{"id":4086,"date":"2013-11-28T14:05:25","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T14:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=4086"},"modified":"2013-11-28T14:05:25","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T14:05:25","slug":"happy-sad-places-have-common-threads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4086","title":{"rendered":"Happy, sad places have common threads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Forbes Magazine has come up with a survey of the happiest and saddest countries on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Take a look at the list. You might discover something I noticed immediately after scanning the list and looking at the pictures associated with the link.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/money.msn.com\/investing\/happiest-and-saddest-countries-2013-1<\/p>\n<p>Happy places are prosperous and peaceful. Sad places are poverty stricken and ripped apart by war.<\/p>\n<p>Look at the people in the pictures and you&#8217;ll notice something else. Close your eyes and think of the stereotypical Norwegian, who lives in the happiest country on the planet. Blond and blue-eyed, yes? The rest of the 10 happiest countries are populated by people with similar stereotypical features.<\/p>\n<p>Now, look at the pictures of the 10 saddest countries. Chad is the No. 1 on the sad list. Where is Chad? In Africa. It is populated by people of color, as are virtually all the countries on the saddest places list.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure what the Forbes study is <em>meant<\/em> to prove. To my eyes, the obvious conclusion I&#8217;m drawing is that worldwide peace and prosperity need to be distributed much more evenly.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe someone will come up with a list of strategies to make that a reality.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forbes Magazine has come up with a survey of the happiest and saddest countries on Earth. Take a look at the list. You might discover something I noticed immediately after scanning the list and looking at the pictures associated with the link. http:\/\/money.msn.com\/investing\/happiest-and-saddest-countries-2013-1 Happy places are prosperous and peaceful. Sad places are poverty stricken and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4086\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy, sad places have common threads<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1762,2057,3760,4070],"class_list":["post-4086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-forbes","tag-happiness","tag-prosperity","tag-sadness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}