I may be going to Costa Rica this year. It’s been on my list for a while, mainly for the fauna. Awesome pics on your other blog!

Re: another possibility: maybe one of the keys to happiness is whatever allowed Costa Rica to eliminate its military in the first place

Good point. Also, an important reality, apparently overlooked by Kristof (if his implication is that we would be better off, on balance, if we spend less on the military and more on other programs), is that Costa Rica is a “free rider” of U.S. military spending; if they didn’t have a nearby superpower that would probably come to their defense if invaded by a neighbor (and thus deters an invasion), I assume it would be substantially less likely that they would have eliminated their military and saved all that money to use for other spending instead.

I have a similar question, although probably more complex and less clear (at least to me), about R&D of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment: Some argue that the U.S. pays higher prices for the same stuff than do other nations, so we should start paying less (via prices government will pay and via regulatory/legal changes such as more re-importation or shorter patent protection). But if we are “overpaying”, does that profit potential in the U.S. market (1) increase innovation vs. what it otherwise would be? (2) enable those other nations to benefit from prices that are lower than they otherwise would be for the products in question? In other words, are those other nations free-riding on the “excess” spending by the U.S.?