The 2024 World Happiness Report tells the same story it has for the past decade; the U.S. is the land of unhappy unequals; while Nordic countries have evolved into a society of happy, equal, and well-educated super-humans.
Academics, pundits, and blowhards of every sort have theories on how we got here and how to fix it. But I’m neither historian, nor philosopher, and don’t have the hubris to believe I’m smart enough to fix it.
Those with loftier credentials have tried. Not only have they failed; such efforts have hardened America’s resistance to evolve our old-world class-based system into a modern equality-based society, similar to the Nordics.
But as a financially independent American, I have indeed tasted many of the privileges of Nordic life: autonomy, employment independence, and security of basic services like healthcare.
Nordics are handed these privileges at birth. Except for the rich who inherit it, all other Americans have to earn it, like I did, and for most, the journey is hard and long. But there is one way to get there faster: the American FIRE movement (Financial Independence / Retire Early).
Is it that bad for Average Americans?
According to the World Happiness Report, U.S. social harmony is eroding.
Not only did the US fall out of the top 20 countries in 2024; even worse, the US ranked an abysmal 60th, when measuring the well-being, opportunities, and security of people 30 and under. In short, the US is breeding a society of warring malcontents who distrust their government, society, and fellow citizens, and who believe a me-against-the-world mentality is the only way to thrive in the game of life.
It’s not hard to see why. Study after study has shown rich Americans are amassing obscene amounts of wealth, while lower and middle classes fall behind. Just 1% of our population owns 90% of the wealth. Meanwhile, the U.S is the most wealthy country in the world yet has the highest poverty rate when measured against the 26 most developed economies. We’re both richest and poorest simultaneously.
Studies show this acceleration in the rich/poor gap has continued to erode the social order since the 1980s. In that era, efforts were made to shrink the role of the federal government and turn the citizens and free market to self-regulate in a “Lord of Flies” type free for all. We are now reaping what we have sown: massive inequality and a discontented populace that has turned against itself.
How Nordic Countries differ
The five Nordic countries – Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland – all ranked in the top 10 happiest countries, even snagging the top 4 spots.
Their high rankings were primarily determined by standing out on the following measures: “GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption.” All of this is supported by a robust social contract administered by the individual governments of each Nordic country.
Nordics utilize a smart, tax-efficient system of government that guarantees universal education, universal healthcare, paid vacation, paid parental leave, and universal childcare and elder care. Its citizens are not reliant on family, employers, spouses, family fortune, or any other form of dependency to obtain basic rights, opportunity, and human dignity.
The Nordic systems, which guarantee basic rights like paid parental leave, are far from unique in developed economies. Most other European countries, as well as Canada and Australia, offer similar rights, and all rank ahead of the US.
What’s unique about Nordic societies is just how generous these benefits are, and especially their impact in making each individual completely free from dependency on others. The below graphic emphasizes this point.
As you can see, the Nordic individual is free to form bonds with individuals, family, and their employer for reasons independent of basic human rights.
American System of Dependencies
The U.S. social contract is the exact opposite. Americans have a legacy of hating taxes and distrusting government and instead placing all bets, including basic services like healthcare, on free market capitalism.
As such, the U.S. has the least government services and lowest tax rate amongst advanced economies. Instead it favors deregulated, hyper-competitive private systems where citizens are left to their own devices to navigate and independently secure their own needs like education and childcare.
Naturally, middle-class Americans are not capable of securing all of these rights on their own and so relationships of dependency are required: employers decide paid time off and healthcare benefits, parents provide daycare, children provide elder care, spouses are dependent on a breadwinner to secure benefits, children rely on adults to fund college, etc.
The below graphic demonstrates this complex tangle of American dependencies to obtain basic rights, security, and opportunities.
If this graphic looks complicated, that’s because securing a middle-class life in America is complicated. As you can see, individual autonomy and freedom is sacrificed in America due to the necessity of obtaining basic benefits and securities through dependent relationships with employers, family members, private insurers, and (for a small poor minority) a small sliver of government.
The end result as Americans know has been a wealth-mutating upper-class, a shrinking and fragile middle-class, and an entrenched and growing poverty class.
This is why equality-based Finland ranks as the number one happiest country in the world, where all citizens have the same guaranteed opportunities, and why the inequality-based U.S. is no longer recognized as a world icon for social mobility.
The tragedy is that social mobility was once the single core tenet of the American Dream. But as Lars Trägårdh says in popular book “Nordic Theory of Everything,” “Social mobility without social investments is simply not possible [ . . . ] You’re going to end up with inequality, gated communities, collapse of trust, a dysfunctional political system. All these things you see now in the United States.”
The FIRE Alternative
Is there an alternative to the binary choice between American middle-class dependencies and Nordic universal autonomy? Is our only choice to be a violent American road warrior or a Nordic sissy coddled by the “nanny state?”
I argue there is in fact an alternative that sits somewhere in the middle: the American FIRE movement.
FIRE is quintessentially American in that it rewards hard work, innovation, sacrifice, and the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. But its rewards are decidedly Nordic in nature, as achieving FIRE frees you from having to access basic rights and security through dependent relationships. In fact, FIRE adds a little American spice to the mix, as it not only frees its graduates from dependencies on employers and family, but it also frees them from government dependencies as well.
The below graphic illustrates this independence.
Some might argue that this is just an “upper-class” American in disguise, and in some ways, they’re right. Most FI nest eggs are two million dollars or more, affording people both the luxury to self-fund their own care, as well as exploit tax loopholes that favor the rich.
But just because the end game of FIRE is sustainable wealth, that does not mean you have to have a privileged income to get there. My average lifetime adult earnings, for example, track closely to the median American wage. I’m financially independent now, sure, but that has been due to aggressive investing and a modest lifestyle.
Avoiding toxic debt and consumerism is something that FIRE adherents excel at, but most of America is hopelessly imprisoned by runaway consumption that forces a lifetime of dependencies on the U.S. inequality-based private systems. FIRE can set you free.
Complain or invest in yourself. Its your choice.
Why not just change our government for all, rather than live like a FIRE-monk to earn your independence individually? Oh, to dream.
Maybe I’m wrong and passionate citizens can effect change. Maybe I should storm Congress and demand a Swedish makeover, like the January 6 “rioters” did when they took a tourist visit of the Capital building to politely air their grievances.
I can already see the future as a result of our collective lobbying. A Nordic re-imagining of the U.S. social order might usher in Utopia-for-all, where streets are pothole-free. Shiny government buildings sit on every street corner, serving happy citizens free Swedish meatballs while they lounge in chic Ikea furniture. Throw in some snappy Linzer cookies, Viking mead, and lingonberry jam, and I might just change my name to Sven.
If you believe you can will this American future into existence, have at it. I’m rooting for you. Seriously. The world needs big dreamers, and America is full of them.
But I’m not one of them. I buried my dreams and started hustling instead at the age of 24, when I graduated $100K in debt, got married, had no health insurance, and struggled to find work.
No benevolent force swooped out of the Norwegian fjords to rescue me or my inequality-entrenched society then, and I won’t dream it will do so now.
If America hasn’t crushed your Nordic dreams yet, feel free to invest your efforts in changing the rules in this country. You do you.
Me? I’ll just play by the rules we already have and find my salvation in FIRE. I’m American through and through (well if you count half-Mexicans) and I’m using my American freedom to invest my time, efforts, and money in myself. This is America, after all. We might be the most unequal country in the developed world, but we still have the freedom to make our own choices.
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