Nigeria tops happiness survey

A new study of more than 65 countries published in the UK's New Scientist magazine suggests that the happiest people in the world live in Nigeria - and the least happy, in Romania.

People in Latin America, Western Europe and North America are happier than their counterparts in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Nigeria has the highest percentage of happy people followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico, while Russia, Armenia and Romania have the fewest.

But factors that make people happy may vary from one country to the next with personal success and self-expression being seen as the most important in the US, while in Japan, fulfilling the expectations of family and society is valued more highly.

The researchers for World Values Survey described the desire for material goods as "a happiness suppressant".

They say happiness levels have remained virtually the same in industrialised countries since World War II, although incomes have risen considerably.

The exception is Denmark, where people have become more satisfied with life over the last three decades.

The study was carried out in 1999-2001 and published for the first time by New Scientist this week.

"New Zealand ranked 15 for overall satisfaction, the US 16th, Australia 20th and Britain 24th - although Australia beats the other three for day-to-day happiness," New Scientist says.

The survey is a worldwide investigation of socio-cultural and political change conducted about every four years by an international network of social scientists.

It includes questions about how happy people are and how satisfied they are with their lives.

Although such surveys are not new, they are being increasingly taken into account by policy makers, the magazine says.

The company where I used to work a long time ago had just beat some of our competition in the Northeast into the dirt. Rather than let them go bust, our company bought theirs and we took over operations. We sent two fellows up from our Georgia operation. Neither had a high school diploma. They were both brilliant workers/managers/businessmen. They were both red necks.

It's worth noting here that our company was non-union. We paid better than any other manufacturing job in our area and we had a simple philosophy- Get the mostest from the fewest. We let a new employee know right off the bat that he was expected to get out there and run with the pack or he would be run out the door. It was an industrious place- a$$holes and elbows 9 hours a day. You took a crap on your break- not on company time. We paid on an incentive program. Not by what you personally produced but by what the whole company produced weekly. This encouraged the average employee to tell someone who was wasting time to pull his thumb out and get to work. It worked great. When Japanese businessmen from Isuzu and Mitsubishi came to tour the plant when looking for a company to build their dry freight van body fleet- they were mightily impressed with dozens of men working as hard as they possibly could. We got the big contracts.

Anyway, these two fellows from our plant went up North and after a few days of setting up new jigs and ordering new equipment and materials so our new aquisition could make van bodies our way- they realized the problem with that company wasn't skills or materials it was just general attitude.

The more senior of the two was acting as the liason between the new company's manager and our VP in charge of Operations in the South. In the front office, there were all these little stickers with "Don't worry be happy" written on them. They were post-it notes. All over the place. People put 'em up I suppose to give a positive attitude to the work environment.

Our man went into the front office and tried to explain to these people that business was down and dirty. You had to get the other guy before he got you. They weren't receptive. The guys out in the shop weren't overly receptive as long as the office people weren't playing along.

So, this Georgia redneck got on the telephone with our VP and asked him how far his authority went. "Who can I fire?" The answer came back "Anybody you need to". Now this fellow hated lackadaisical attitudes. He hated non-productiveness. This company was really getting on his nerves with both. When he got irritated, he sucked his teeth until his lips bled- better than picking up a hammer and killing someone I suppose. So, he worked himself up to a bloody froth, went in the front office and fired the plant manager- a fellow who had been a VP himself before we took over. Then he yelled at the office people for about half hour and the whole time he did so he ripped those little post it notes down to punctuate his speech. When he was finished he flung all the little notes on the floor and said this is your problem- "you're all happy- nobody's f--king worried about their job around here! Well, that just changed."

Production improved immediately.

Now what this has to do with the article- who knows?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.