Economic doom and gloom notwithstanding, how happy are people around the world? Pretty happy, it turns out, according to a new global survey by private think tank Ipsos (whose motto "nobody's unpredictable" suggests that they've never met our intrepid adventurer-by-day/blogger-by-night John C. Farrier):
DESPITE global economic gloom, the world is a happier place than it was before the financial crisis began. That is the counterintuitive conclusion of a poll of 19,000 adults in 24 countries by Ipsos, a research company. Some 77% of respondents now describe themselves as happy, up three points on 2007, the last year before the crisis. Fully 22% (up from 20%) describe themselves as very happy—a more important measure, says Ipsos’s John Wright, since whenever three-quarters of people agree on anything, “you need to pay attention to intensity in the results.”
So, how about you? Are you happy?
The bigger picture is not so much, because I am not yet at any of the social (married, kids) and economic (house 2 cars, retirement plan) milestones a person my age should have. The plus (and part of my happiness), is that I have few to no expenses related to children, owning a home, and all that.
For me? Life is awesome, I make good money. I have a nice house. I cannot complain at all. America needs some purging of its religious nut job chicken-littles, but that doesn't really affect me since I avoid them anyway.