Frazz by Jef Mallett for April 23, 2022

But they don’t have lutefisk.

Cute way to draw that second panel.

I once read that the base of the Swedish welfare state is what the Swedes call the “Royal Swedish Envy”, their historic antagonism toward anyone who achieves greater success than others. Of course the Finns aren’t Swedes, but the small Swedish minority in Finland has had great cultural influence there. But I’m just winging it here.

Per Bing Translator: Kumpi tuli ensin, kana vai muna?

Per Google Translate: Kumpi oli ensin, kana vai muna?

Per Aristotle: The chicken, because the actual has precedence over the potential.

They have universal healthcare, which works beautifully in every industrialized country on earth – except ONE.

Chicken vs. egg? Reptiles were laying eggs for millions of years before chickens even evolved.

I think it’s France where they eat consonants.

So you are saying vowels are the root of dissatisfaction?

They never worry about not completing something.

As they can truthfully say (in English), “We always Finnish.”

What does Finland and all those other “happiest” countries have that we don’t?

According to many people who have studied the “happiest countries” syndrome, what they have are:

1) A cultural ethos that discourages complaining, about just about anything; and 2) A largely monolithic culture (common ethnicity, common religion, common educational system, etc.

What does the USA have by contrast?

1) Complaining (be it about racism, sexism, or the fries being cold) as literally a national pastime; and 2) “The Great American Melting Pot”…………………..

I am danish, and we have (more or less) the same welfare system as Sweden and Finland (and Norway) – and I can tell you that our satisfaction and happiness is bases on TRUST in the public system. And that trust was created by a king (centuries ago) who realised that if someone with power abused the people beneath him, it was bad for the country. So he decided to punish everybody who did that: Those who did, were executed!

Are you done being happy? No, I’m FINISHED!

Wonderful drawing of the squeegeed window!!

Mallett has been wandering far afield recently. Gotta wonder if he’s smelling the heather or . . .?

Back when segregation was the law of the land, Finns had to go to court in Minnesota to prove they were white. Even though they’re all blond and blue-eyed. The claim was that they weren’t European but Mongol because of their language, and if that was the case, they couldn’t become citizens.

Professor Tolkien based Quenya – High-Elven – on Finnish. He said that studying Finnish was as intoxicating as wine.

Publicly funded health care, a top notch education system, a guarantee that their children won’t go hungry if they fall on hard times,… darned socialists!

More common courtesy and civic minded.

answer: rooster

An agglutinative language?

I’m guessing Russia will give Finland something to be unhappy about soon enough.

Not that many consonants. Google Translate claims it’s “Kumpi oli ensin, kana vai muna?” That’s exactly half consonants.

Come on… a people having a word for "the joy of sitting on a bouncy pillow " must be happy… By the way, that word reads “hyppytyynytyydytys” in finnish (no joke).

it always amazes me how the social sciences try to quantify emotions.

Maybe also less fear and resentment. But I’m just guessing.

Mikä oli ensin, kana vai muna?

Part of what Finns have is the contentment achieved by not worrying about such things as the chicken/egg conundrum.

It’s a social democracy for a start. On that alone it’s likely way ahead of the US for happiness. As Lewis Lapham once said to me many years ago on a Canadian TV call-in show, social democracy is dead in the US.

Finnish is not unusually consonant-heavy; its proportion of vowels is similar to most other European languages.

Oh Jef.. as someone of Finnish Ancestry – I love this discussion…

Scandinavians have always had a tradition of focusing on the community over self so there is less of an issue of keeping up with the Korhonen’s. It is widespread envy that keeps Americans from being content. It is not that they don’t have enough. It is the resentment that others have more that make us unhappy.