Tune into any politically oriented news show, radio program or blog of late and you'll likely encounter the word “socialism,” often as the main topic of discussion. Notice that the pro and con voices have gotten much louder as the term has re-entered the political lexicon in the wake of unambiguous evidence that globalism has not benefited everyone.

In the U.S., Democratic presidential candidates are proposing radical new social programs, termed “democratic socialism” by proponents and Soviet-style “socialism” by opponents. Clearly, the term means one thing to one side and something very different to the other. Indeed, google socialism and 127 million results appear.

A recent U.N. report has indirectly shed light on the efficacy and fairness of democratic socialist countries. The World Happiness Report released last month showed that the happiest country in the world in 2019, again, was Finland. It was followed by Denmark, Norway, Iceland and the Netherlands.

The U.S., by contrast, came in 19th, dropping a spot from the year before. Four of the five leading countries are what can be termed “social democracies” operating under “democratic-socialist" principles, or even what one free market economist referred to as “compassionate capitalism.”

Regardless the term used, these countries have a significant social safety net that is supported by high taxes. This in of itself is not the reason for happiness, as the report shows. But a combination of high GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and relative absence of corruption contribute to the feeling.

In short, countries with these characteristics are more likely to have citizens that trust their government and support a large social safety net and well-funded social programs, even at the cost of high taxes – all features missing from the life in the US of A.

In spite of an improved economy and increase in GDP, the U.S. ranked near the bottom of developed countries, owing to worsening health conditions, increasing addiction, declining social trust, and declining confidence in government. Unhappiness has been increasing since 2005, the report showed.

“Whatever benefits in subjective-well-being might have accrued as the result of rising incomes seem to have been offset by these adverse trends,” co-author Jeffrey D. Sachs said.

One reason for the relative high level of unhappiness in the U.S., in spite of the strong economy, is the lack of government response to the clearly negative social consequences that have resulted from economic consolidation and the growing power of corporations, especially in pharmaceutical and the food industries with notoriously weak government regulation.

Addiction in different forms

This year’s report featured an analysis that widespread drug addiction in America is also contributing to the country’s malaise. Sach’s definition of addiction includes the usual maladies such as obesity, alcoholism, smoking and drugs, but this year’s report featured the more recent mass epidemics of social media use and opioid addiction.

“The U.S. is in the midst of epidemics of several addictions, both of substances and behaviors. Recent data of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) show that the U.S. has among the world’s highest rates of substance abuse,” Sachs said.

Psychologist Jean Twinge’s research has shown an increase in depression among those born after 1995, termed I-Gen. Twinge’s research concludes that an increase in screen time on social media sites, resulting in poorer sleep habits and less face-face socialization, has led to higher rates of depression for this group. Facebook and other social media outlets have faced criticism but no new regulation has been implemented by the government.

“There’ll be a whole bunch of bills introduced to regulate Facebook. It’s up to you whether they pass or not,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a Senate hearing. Kennedy added that Zuckerberg could fight Congress or comply, but never issued an ultimatum.

The opioid crisis is the other big sickness. Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, aggressively marketed their drug to physicians and their efforts, in the darkest sense, paid off. Purdue Pharma spent about $200 million on marketing in 2001 and by the next year had seen sales rise to $1.5 billion. By 2012, OxyContin accounted for 30 percent of the market for painkillers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 70,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in 2017 alone.

As a result, the Trump Administration declared the opioid crisis a national emergency, but a Government Accountability Office report showed the response had a marginal effect. New legislation was enacted in October to spend additional funds on addiction, but no significant federal laws were put in place regulating the pharmaceutical industry since the crisis began.

On March 25, Purdue Pharma settled a $270 million lawsuit with the state of Oklahoma over its practices and handling of painkillers. The company faces numerous other lawsuits from municipalities and states.

“In view of the multiple addictive epidemics underway in the United States that are contributing to shockingly adverse public health outcomes…. one would expect a major public policy response. Yet the shocking truth is that U.S. public health responses have been small, even insignificant, to date," said Sachs.

"If anything, the epidemics expose the remarkable power of corporate vested interests in American political life, power that is so great that it has forestalled any effective responses that would jeopardize corporate profits and control.”

Political consequences of unhappiness

The rise in unhappiness was likely a factor in the 2016 presidential election results. The UN report showed that counties where voters shifted significantly from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 were associated with high levels of life dissatisfaction. This correlates to findings in the wake of the 2016 Brexit vote and the 2017 French presidential election, where far-right candidate Marine Le Pen shocked observers when she made it out of the first round of voting before losing to centrist Emanuel Macon.

In terms of the U.S. situation, growing unhappiness combined with the established data that unhappy voters are with the incumbent party makes a clear case why a politically inexperienced candidate like Donald Trump could become the leader of the free world.

But unhappiness with the political status quo is hardly limited to one political party. The 2018 midterms saw a significant increase in voter turnout compared with previous midterm elections. Future elections are likely to see other major upsets and turnovers in political party control, according to Pew research, as 70 percent of Americans are reportedly dissatisfied with the current state of politics and national life, marking a clear a lack of confidence in the federal government.

Pew notes, however, a stark contrast between Democrats and Republicans in terms of how to correct the problems plaguing the country. For example, about two-thirds of Democrats list increases in funding for public education as a top priority, versus only one-third of Republicans. The gap is even larger when it comes to environmental concerns, with 70 percent of Democrats ranking it as a major concern as opposed to 15 percent of Republicans. The partisan gap is the widest in decades, making any reforms an uphill battle.

The World Happiness Report establishes the correlation between happiness, income inequality and ineffective and corrupt government. But it also makes clear that a fractured society is unlikely to implement an equitable government. Social democratic reforms would likely lead to an increase in happiness, but without the right environmental conditions, such a government would likely be autocratic or dysfunctional.