S4 E35 - The Happiest Country? — What the UN Won’t Tell You About Finland

The United Nations says Finland is the happiest country on earth — again.
 But how do they know?
 We look behind the World Happiness Index and find missing data, selective reporting, and a quiet message aimed at America.
 From Finland’s high taxes on the poor, its state church, and centralized police force, to rising suicide rates and school attacks — this episode reveals how the UN’s feel-good rankings turn into subtle anti-American propaganda.

We don’t bash Finland — we expose bias.
 Because if “happiness” can mean anything, it can also mean whatever helps the narrative.

🎧 Watch or listen now — The Tenth Man Podcast.
Where we don’t echo the left or the right.
We bring you original analysis and the facts buried in plain sight.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Finland ranks first in the World Happiness Report for the eighth year in a row. And once again, America takes a beating. Maybe it's time to look at how the UN measures happiness today on The Tenth Man. This is The Tenth Man where we don't echo the left or the right. We bring you original analysis and the facts they bury. Here's what we mean. Welcome to the weekend everyone. I'm Michelle Miller, and this morning we're gonna take you to the happiest place on Earth. No, not Disneyland, but Finland. That's right. The European country was recently voted The Happiest in the World, for an eighth consecutive year. We're gonna go there to find out their secret sauce and try our hand at some of their traditions.

[00:01:02] CBS Saturday Morning news said Finland was voted the happiest nation on earth. I didn't vote. Did you? When people hear World Happiness Report, they picture a team of analysts buried in spreadsheets, income, health, education, freedom, maybe even hours of sunshine. It sounds like the sort of project that takes years and a dozen graduate students to finish, but brace yourself because the truth is far simpler, too simple in fact.

[00:01:31] The backbone of the entire report is something called the Cantril Ladder, a psychological survey from the 1960s. It does not measure how well people live, only how they feel about how well they live. It's a Gallup poll where they call roughly a thousand people in every country and ask one question -on a ladder from zero to 10, where zero is the worst possible life and 10 the best,

[00:01:59] where do you stand today? That's the whole thing. Each nation's average answer becomes its happiness score. 

[00:02:08] The UN. Then sprinkles in a few background numbers like GDP and life expectancy to make the chart look official. But at its core, it's still a poll of perceptions, not performance, just "How ya doin'?" There's nothing wrong with the Cantril Ladder itself. It's a legitimate tool for measuring self-reported wellbeing.

[00:02:30] The problem is what happens when the UN turns that modest survey into a moral scoreboard for civilization. There's no audit, no follow up, no controls for cultural bias. 

[00:02:44] So one person's seven might be another person's five different languages and temperaments interpret the scale differently. Finns may round up their feelings as a civic duty. We'll talk more about that. And Americans raised on self-improvement, mark themselves lower because they expect more.

[00:03:03] And remember, every country gets the same sample size, about 1000 people. In Finland, that's one for every 5,500 citizens. In the United States, one for every 330,000. So a single cheerful Finn can outweigh an entire small town in Kansas.

[00:03:23] If you've learned something, then you should like this video and subscribe. You probably didn't get a vote on the World Happiness Report, but you can help this channel and get the word out to other people.

[00:03:34] Because then the survey results themselves are compressed. There's really not a lot of difference in the top end.

[00:03:43] The top 20 countries differ by roughly a single point on that 10 point ladder, and yet that one point margin fuels endless headlines about national virtue. All this is why America is only 24th and Mexico is in the top 10 ranking above us and Canada. Yes, really.

[00:04:05] And why Finland looks like the valedictorian while the US gets a scolding, even though their averages are practically identical.

[00:04:14] Even if Finland were happy, it's only 5 million people. . Does that happiness scale up? If we ran the same survey separately by American states, we'd get 50 wildly different results. Californians would give themselves a nine just for the weather. That would make six Finlands. The point is happiness depends on who's talking and how many and how loudly.

[00:04:41] Meanwhile, Finland has turned that ranking into a brand. Billboards, travel ads and government websites now proclaim it the world's happiest country. Tourists are invited to come learn the secrets of happiness, and we saw CBS news taking the bait. When your national PR depends on a survey, you have every reason to keep answering high.

[00:05:06] In Finland, happiness isn't just a feeling anymore, it's civic participation.

[00:05:12] So let's see what the UN could have measured but didn't. If the goal were truly to understand how people live, there's plenty of real data available. Birth rates, suicide rates, taxes on working families, immigration demand, charitable giving, even marriage and divorce. All of these reveal how hopeful a society feels about its future.

[00:05:36] But those numbers tell a very different story, one that doesn't fit the sermon. And here's one, the UN never touches violence. A year ago, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz went on camera saying he'd spent time in Finland and that they don't have this problem. 

[00:05:54] I've spent time in Finland and seen some finished schools. They don't have this happen. Even though they have a high gun ownership rate in the country,

[00:06:02] but they do. 

[00:06:04] Another developing story. Police in Finland say there's been a shooting at a school outside the capitol. Helsinki police have detained a suspect, also a minor. They have said in the last few minutes that there has been one fatality and they are calling it a tragic day.

[00:06:21] Finland has had many school attacks, including nine school attacks in the 2020s, eight with knives and one with a gun. 

[00:06:29] Three just in 2025 alone, and one just in October. They're getting more frequent, and it's a reminder that even so-called Happy Nations aren't immune to the same human darkness.

[00:06:43] And yet when those incidents happen abroad, they fade away quietly erased by Tim Walz and the mainstream media. When they happen here, they're proof that America is broken. That's not journalism. And the UN builds its data narrative on that same selective blindness.

[00:07:05] Start with suicide. Finland's rate has been horrific.

[00:07:11] It's declined over the decades to where it's close to the American average. If happiness means wanting to keep living, that number matters more than any self score on a ladder. We'll talk more about this later.

[00:07:26] Next birth rate, Finland's fertility is about 1.26 children per woman the lowest in the Nordic region. That's not optimism. It's more like demographic surrender. The US is at 1.6 and every new child is a vote of confidence in tomorrow.

[00:07:49] And immigration. If Finland is the world's happiest place, where are the crowds? Immigrants make up only about 7% of its population, less than half America's share. Meanwhile, millions still line up for US visas, but no one rows a dinghy across the Atlantic to reach Lapland.

[00:08:13] Now look at the yardsticks the left says it values, and see how those compare. Take taxes. Progressives love to say, look at Finland, high taxes, happy people, but those taxes fall on everyone.

[00:08:30] Roughly 13% of Finland's GDP is taxed compared with 8% in the US. And that's because they take 60% of your income in taxes once you make over $95,000. And there are consumption taxes on all goods and services which hit low income earners hard. Here, the working poor keep more of what they earn. In Finland ,the social contract starts at the checkout counter.

[00:09:01] Minimum wage? There isn't one. Wages are set by private bargaining between unions and employers. In the US even our lowest paid workers have a statutory floor and several states exceed the federal minimum. The supposed Workers' Paradise runs on private contracts.

[00:09:24] Abortion? Finland allows abortion on demand only up to 12 weeks. When Mississippi proposed a 15 week limit, the pro-choice faction challenged it in the Supreme Court, and that's how Roe versus Wade was overturned. Imagine the outrage Finland's policy would've triggered here, yet it's labeled progressive there.

[00:09:51] What else do they quietly excuse in Finland, but would condemn in America? Finland has a state church. About 62% of Finns belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Formally recognized and partially funded through taxes.

[00:10:09] Try proposing that in the US, the same commentators who celebrate Finland's social cohesion would call it Christian nationalism overnight.

[00:10:21] Next, there's policing. Finland has one national police force under the Ministry of the Interior. The government can deploy officers anywhere in the country without debate. When Finland does it, it's efficient. When Donald Trump sent out the National Guard to fight crime, it was fascism.

[00:10:43] If America adopted that same trio, a state religion, a national police force, and broad taxes on the working poor, it would be denounced as theocracy, fascism, and inequality all at once. When Finland does it, it's Nordic happiness.

[00:11:01] The truth is Finland isn't a socialist paradise or a right wing dream, either one. It is a pragmatic survivor, something to respect, not to worship. And history bears that out. In World War II, Finland fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviets, not from ideology, but from desperation. After the war, it got friendly with Moscow trading free speech for peace in a policy known as Finlandization.

[00:11:36] Now today after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's joined NATO to defend the very freedoms it once suppressed. Three opposite alignments in less than a century, that's not ideology, that's survival instinct. Yet the UN and western media still sell Finland as a permanent progressive utopia. They airbrush the contradictions, the state church, the national police, the heavy taxes, the homogeneity.

[00:12:05] If America had that mix, it would be called oppressive. When Finland has it, it's modern. But Finland isn't the villain here. The narrative is. The world uses its image as moral leverage. Another polite way to tell Americans they're doing life wrong. So what does the World Happiness Report really measure?

[00:12:30] Not wealth, not health, not safety, and not even smiles. It measures how content people say they are, and how neatly that contentment fits the UN's idea of virtue. The real headline isn't, "Finland is Happy", it's the UN found another way to criticize America. But here's the thing, America is the one place people fight to get into, not out of. Our poor own smartphones.

[00:13:07] Our immigrants start businesses. Our arguments loud as they might be, prove that we still believe in choice. We measure happiness in possibilities, not percentages. Finns may tell the Gallup poll that they're content and good for them, Americans respond differently. When we are not satisfied, we build, innovate, complain, and vote.

[00:13:38] Dissatisfaction is our national fuel. That's why the rest of the world keeps copying our inventions, even as it lectures us about our mood. And while the UN hands out happiness ribbons, another statistic tells a deeper story. Suicide. I said we'd come back to this. Finland's rate, though improving still stands above ours. America's sadly, has been rising.

[00:14:06] And that's the number worth watching because it warns what happens when comfort replaces purpose. If we chase European style serenity by trading freedom for security, we may end up with neither and no reason to get up in the morning.

[00:14:25] Because the World Happiness Report isn't the UN's only crystal ball. There's a peace index, a gender gap index, a nations inequality index, a climate resilience score. Each one wrapped in data. Each one whispering the same sermon that virtue lives abroad and America needs correction. After a while, the pattern isn't science or data, it's envy and blaming. The UN doesn't measure happiness so much as it substitutes jealousy for accountability. And we're supposed to buy into it.

[00:15:01] So let them keep their ladders and their indexes. Let the media worship their latest Northern miracle. We'll keep chasing something a little bigger than happiness. The restless energy that built a free country and still draws the world to its doors. Because happiness isn't the absence of struggle.

[00:15:22] It's the freedom to make the struggle mean something.