According to the latest World Happiness Report released this week, Australia ranks 9th, behind New Zealand 8th, and Canada 7th, but well ahead of the US at 14th, and China not making the Top 20 – with both the latter declining in ranking. The Top 5 was Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and Finland.

The researchers concluded that three quarters of the variation can be explained by six social and economic factors – national wealth; healthy years of life expectancy; social support (someone to rely on when in trouble); trust (perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (measured by donations).

Economic growth often dominates these sort of surveys, but growth doesn’t guarantee ‘happiness’, as evidenced by the results for the US and China. While the US is undoubtedly getting ‘richer’, its social capital is deteriorating and, as one of the researchers commented, the country is ‘mired in a roiling social crisis’.

To fix that social fraying, Jeffrey Sachs, a leading economist from Columbia University, argues policymakers should work toward campaign finance reform, reducing income and wealth inequality, improving social relations between native-born and immigrant populations, overcoming the national culture of fear induced by the Sept. 11 attacks, and improving the educational system.

While I must admit that I always take these sort of surveys with a ‘grain of salt’ – like those that suggest that Melbourne out ranks Sydney as ‘the most livable city’etc.- there is always food for thought, and a challenge to what can be our complacency. For example, while not to the same degree, many of Sach’s comments about the social fabric of the US should cause us to focus on similar issues and challenges here.

I am very concerned now just how easily our short-term, opportunistic, populous, mostly negative, politics simply focuses on winning points on the other side on issues that are fundamentally important in our society, often with significant, longer-term consequences against our national interests and, indeed, our sustained ‘happiness’.

For example, we don’t focus enough on the significance of growing inequality; or on closing the ‘gap’ with indigenous Australians; or to see our very successful and tolerant multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic society as a major national asset that remains a work-in-progress; or on the magnitude and urgency of the challenge of climate change; or on the erosion of our democracy; to mention just a few.

Indeed, our political process is in danger of doing irreparable damage in many of these respects – consider, the grossly irresponsible point scoring on renewables and climate in recent months, or the divisive debate about reforming the Racial Discrimination Act, or on the appalling neglect of the consequences of youth and aboriginal incarceration, and many, many more.

You often hear people lament just how fast moving and complex our lives have become, and how they have had to adjust to things like job insecurity, and to deal with a host of daily financial challenges, and even not being able to understand their electricity and phone bills, but knowing that they are being ripped off anyway, and a host of others.

The suggestion is often that they were ‘happier’ when their lives were simpler, and their goals and values clearer. While we have recorded some 25 years of sustained economic growth, many feel that they have missed out, and been left behind by our politicians and political system. Hence, out of frustration and disappointment, Trump, BREXIT, Hanson, and so on.