The Geography of Bliss

In Iceland, the reverse is true. If the unemployment rate
reaches 5 percent, it’s considered a national scandal.
Presidents are booted from office. Yet Icelanders will
tolerate a relatively high inflation rate. Why the different
approaches
The answer lies in how countries feel about pain,
economic pain. High inflation is shared pain; everyone
feels the pinch of higher prices when they go to the grocery
store or the gas station. Everyone suffers a little; no one
suffers a lot. Unemployment is selective pain. A relatively
few people suffer greatly, yet most of us don’t suffer at all.
Or do we High unemployment, research has found,
reduces overall happiness much more than high inflation.
The specter of losing one’s job spreads through a nation
like a ripple across a pond.
An older man shuffles by. He is disheveled, has a scruffy
beard, and is wearing a leather bomber jacket. I wonder if
it’s Bobby Fischer. I’d heard that the former chess
champion was living here. Icelanders love Bobby Fischer.
He took part in one of the most famous chess matches
ever, right here in Reykjavík. Fischer was brilliant, beating
his Russian counterpart, Boris Spassky, in a match
watched around the world. For Americans, Fischer became
an instant hero, a Cold Warrior who had defeated the Evil
Empire, albeit only on the chessboard. For Icelanders,
Fischer was also a hero but for a different reason. He had