World Views

Many Americans were outraged when the Wall Street banks paid out an estimated $18.4 billion in executive and staff bonuses in 2009, even while the economy was being cratered by the financial meltdown and the Great Recession.1  It seemed very unfair; the perpetrators were being rewarded while the victims were paying a terrible price.  

The United Nations now publishes an annual World Happiness Report, and it shows that the overall trend since the depths of the Great Recession, in 2008-2009, continues to improve.  By the U.N.’s criteria, the world is getting happier.  Likewise, the Gallup polling organization, which does an ambitious annual survey across some 140 countries of people’s subjective sense of well-being, reports that its metric is also rising.