  The data below suggests that the final contestants in the best country contest go to: 1. Iceland 2. Sweden 3. Australia 4. Norway 5. Switzerland My vote goes to Switzerland.
Iceland, Sweden, and Norway are too far North; they'd be too cold. Australia is too far away from anything. Plus, Switzerland is a peaceful country. And it is centrally located in Europe, so that you could travel around to lots of other countries if you got bored. Plus Zurich is gorgeous, and I know german well enough to get by. :) Come to think of it, all my swiss experiences were positive.
They actually abide by pedestrian right of way there. So that's where I'll have to apply for political asylum if Bush gets another term in office. Supposedly you can get labor stats at this site, but it didn't seem to work on my browser. :( http://laborsta.ilo.org Life expectancy from birth (in years)--Slovenia has a higher life expectancy than the US!!! [Derived from http://www.who.int/entity/whr/2002/en/whr2002_annex4.pdf] 1. Japan 73.5 2.
Switzerland 72.5 3. San Marino 72.1 4. Sweden 71.6 5. Australia 71.4 6. Iceland 71.3 7. France 71.1 8.
Italy 70.9 9. Andorra 70.8 10. Monaco 70.8 11. Austria 70.7 12. Norway 70.7 13. Spain 70.7 14.
Greece 70.4 15. Luxembourg 70.3 16. Germany 70.1 17. New Zealand 70.1 =============================== Countries ranking better than the US on Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index for 2003 [Derived from http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2003/cpi2003.en.html} 1 Finland 9.7 2 Iceland 9.6 3 Denmark 9.5 4 New Zealand 9.5 5 Singapore 9.4 6 Sweden 9.3 7 Netherlands 8.9 8 Australia 8.8 9 Norway 8.8 10 Switzerland 8.8 11 Canada 8.7 12 Luxembourg 8.7 13 United Kingdom 8.7 14 Austria 8.0 15 Hong Kong 8.0 16 Germany 7.7 17 Belgium 7.6 
