What Makes a Country Great?

What makes a country great? I offer the idea a country’s greatness, or health, depends on its culture, how the country manages its natural resources and economy, and its ability to defend its people and its allies. 

I offer the idea a country’s culture is reflected in how it respects life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or property ownership, how its people accept responsibility for their growth and to serve others, how they feel about themselves and the institutions in the country, and how other countries feel about them. 

Do people feel like they belong in their community, city, state, or country? Many healthy families have children who grow up to have very different core beliefs, they are still family and care for each other. Communities, cities, states, and countries might be able to learn from healthy families. 

I offer the idea that the belief in God, and especially Jesus Christ, can help communities and countries to respect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States of America’s Declaration of Independence references “Nature’s God” in multiple ways.

There happens to be some nonprofit organizations that rate countries along most of the previous mentioned values.

Considering how countries value life, the United Nations Development Program rates countries on what they call the Human Development Index considering the life expectancy, education, and standard of living. They also publish a report on their research. 

https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI

Considering how countries value liberty, the Cato Institute rates countries by freedoms. The Freedom House also rates countries by freedoms. Each of these organizations create a report on their freedom ratings. The Freedom House even claims the data shows that more countries are declining in freedoms than are increasing in freedoms over the past 18 years. 

https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2023

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world

Considering how countries value the pursuit of happiness, or truth, integrity, and fairness, Transparency International rates countries by lack of corruption, or a Corruption Perception Index.  

https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023

Considering how people feel about themselves, the World Happiness Report rates countries according to how happy their people are. Not surprisingly, the countries that score high in freedoms and human development, and low in corruption, score high in happiness.

https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/social-environments-for-world-happiness/

Considering how people trust other people in their country, Our World in Data has some information about it. 

https://ourworldindata.org/trust

Considering how people trust their institutions, the Edelman Trust Barometer shows how people trust their governments and businesses.

https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2024-01/2024%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20Global%20Report_0.pdf

Considering how countries manage their economy, the World Population Review, and the World Economics websites provide stats on different countries by their GDP to debt ratio (a reflection of how they manage their income and expenses). 

https://www.worldeconomics.com/Debt/

Last but not least. Considering a country’s ability to defend its people and its allies, Global Firepower ranks countries by their military strength. 

https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php

I offer the idea that there are many great countries. While all have the capacity to be great, it seems that it is a reasonable and respectful responsibility to at least be good. 

Of course, those website references could have some bias, whether conscious or subconscious. We all have bias, the question is, where, how much, and what are we doing to avoid it? On the flip side of the coin, those website references might be very accurate.

I understand there are dangers when comparing with others, however, if we can do so with some courage and humility, I believe we can learn from it. It is human nature to want to improve, and to respect hard work and excellence. This is a key reason why sports, arts, and science are so competitive and admired, and have so many different annual awards. 

It seems that many countries in the world are about to have shrinking populations, if they do not already. It seems that population growth and economy growth help cover up or smooth out problems in a country, similar to how rising income can help with problems in families and businesses. 

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

If the future population and economic growth of our country is about to level out or start decreasing in the years to come, we might want to get more serious about improving our country’s health? I offer the idea that improving any country, or community, starts with individual growth. Healthy organizations are built by respectful and reasonable people who accept responsibility for their growth and the growth of the organization. 

This website has many great pages on Personal Growth, Professional Growth, Leadership Growth, Spiritual Growth, Business Growth, Business Planning, Digital Marketing, Innovation, Truth about Life, and even some Secrets. The growth pages contain lists of the best books, podcasts, and YouTube channels for that area of growth, along with some epic quotes or references.