The German Happy Index

When a Mercedes comes off the German assembly line.....there's a list that is filled in and probably notes at least 10,000 quality points of manufacture.  The glass window is properly sealed, and made up of such-and-such material, which meets X-number of required safety features.  The air conditioning works like it should.  The seats are firmly attached.  A Mercedes customer can look at the sheet and feel some sort of comfort and rest assured that it's not some nickel and dime assembly.

Well....the German government has decided to take this concept of quality points, and apply it to life.

It's called the 'good life index'.

It took several years of scientific discussion and review....coming to 46 factors...which allocate out to twelve different dimensions.  The nifty thing, at least what they say?  You can measure each one of these.

For example, there is a concept called "Working well and getting a fair share".  Everyone in Germany is hyped up on getting their fair share.  It's part of the wealth redistribution game.  If they take 8,000 Euro from you over the entire year in taxes....sometimes even nickel-and-diming you....you kinda expect your fair share back.

Another items is actual take-home pay.  It doesn't matter what you make in pay.....because after the pension, health care and various tax items (even church tax) is taken out.....do you have enough to make you happy?  Well, it's a measured item as well.

Where does this list of 46 factors lead to?  Some Germans.....particularly politicians....want to pick this up every four years and announce their new strategy by picking the weaker of the 46 points, and building special programs around them.  They could then go and tell you that by voting for them.....you are improving your quality of life.

As you look at this concept.....you kinda wonder if the Berlin crowd is really that far outside of the circle of regular Germans....that they need someone or some list of measurements.....to tell them where they screwed up.  How they Germany advance so far in life over the past two-hundred years.....without such a list?  Or was it simply the leadership and authority not such a big deal and 99-percent of Germans were picking up shovels each day and moving the country and society ahead with no real concern of quality of life?

Back in 2014, a number of Germans spoke up about the immigration and asylum business.  Questions were raised, and they were basically told that they were not informed or reacting in the proper way.  Two years have passed, and now various politicians are being met in state elections, and told by the public to go home.....being replaced by frustrated and angry voters across the German heartland.Would the quality of life list or 46 factors have predicted that?  I doubt it.

It is an intellectual tool.....if you sit and think about this long enough.  It uses scientific principals to establish guidelines and suggest happiness or unhappiness.  On paper, it makes sense and I would take a guess that this started out as some political figure's Theseus from his or her university days.  They tinkered with it.....had group discussions, and convinced themselves that politics can be handled via a measured process.

If you'd taken this and applied it to the US in 2008.....it would have said you needed a new health-care program to make everyone happy.  So you would have made a new health-care program, and like we can observe today, six years later, it' s more or less a failure, and financially bankrupting the nation.  The happiness index?  People are unhappy......so you'd have to prioritize your gimmicks once again and re-invent the health-care program into something else.....temporarily making people happy, until they are unhappy once again.

Yeah, the index gimmick doesn't necessarily make things "right", it just gives you a tool to tell the public that you think their issues are worth fixing.....but fixing them doesn't mean that they really get fixed.

Then you come to the final issue.....getting a happy and unhappy group of Germans to be humble and admit their status in life.  Sadly, a lot of Germans whine.....even when they are driving a new Mercedes, drinking a five-star beer, and having just wrapped up a four-week vacation in Crete.

When you hear about this happiness index in Germany.....that's the 'jest' of the whole story.  It's supposed to fix the nation.....one way or another.