These sorts of studies aimed at ranking countries from worst to best are almost always pretty useless, based as they are on a points scale made up of some poorl

These sorts of studies aimed at ranking countries from worst to best are almost always pretty useless, based as they are on a points scale made up of some poorly-chosen metrics of goodness assigned arbitrary weightings. They're even more useless when just used to compare the twenty or so rich "western" countries of the world, all of which are fairly similar in terms of their absolute quality of life. I like the way the author here acknowledges that he wouldn't usually believe this sort of study, and that he doesn't know enough about the other 20 countries to really judge, but since the study agrees with his prejudices he's inclined to believe it. I applaud his honesty here.