Free Republic

Marriage better supports individual and social wellbeing, and the government can and should reinforce its value through economic incentives. Cohabitation, not so much.In the wake of the sexual revolution, the increasing popularity of cohabitation is an alarming trend. Cohabitation, the practice of a romantically involved couple living together while unmarried, has doubled since 1995, with 12 percent of adults under the age of 30 living with their sexual partners. As cohabitation has become more accepted by Americans, there is also increasing support (from 65 percent of American adults, to be precise) for cohabitating couples receiving the same economic and tax...

Recently I realized that I think way too much about what I’m going to say to people who cause me, to be honest, just a mild inconvenience! It’s a clue to an issue that isn’t fully worked out yet. I remember being at a park one day when I was a boy. My brother was there, too, and another boy. I was smiling, and I believe it was the other boy who asked me, “Why are you smiling?” I was just happy to be alive. Apparently that boy had already had his happiness snatched away. Mine would get snatched soon...

At a time countless students face obstacles that could permanently stunt their learning growth, school choice provides one obvious solution to help mitigate a ‘lost generation.’At a time countless students face obstacles that could permanently stunt their learning growth, school choice provides one obvious solution to help mitigate a ‘lost generation.’ Impact on Suicide RatesThe study, released in December and conducted by a Cato Institute scholar and Western Carolina University economist, used two different methods to examine the impact of school choice on mental health. First, the researchers used examined variations in teenage (i.e., 15-19) suicide rates based on states’...

Here are some unhappy statistics: -- In America between 1946 and 2006, the suicide rate quadrupled for males ages 15 to 24 and doubled for females the same age. -- In 1950, the suicide rate per 100,000 Americans was 11.4. In 2017, it was 14. -- According to Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, in the 1980s, there were 32 mass public shootings (which he defines as incidents in which four or more people are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours). In the 1990s, there were 42. In the first decade of...

And if you are very, very lucky you will realize this long before it’s too late to enjoy those little things.That is all, now get out there and enjoy the little things.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

It is no secret that America is polarized. This is a fact that is manifested in so many different ways. Traveling down the highway to Chicago, for example, I came upon two successive billboards that I thought were striking examples of our divided culture. The first billboard caught me by surprise: it consisted of an electrocardiogram of a heart that suddenly stops beating. The caption read: When you die, you will meet God. As we were passing through the snowy night, I was unable to catch more details of this billboard. I do not know who put it out or...

Actual title: Some fun videos of Asia; to include China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan. (Part 13) This is part 13 of a 20 part series of videos of Asia during July and August. The post begins on a discussion of the importance of the Seinfeld Soup Nazi and starts to go into the subject of elementary schools in Thailand, when the protests in HK broke out. This particular post places five videos of the protests and the relative impact on China as a result.

I work like a maniac. But even if I stayed at it 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at some point my career would slow and stop. And when it did, what then? Would I one day be looking back wistfully and wishing I were dead? Was there anything I could do, starting now, to give myself a shot at avoiding misery—and maybe even achieve happiness—when the music inevitably stops?

This is the full post of the article. It is in honor for all the new graduates that are just now entering the work force. How to Build Up Your Life from Nothing. Here are my thoughts on what a young man can do to build up his life when he exits school. It does not matter if the school is college, High School, or elementary school. There comes a point in time when you need to make the transition from a student to a worker. Everyone has their thoughts on this. Here are mine. What Can we do? If...

Finland has just been named the happiest country in the world for the 2nd year in a row. The U.S., meanwhile, has fallen in the rankings from 18th to 19th. People in America and around the world are asking: What is Finland doing right? Why are the Finns happy? Can the Finnish model be exported to other countries? For this episode, we traveled to Finland to observe and speak with its people and to try to get some insight into those questions.

(Skip) After our reunion, I wondered if my Harvard [Business School] class — or even just my own friends there — were an anomaly. So I began looking for data about the nation’s professional psyche. What I found was that ... a surprising portion of Americans are professionally miserable right now. In the mid-1980s, roughly 61 percent of workers told pollsters they were satisfied with their jobs. Since then, that number has declined substantially, hovering around half; the low point was in 2010, when only 43 percent of workers were satisfied, according to data collected by the Conference Board, a...

Pope Francis gave his usual rant yesterday about the evils of capitalism, advanced civilization and material well-being. “For many people, life’s meaning is found in possessing, in having an excess of material objects. An insatiable greed marks all human history, even today, when, paradoxically, a few dine luxuriantly while all too many go without the daily bread needed to survive,” the Pope said. Hey Pope Francis: Why don’t you go live in a hut, without heat, air conditioning or comfortable clothes, cars and planes? You hypocritical Communist. Oh, and by the way: Merry Christmas! The Pope appeals to the worst...

The greatest happiness in life, is to love and be loved. --George Sand Brought this up with some people last night, and I was at first really taken back by the number of those there, who disagreed with this statement. Am interested in the how fellow Freepers think on this. You could almost cut it down the middle with 1/2 of the group agreeing that the greatest joy is to love someone, and the love is returned. I would say their politics was clearly more conservative, and they were Christian. Then you had a third who found happiness purely in...

This instinct to measure and compare doesn’t disappear once people have an obscene amount of money. “The problem is, Am I doing better than I was? is only [moving people in] one direction, which is up,” Norton says. And if a family amasses, say, $50 million but upgrades to a neighborhood where everyone has that much money (or more), they feel a lot less rich than if they had stuck to the peer comparisons they were making tens of millions of dollars ago. Hence the ever-shifting goalposts of wealth and satisfaction. The research Norton has conducted illustrating this phenomenon is...

Here’s one that really cuts against the cultural grain. A new study by a sociologist in Utah finds that people with fewer sexual partners reported having happier marriages compared to those who had more partners prior to marriage. From the Atlantic: Over at the Institute for Family Studies, Nicholas Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah, has found that Americans who have only ever slept with their spouses are most likely to report being in a “very happy” marriage. Meanwhile, the lowest odds of marital happiness—about 13 percentage points lower than the one-partner women—belong to women who have...

Over at the Institute for Family Studies, Nicholas Wolfinger, a sociologist at the University of Utah, has found that Americans who have only ever slept with their spouses are most likely to report being in a “very happy” marriage. Meanwhile, the lowest odds of marital happiness—about 13 percentage points lower than the one-partner women—belong to women who have had six to 10 sexual partners in their lives. For men, there’s still a dip in marital satisfaction after one partner, but it’s never as low as it gets for women,... (Skip) In an earlier analysis, Wolfinger found that women with zero...

Rankings: A new report claims that Finland is the happiest out of 156 countries around the world. What the report really shows, however, is the futility of these types of international comparisons.XThe annual ranking, put out by the U.N.-sponsored Sustainable Development Solutions Network, is based on the findings of the Gallup World Poll, which conducts national surveys in more than 160 countries.The other of the top five "happiest countries" on this year's list are Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland. The U.S. came in 18th place, down from 14th last year.The findings generated widespread coverage, and to some on the left,...

We all learned in elementary school that "you can't divide by zero." But what happens when you divide by a number very close to zero, a small fraction? The quotient shoots way up to a very large value. Pick any number. If you divide 27 by 1, you get 27. If you divide 27 by 0.1, you get 270. Divide 27 by 0.001, and you get 27,000. And so on. Any such division exercise blows up to a huge result as the denominator gets closer and closer to zero.  There are several indices being cited these days that get people's attention because of the big numbers...

Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Science has proved him correct … still. A team of German scientists examined more than 13,000 molecular food compounds, looking for substances that may activate dopamine receptors in the same way that actual dopamine does. In other words, food that makes you happy. They found one in beer, a drink so noble that it is thought that beer was the nectar of the gods sipped by the Greek god Zeus from his goblet. "Drink. Be merry," commanded Zeus, or at least that's what...

He forages in rubbish to put half-eaten food and still-usable items to good use. In the process, Daniel Tay has found a happier way to live - and is inspiring others to do likewise. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) SINGAPORE: He spots an open cake amid the used cans, old clothes and other rubbish. “There are three rules when it comes to eating food from a dump,” explains Mr Daniel Tay, 38, as he puts them into action. First, he examines the cake for mould, then sniffs it and finally licks it. This time, however, he does not take a nibble as he usually...