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Costa Rica: The Happiest Place on Earth

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Posted on Jul 7, 2009
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Flickr / wha'ppen

Greetings from the happiest place on Earth.

The New Economics Foundation released its new report ranking countries according to their levels of happiness, life expectancy and their ecological footprint. According to the study, Costa Rica is the happiest place in the world, while the U.S.—surprise, surprise—is less green and less happy than it was 20 years ago.

CNN:

Forget Disneyland! Costa Rica is the happiest place in the world, according to an independent research group in Britain with the goal of building a new economy, “centered on people and the environment.”

In a report released Saturday, the group ranks nations using the “Happy Planet Index,” which seeks countries with the most content people.

In addition to happiness, the index by the New Economics Foundation considers the ecological footprint and life expectancy of countries.

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You can also check out a map of the world according to life satisfaction, life expectancy and ecological footprint here, or download the full report here.

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By Inherit The Wind, July 8, 2009 at 4:57 am Link to this comment

“Champagne don’t drive me crazy.
Cocaine don’t make me lazy.
Ain’t nobody’s business but my own.
Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker
You can get all the liquor down in Costa Rica
Ain’t nobody’s business but my own.”—Taj Mahal.

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By samosamo, July 7, 2009 at 11:55 am Link to this comment

““Forget Disneyland!”“
**********************

It is no surprise that Costa Rica and those other latin american countries are ‘happier’ than the countries pushing for the ‘unsustainable’ high levels of growth and market control because, as I see it, life should be simple even when providing, defending, feeding and sheltering one’s self and family and the happiest way to do that is for people to live in close symbiotic relation with their own enviroments by not being too invasive and destructive to it, much unlike the ‘hogs’ in the ‘developed’ countries that figure they should have anything and do anything without regard for their greedy negative affect on anybody’s environment.

I just hope now that our ‘unfettered’ milton friedman hogs aren’t able to kill these places of less destructive existence off or subvert them into another and visible land of ‘Mordor’.

And disney? I loved it as a kid much to my father’s dismay and I see why when it doesn’t take much to see how much disney has been used as a veggetating means of distraction just as televised spectator sports and empty tv programing which for me proves the most applicable of sayings: ‘too much of anything is not a good thing’, and that indicates addiction.

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