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What’s the best country to live in?

best country to live

By Factual FrenzyPublished about a year ago 3 min read
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What’s the best country to live in?
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Which nation has the best living conditions in the world? Is it the one serving the finest cuisine? The longest future? Which weather is best? To answer that question, the majority of governments have heavily relied on a single number for the past seventy years. Elections, the stock market, and government policy are all influenced by this number. In any case, it was never planned for its ongoing reason; and there are those who would argue that the entire world is forever addicted to making it grow. The economist Simon Kuznets came up with this number, which is known as the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, in the 1930s to try to measure the size of an economy using a single, easy-to-understand number. GDP is the total value of all goods and services a nation produces and sells on the market. GDP per capita, which is simply the country's total GDP divided by the number of people living there, is still widely regarded as a measure of well-being to this day. Be that as it may, Gross domestic product doesn't really say anything direct about prosperity, since it doesn't consider what a nation produces or who approaches it. A nation's GDP is equivalent to that of a million dollars spent on food or vaccines or a million dollars spent on weapons. Because they are not offered for sale on the market, the value that society derives from things like public schools or firefighters is not included in GDP at all. GDP per capita also presents a misleading picture of a nation's wealth if the majority of it is controlled by a small number of individuals. Despite everything, there was a long-term correlation between a better quality of life and a higher GDP in many nations. From 1945 to 1970, as Gross domestic product multiplied, significantly increased or even quadrupled in a few western economies, individuals' wages frequently developed relatively. This had changed by the 1980s. Wages stopped keeping up with GDP growth or, in some cases, even declined, and the majority of the benefits went to a smaller and smaller percentage of the population as countries continued to gain wealth. Nonetheless, the concept of summarizing a nation's well-being in a single number was highly appealing. As an alternative to gross domestic product, King Jigme Singye Wangchuk of Bhutan proposed the concept of gross national happiness in 1972. A metric called Gross National Happiness asks people, "How happy do you think your family members are at the moment?" and takes into account factors like health, education, strong communities, and living standards. What is your insight into names of plants and wild creatures in your space?" furthermore "What kind of day was yesterday?" A more widely used metric is the Human Development Index from the United Nations. It estimates overall well-being by taking health, education, and income per capita into account. In the meantime, a metric known as the Sustainable Development Index takes into account both the effects of economic growth on the environment and people's well-being, reducing everything to a single number. Although no nation has ever been able to fully sustainably use its resources while simultaneously meeting its people's basic needs, Costa Rica currently comes closest. It has been able to significantly raise living standards and grow its economy over the past few decades without significantly increasing emissions. Jordan and Colombia, among others, have made significant progress. Life expectancy, for example, is now higher in Costa Rica than in some of the richest nations in the world. Eventually, there are cutoff points to any move toward that heats up the personal satisfaction in a nation down to a solitary number. Progressively, specialists favor a dashboard approach that spreads out every one of the elements a solitary number clouds. Given that people have different priorities and that the best country to live in depends on who is asking the question, this strategy makes even more sense. What would happen then if you were designing the well-being metric for your nation? What are your priorities and how would you measure them?

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