What Makes the Perfect Country?
Or at least one that doesn’t seem so egregiously substandard that you’re embarrassed to live there
I’ve seen a lot of articles over the last few weeks along the lines of ‘6 Reasons Why You Should/Shouldn’t Move to *****’, or ‘10 Things Everyone Loves/Hates About ******’. And whenever you read them, you end up going through a mental checklist of how your own country of birth or residence stacks up against those positive and negative factors.
I live in Spain and have done it for 20 years or so. I like the place. I may even this year get around to applying for citizenship, though that inevitably brings me up against two issues that are definitely in the ‘Debit’ column of my account with my adopted homeland.
- The bureaucracy.
I fully appreciate that granting lifelong citizenship is A Big Thing that no nation should feel they ought to do without due formality. But there’s due formality, and then there’s endless hoop-jumping for no purpose, shuttling from one non-functioning departmental queuing system to another to get a whole War and Peace’s worth of papers signed, stamped, counter-signed, and counter-stamped. And that’s just to register a pet dog.
2. The monarchy.
It’s one thing to be saddled with a monarchy just because it’s always been there and no one can really decide what to replace it with. Like the old oil can that’s still collecting the condensation drips from the air conditioning fully 12 years after you first shoved it under the pipe, because although it’s kind of ugly, it gets the job done, and it’s not as if there’s an obvious readymade alternative that would look or function any better.
But if a country has had them shooed out once already, as most monarchies have been at some point, and then actually chooses to dig up and dust off the whole rotten, stinking zombie concept?
Spain is a bit of a special case here because old Juan Carlos did a decent enough job back in the post-Franco days when it was all a bit touch and go. But after he started screwing around, fiddling with taxes, and massacring protected species for kicks, maybe instead of just trading him in for a younger model, they should have scrapped the whole thing completely.
In an ideal world, I’d prefer to swear allegiance to a country that didn’t have a hereditary head of state, unless I was traveling back in time several centuries and needed to cut them some historical slack. So…
Rule #1: No monarch and/or dictator as head of state
Which ends up ruling out a hell of a lot of countries, including a bunch of otherwise progressive European states. Lookin’ at you, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden… Which makes a difference, as the next factor is healthcare.
Rule #2: Must have good quality healthcare
With those backward monarchies out of the running, candidates are starting to thin out a bit. I reckon anywhere in the Top 50 for healthcare should be fine. Finland is still in for the Nordics, ranked 12th by CEOWORLD. Other usual standard-of-living suspects from Europe are there — Germany, France, Switzerland… And then around the globe, there’s Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea… But quite a few of these will fall foul of the next factor.
Rule #3: Same-sex marriage must be legal
This serves here as a fundamental proxy for all kinds of aspects of social justice and enlightenment. What the last few decades have shown is that where the right to marry is afforded equally to all, we can be fairly confident that normative social attitudes are inclusive and protective, and hidebound religious or cultural bigotry is actively outlawed, whatever individuals or entire congregations may think.
This really does narrow it down, as there are only 34 candidate countries under this criterion and only 20 of those passed the first test. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia won’t be eligible until they ditch Charlie Boy and get their own proper head of state.
So after those first three strikes, who do we still have with us? Nations with a modern constitution, that protect their residents’ rights and health. In other words, they simply do what every nation should be able to manage, or at least genuinely aspire to, in the 21st century.
Well, at this point the list looks like this, by my reckoning:
Argentina, Austria, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Mexico, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, United States, Uruguay
Quite how the USA scrapes in on healthcare (in 30th place) I do not know. I guess the clue is in the name of the publication that produced the rankings: CEO World. For those who aren’t CEOs, the reality might just be a little lower.
But in any event, we’ll have to cross it off the list under the next criterion.
Rule #4: I must have a decent chance of not being gunned down when I step out of my front door
This is not, I feel, an unreasonable request. There’s not much point living in a country if it’s crawling with heavily armed homicidal maniacs. Right now, the worst place for that is Venezuela, with 36.75 gun deaths per 100,000 population. South Africa stands at 5.98 and doesn’t strike me as a particularly safe place either. So I’m looking for somewhere with a number below 5. The USA now misses the cut, being somewhat less safe on this count than Iraq and Eritrea. Seriously.
And it is joined on the discards pile by pretty much all the Latin American countries, that had been doing so well up to this point.
We’re now down to Chile flying the flag for the Americas, the European nations on the list, and Taiwan. Which we’re going to have to knock out on a technicality. 0.21 gun deaths per 100,000 people make it the ninth-safest country in the world. But we suspect that its neighbor across the Strait might have other ideas. I don’t think moving to Taiwan right now is a very good call.
Time for one last shakedown to give us a shortlist.
Rule #5: Must have mild winters, and a coastline
This is a dealbreaker for me. Two decades living in Spain and I’ve gone soft. I need at least part of the country to offer me the kind of Mediterranean warmth I have grown accustomed to, without having to jet off somewhere else for the winter months. So the central and northern European countries are out.
What does that leave me, then?
Chile, France, Malta, Portugal, unless I’m mistaken.
Call me fussy, but it would seem that those are the only countries in the world where I could comfortably choose to become a naturalized resident on constitutional, medical, ethical, security, and meteorological grounds. I’ve spent time in France and Portugal, and what I’ve seen could corroborate the raw statistical verdict. They’d do me just fine.
I’d better chalk Malta and Chile down for future research.
So what would your criteria be? And which countries would make it into your Final Four?
More musings on expat life:
