranked 13th on the list of the world’s happiest countries. By March of this year, we had dropped to 23rd.
So, who were the happiest countries, and what might we learn from them?
Year after year, Nordic nations dominate the top 10 list compiled by the World Happiness Report. Finland ranked first this year, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The report considered per capita GDP, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, the population’s generosity, perceptions about the quality of governance, and the support provided by social systems.
This last metric, social support, is especially significant in America’s slippage. The happiest countries have capitalist economies and democratic governments, but they provide their people with essential tools for success — tools that American conservatives brand as “socialist.”
Universal health care is one. The United States is the only high-income nation without it. Americans pay nearly four times as much for prescription drugs and higher costs for hospitalization and doctors than people in other developed countries. More than 27 million Americans still have no health insurance.
As of March, over 45 million Americans were enrolled in Obamacare. Trump tried to kill that option during his first term and says he has “concepts” to replace it now. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 3.4 million Americans would lose health insurance without Obamacare.
Access to quality education is another factor. Our education system starts crushing opportunity at a very early age, especially among children of color and in low-income households. In 2016, the United Negro College Fund reported that African American students are often concentrated in schools with fewer resources, less qualified and lower-paid teachers, and fewer college-ready courses or programs for gifted and talented students.
Compared to other countries, 15-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 16th out of 81 in science in 2022 (the most recent test) and 34th in math. “The United States isn’t investing as much in human capital as other developed countries,” according to one analysis, “and its comparative advantage is falling behind as a result.” Nevertheless, Trump has promised to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.
Trump won 56 percent of the vote among people without college degrees. The average cost of college in the U.S. has tripled in the last 20 years, making advanced education unavailable and causing justified resentment among those who can’t afford it. David Brooks points out that “the diploma divide became the most important chasm in American life.” High school graduates die years sooner, marry less and divorce more, are more likely to have children out of wedlock, and don’t “hold the sort of luxury beliefs that are markers of public virtue.”
That may be one reason the World Happiness Report found that unhappiness among young Americans especially drove the U.S. happiness ranking down. The U.S. ranked 62nd in happiness for people below age 30.
Forty-six countries avoid these inequities by offering free college tuition, typically without regard to income or social status. They include six of the 10 happiest nations: Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
Income and wealth are more equitably distributed in happy countries such as Iceland, Denmark and Norway. Credit Suisse reports the average wealth per person in the U.S. was more than $550,000 in 2022. However, 10 percent of Americans own about 70 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the poorer half owns only 2 percent.
America ranks only 15th in median wealth, the best indicator of how evenly wealth is distributed.
In 2017, Trump’s tax cuts widened the wealth gap by skewing tax policy toward the rich. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that in terms of after-tax income, the cuts were more than triple for the top 5 percent of households compared to the bottom 60 percent. Trump has promised to lower corporate taxes even more next year.
Meanwhile, America’s middle class is shrinking while its lower class expands. Nearly 38 million Americans live in poverty. The World Happiness Report says, “While it is considered the leader of the world stage, the United States still has one of the biggest problems with homelessness, even when compared to more impoverished countries. With a homeless population per night of over half a million souls, the numbers are concerning.”
There is other work to do to provide equal opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, like improving early childhood education, making childcare more affordable, raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing equal pay for equal work, shattering the glass ceilings that deny upward mobility based on gender or race, and investing in growth industries like clean energy rather than dead-end industries like fossil fuels. Until we do these things, we are squandering America’s human capital. We will never know how many extraordinary scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and political leaders have been held down, their potentials unfulfilled, by denying opportunity.
The “socialism” brand has become a poison pill in U.S. public policy, but the progressive policies of the happiest nations are not socialist. According to the World Happiness Report, five of the 10 happiest countries are among the world’s 10 most capitalist economies. And while people in the 10 happiest nations pay some of the world’s highest taxes, they believe they are investing in their societies and purchasing a high quality of life.
On the other hand, report classifies the U.S. as a “mixed-market economy” that already blends the attributes of capitalism and socialism — not because of its social supports, but because the government subsidizes profit-making private companies like those in the fossil-fuel sector.
These facts should tell Democrats two things. First, the U.S. should adopt a more holistic system than GDP for measuring progress. Second, the right of all Americans to pursue happiness may be inalienable, but it has little meaning when so many are denied the basic tools to use it.
William S. Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project and a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy.
