[Tyrannosaurs]

Interestingly if you put in the cliche American free market priorities (jobs, income high, safety, work life balance, environment low, everything else in the middle) the US does come out top (as opposed to high but not top on a more even measure).

The same things seems to happen if you put in the sort of priorities other countries are generally believed to hold (so put in the environment, satisfaction, work life balance and so on and the Scandinavian countries leap to the top).

So if there is any truth in the cliches, countries do seem to optimise for what is important to them. Which I guess is what you'd hope happened.

As an aside there doesn't seem to be too much you can do to stop Australia being a great place to live - they don't have a slider for "Deadly animals".

[vince_refiti]

The deadly animals in Australia are the same everywhere - people. The wildlife does far, far less damage.

[sneak]

Government surveillance would be a good slider. Commonwealth countries are notoriously short on protections for things like that.

[danieltillett]

As an Australian the thing that makes Australia a great place to live is the same that makes it suck - distance. It does have California's weather without the risk of earthquakes which is hard to beat :)

[pm90]

But does it have California's Jobs? :)

[Dewie]

I don't know of anyone called Steve Jobs in Australia, no.

[berelig]

What about drop bears?

[vorg]

> Australia being a great place to live - they don't have a slider for "Deadly animals"

Australia has poisonous snakes and America has grizzly bears -- only New Zealand can claim no deadly animals.

[Tyrannosaurs]

Australia also has crocodiles, box jelly fish, sharks, lethal spiders...

I don't think that I'm imagining that Australia has more species of lethal animals than any other country.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying Australia isn't a great place to live. I've only been to Melbourne and then only for three weeks but it seemed great. There are just lots of things which can kill you there (though the Australian's have naturally got very good at stopping that happening).

[danieltillett]

Obviously you have never met a drunk kiwi.

[seanmcdirmid]

Kiwi fruit are actually from northern China and weren't introduced to New Zealand until the 20th century.

[tokenizerrr]

Kiwi is slang for New Zealanders[1]. It is also a bird native to New Zealand[2].

[1]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Kiwi&defid=20...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi

[lostcolony]

Not sure if that's just compounding the joke, but if not - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi

[seanmcdirmid]

The submission was about China, not New Zealand, so forgive me for being a bit bemused.

[will_work4tears]

Grizzly bears don't hide in relatively short grass and are very rare and limited to certain areas, and nor does America have spiders that bite your ass when you are trying to poo. Well, we might, but they aren't deadly.

[halflings]

Their health index seems... unreliable.

http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/health/

[BrianEatWorld]

Any deficiency in the "Deadly Animal" slider is easily balanced by the massive surplus on their "Ute Availability" slider.