And you are here why?

Well, technically, this is the Global Burden of Depressive Disorders , and is part of a study that was conducted by researchers in Queensland .  The maps below have some fairly interesting (and sometimes unexpected?) findings: Afghanistan, Algeria, Libya and Syria do very  poorly Australia, China, Japan, Mexico and New Zealand do  very  well Finland and Norway do poorly, but Sweden is doing just fine. Russia does quite poorly The war zones I completely understand - you'd have  to be depressed. Japan and Mexico are somewhat surprising, as well as China - anyone care to comment? As for the northern countries, Finland and Norway I'd put down to the long winters, but that really doesn't explain Sweden doing so well...

Lets talk about Zero Sum games.  (Hooray!  This is going to be fun! ) Less sarcasm please. Seriously, lets take a look at the economy of a country.  Broadly speaking, you have the Public Sector and the Private Sector Public Sector :  Also known as Gummint .  This is all the money spent by the Gummint to do whatever the heck that Gummints do. Private Sector :  Everything that isn't the Gummint.  All the goods, service and whatever else that goes on in the country.  Mind you, this even includes the underground economy , i.e., you pay the local kid $20 to mow your lawn, and don't give him a 1099. So, where does the Gummint get its money?  I mean, they have to pay the Army, Congress, DMV, etc, right? The first (and actually quite wrong) answer is " They print it ".  Which is kinda sorta vaguely true, except that its actually none of them, and is in fact quite false. The government gets all (actually most , but more on that i...