‘World Misery Index’ Puts U.S. Between Romania and Hungary

Steve Hanke, co-Director of Applied Economics at
the libertarian Cato Institute today released what he calls the
“World
Misery Index.” The United States’ position is not
encouraging.

The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave lands itself in spot
66 (the lower the number, the worse), right between Romania and
Hungary. The least miserable country in the world is Switzerland,
at spot 109. Our beloved northern neighbors, Canada, beat us by 30
spots. Perhaps the only thing it ranks #1 in these days, Syria is
crowned the world’s most miserable country.

Hanke explains, “Every country aims to lower inflation,
unemployment, and lending rates, while increasing gross domestic
product (GDP) per capita.” He created his ranking system “through a
simple sum of the former three rates, minus year-on-year per capita
GDP growth.” The “largest contributing factor” to American misery
is unemployment.

Earlier this year a Gallup poll found the percentage of people
who feel satisfied with their level of freedom has plummeted from
91 percent to 79 percent in the last eight years. Another Gallup
poll found that Americans think government itself is the biggest
facing our nation. Reason‘s J.D. Tuccille
suggested that people feel these ways because they’re true.
 He laid out several other indices: The Index of Economic
Freedom, which found “the U.S. is the only country to have recorded
a loss of economic freedom each of the past seven years. The
overall U.S. score decline from 1995 to 2014 is 1.2 points, the
fourth worst drop among advanced economies”; The Fraser
Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World:
2013 Annual Report gave an even harsher
assessment, dropping the U.S. from 3^rd to
19^th in a decade; The World Press Freedom Index and the
Committee to Protect Journalists have also sounded the alarm that
press freedom is on the decline in this country. 

Here’s Hanke’s full index: