Work has if anything gotten worse in general. Remote's gone. Pay's less. ADHD maximum AI use required. Nobody can take a break. Pressure's on. 1.5 trillion more to the military. What are we even building? For what?
Is it any wonder at all?
Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic because everywhere you turn there's a Reddit post or news headline about how housing is impossible to afford.
> Pay's less.
Less than the narrow window of post-COVID mania pay maybe, but inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term.
> Nobody can take a break. Pressure's on.
Annual working hours per worker is flat or slightly down from when your mom's generation made up most of the workforce https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...
When it comes to happiness, the numbers don't actually matter though. Perceptions do. Your and your mom's worldview that everything "isn't working any more", that young people can't possibly be buying homes, that real wages are down, and that working hours are up are actually very common ideas, especially if you zoom in on demographics who read a lot of certain types of social media (Reddit especially!) where classic doomerism prevails.
Younger people are getting into more debt, for much longer in order to be able to survive.
When we start comparing the numbers (i.e, house paid off, even reflected as a percentage paid off, relative to age) the numbers reveal the real crisis.
Anecdotally, I know tons of 20-30 year olds getting into the property market (with insane levels of debt with almost impossible loan lengths) simply because if they don't do it now, there is a high chance homeless is the next option.
That's not quite true. If you want to think that way, then you'd never own it because you'll always pay property taxes so the paying never stops.
But as soon as you buy a home it is your asset. Yes, you have a debt against it. But you are the owner. Go look up the owner in the county records and it is you.
True ownership is non-existent.
Why? The military power owns things by enforcing their ownership. This is, in fact, the true ownership.
You have to pay taxes to own land so the power which is on your side can prevent another power to re-own it.
If you don't pay taxes to the power which is on your side, why would it allow you to own stuff and provide free protection? Out of good will?
That's how the world works, ownership without the power behind it is non-existent, as well as power without the money behind it is non-existent. When there are enough powers balancing each other, stable systems emerge, and we all can enjoy some few decades of peace and prosperity.
What if they get remarried?
Which is a pointer to the "real", general issue: materialism.
Ain't no joy in $tuff.
Joy is of the Lord.
But yes, you do not truly own anything unless you are a sovereign power.
...It's more likely than you think !!
Because redfin shows that just is very clearly not true
https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...
I do wonder about how they're calculating some of this. It looks like in the chart is saying 16% of the cohort born between 1981 and 1996 (aka millennials) owned a home in 2000. I wouldn't even expect 16% of that group to be over 18.
Like this: https://imgur.com/a/d7stXVN
Many boomers grew up in an era where even if you dropped out of high school and waited tables full time for a few years, you'd be able to afford to buy a house and start a family by age 25. Sure, interest rates were 20%, but the price of a house was often just 2-3x someone's annual salary (single earner). Now the price of a house is often 4-5x a households annual salary.
Boomers also had access to stuff like pensions.
I think boomers wouldn't get hate if it weren't a trope for them to say that the millennial generation is lazy, entitled, etc. When milennials have to be extraordinary in order to live what used to be an ordinary life (3 bedroom house, 2 kids).
Inflation is a tool for monetary policy. It doesn't track cost of living. For example, if luxury items become more affordable, but housing prices rise, inflation-adjusted pay doesn't capture this kind of negative effect on the working class.
In the US, the official inflation numbers are based on a "basket of goods" meant to be representative of a typical person's spending. Housing currently makes up about a third of the basket, while luxury items are a fairly small percentage. Here's a pretty well-written summary, albeit with numbers from 2022:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/24/as-inflat...
Changes in housing prices have a large effect on the BLS's inflation figures. Downward changes in the price of luxury goods have a small (and bounded) effect. Even if all luxury goods became free, the reduction in inflation wouldn't be all that much.
Depending on how one live their lifestyle, the 'inflation' calculation can greatly vary in relevance.
Source: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm
In fact, the cost of necessities has overall risen faster than the cost of discretionary goods. This has been generally true since the mid-1990s; prior to that, inflation differences were much smaller across income groups despite lower income groups spending more of their income on necessities. In some periods like the post-COVID housing and energy price shocks, the differential effect of real inflation on basic necessities has been even greater.
Even "small" effects compound over time. For example, when someone in a low bracket loses 10% purchasing power after many years, the net economic stress they experience is much greater than for someone at a high bracket. Differential inflation of necessities vs discretionary goods magnifies this.
Well, "launder" is a strong word that the hardworking bureaucrats at BLS do not deserve, but the people who use CPI as a deflater so that they can wave around graphs "proving" that things have never been better absolutely deserve it, so I'll keep it in.
Bonus meme: the American Dream was not to Owner Imputed Rent a house.
A large company bought the building after I moved out. Ten years later, the same apartment with a fresh coat of paint and new countertops was back on the market for a rent of about three times $x.
The CPI can say that apartment, since it was refurbished, increased in quality and so it wasn't really a price increase of the same good from $x to $3x. This offers a "degree of freedom" to adjust the CPI itself (since quality is inherently subjective), and may be a big part of why CPI does not reflect the lived experience.
I didn't care one bit about paint or countertops when I rented that apartment and I assume broke young adults today don't either. At the time I wanted the cheapest place to live in the area and this was it. It still is one of the cheapest places, but you need three times as much money to rent it.
How are you measuring the "actual standard of living?”
The median Zoomer is in their mid-20s. You're comparing rounding errors.
It's more the case that Gen Z is giving up on having the homes that Millennials want in the places they want them. They're buying fixer uppers, moving into 3rd/4th tier cities, etc. They also have some benefits millennials didn't have: inheritances and way less student loan debt.
You can look at this in a number of ways, but it's clear we didn't solve the problem of "so you want to live in NYC/LA/Chicago/SF/Seattle".
https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/how-gen-z-...
It’s actually not true that a house is affordable to the person living in it.
First, plenty of people own houses, paid-off even, but have little else in the way of income or assets, and, other than not wanting to move, they might be much better off if the home magically turned into cash.
Second, taxes. In the US, in HCOL markets, selling your house may involve large amounts of capital gains tax, and in California, you risk losing your low Property 13 basis.
I suspect that, in markets like Palo Alto, a lot of houses are owned by people who could not credibly afford those houses if they were to sell and then decide to buy an equivalent house next door.
Sure, someone can afford your house, but that’s a nearly vacuous statement.
If they were to sell it, they'd have to pay taxes on 1.1m of "profit." sure they can write off renovations and deduct $500k but that's still a lot of taxes to pay!
So yeah, they wouldn't be able to sell and rebuy even their own house because uncle sam just took about $100k on the sale of their house.
Yeah but aren't they putting down less/leveraging themselves deeper?
edit: also it seems like the millenial/genZ divide here is on the order of like 1-5%, whereas the gap between either of those generations and boomers/genX is more like 10%+. It's good that the trend hasn't gotten worse in recent history, but I think it's pretty inarguable that the housing market is much worse than it was 30 years ago.
A $2200/mo mortgage on a $65k salary does indeed sound like a stretch. But even having a mortgage at all at 24 is pretty impressive, and he's probably still a ways off from his peak earning potential. Then he might have a bit more income for discretional spending.
In short - yeah it's a grind, but it sounds like he's making responsible decisions and hopefully they will start to pay dividends in another 5-10 years. And your 20s is when you are most able to grind it out - before kids (if that's something you want) start demanding a huge chunk of your time and energy, and before work starts to feel like a slog after you've been at it for 20 years.
Impressive in what way?
> ...and he's probably still a ways off from his peak earning potential.
That's an assumption, but even if it's probably true, to what end? The issue most working Americans face is that the cost of living rises faster than their wages.
> Then he might have a bit more income for discretional spending.
So...earn more so that you can spend more. This, in a nutshell, is the insanity of America's consumer culture.
> In short - yeah it's a grind, but it sounds like he's making responsible decisions and hopefully they will start to pay dividends in another 5-10 years.
Young people who are fortunate enough to be in a position to make "responsible decisions" should obviously do so (within reason) but this "grind for the future" mindset is also part of the insanity of American culture.
There are places in this world where people in their 20s can enjoy their youth without having to worry that doing so could doom them to financial distress for the rest of their lives.
I also didn't mean to imply that I didn't enjoy my early 20s. My job was difficult but also interesting and fulfilling. For recreation I was into fitness and the outdoors, which can be done on the cheap. I was in a serious relationship with my now spouse, so I wasn't lonely. It was a very fulfilling time - we just lived very frugally.
Not saying that everyone needs to follow the same path. Or that we can't do better. Or that times haven't changed since then. Just that the parent's example doesn't sound too far off from my own experience in my early twenties, so I don't necessarily see them as doomed to a life of misery. You can certainly do worse.
Times are changing. HNers tend to be among the more fortunate in American society but even today, a STEM degree doesn't guarantee anyone a cushy, high-paying tech job.
AI might have a financial component (malinvestment that needs to be corrected) but from my own first-hand observations, I can't deny that AI is reducing the value of many jobs that people would like to believe are "high skill" and therefore "high value". I've personally seen dev teams shrink by 50% while productivity remains the same because all of the devs are using AI to knock out tasks. A lot of software engineering isn't as complex and immune to AI as software engineers would like to believe.
American companies are already incentivized by the market to maximize profit by cutting labor wherever possible and I don't think anyone should be under the illusion that managers aren't aware of the fact that many employees are already using AI to do their work.
Mortgage never rises (in the US), can only fall (if you refinance when rates dip). So that locks down the housing cost. In that sense, inflation helps you in the long run.
I was in the SF Bay Area and spending $1600/mo to rent a studio apartment in my 20s, and even that looked like a bargain compared to the people that graduated a few years after me. And my starting salary was probably higher than your friend's when adjusted for inflation, but not by much.
Not saying it's right - the US needs to do better when it comes to affordable housing. Just that expensive housing is not exactly a recent phenomenon, and your friend's situation is not hopeless.
You could easily get away with a "gap year" between school and starting a career, but multiple years of screwing around seems pretty hard to come back from. There are exceptions of course, but I can't think of many. One relatively recent example was the rise of coding "boot camps" - where I know of several people who were able to change careers and land high-paying gigs. Or the more traditional path would be serving in the military, getting a free college education, and then going on to a successful career from there.
Has it actually gotten harder to do that recently? It would be tough for me to say without some data. Certainly any time the job market is tight, and there is strong competition for jobs, it's going to put non-traditional candidates at a disadvantage and make it harder to change careers.
As a boot camp graduate, you really have to either be extraordinary or know the right people. College doesn't just give you education, it also gives you references and a network, something that many boot camps lack.
> serving in the military
Nothing against our hardworking soldiers who put their lives on the line, but I would not fault anyone who does not want to serve in this particular military at this particular time. I don't expect it to be like this forever, but it does put today's young people in a predicament.
> free college education, and then going on to a successful career from there.
People with advanced degrees (paid or not) are having trouble finding work, even with masters in STEM fields. Entry level jobs are diminishing. Yes it's hard to change careers, but seems even harder to start one these days.
I have watched this scenario dissolve marriages over and over among my friends.
You cannot assume your job is stable for 15 years nowadays.
Our industries are routinely telling people who just spent 4-6 years in training that tough shit, you picked the wrong career.
You are looking at this with a lens of stability that no longer exists, which I personally believe is a major component about why everyone is so unhappy.
You cant just reach a level of life that you are comfortable with and stay there anymore. Its a constant cycle of learning new skills that are then useless then learning more skills that are then useless, ad on infinitum.
Birth rates have collapsed completely, so this gravy train is ending very soon. There won't be another sucker to buy the real estate, because new buyers aren't being born.
Not according to this Redfin report (also linked by others in the thread):
"Take 28-year-olds as an example: 38.3% of 28-year-old Gen Zers owned their home in 2025, compared to 42.5% of Gen Xers when they were 28 and 44.4% of baby boomers when they were 28." (There is an accompanying chart in the linked report.)
https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...
That seems to show a pretty clear decline in home affordability over time, for people of the same age.
But on Jan 20, 2025 it was magically fixed instantly despite grocery store prices increasing because voters decided to elect in blanket import taxes. No one cares about these issues. They just care about the aesthetic.
edit: besides, happiness is not about money. freedom of expression and free/impartial institutions are at all time lows across the western world. which as we speak is in an arms race to be the biggest and best surveillance system it can be.
Or are they taking out mortgages they can never pay off, meaning they are almost renting not on a path to actually buying or owning and most of their payments are interest.
If that’s the case they are renting a leveraged financial position.
Previous generations could own homes. As in pay them off.
Owners only really get screwed if their home value goes down and they need to sell for some reason.
Prices are usually going up (at least on a long enough time frame), so most owners make out pretty well when selling even with little home equity.
I suspect these stats are nationwide. There are places you can still actually buy a home without an exit event. Maybe genZ has wised up and is avoiding high cost of living traps and that’s how.
Remote work is an interesting one. Before you had 8-9 hours a day of serious social activity, and if you were lucky, people you enjoyed. Even if you didn't enjoy the people, you were at least social. Remote takes that away, and as the article noted, social contact is a definite plus for well-being.
The "leaders" forcing people into it though are just petty fiends. Linking bonuses/compensation to in office days is just punitive because you want to see bums on seats, nobody will convince me otherwise.
This is a big YMMV, but you accidentally hit on something I've observed over my years of working remote: A lot of the successful remote coworkers I've had have been people with families at home.
There is a lot of demand for remote jobs from young, single people who think it's going to be the best thing ever, but then many decline into a funk that they don't really understand. The social isolation starts to wear on most people like that.
There are very obviously ways to theoretically avoid this, like having an active social life during the work week. I know many people who fit this description and love it. However a lot of people think they're going to do that and then just don't really keep up with it. They go from bed to remote job to Netflix on the couch to sleep and repeat, then wonder why they're feeling so blah.
This is a major difference between US and Euro workplaces that I have noticed. In the USA, there is plenty of time for chat with colleagues, and everyone stays at work longer. In Euro workplaces it tends to be more focused on work and then everyone goes home at 5.
The most extreme example I've worked in was in Dublin, where there was an explicit "you are given 8 hours of work, and 8 hours to do it in. If you need to stay longer than that then you must be incompetent", and the entire office, everyone, emptied into the pub at 5pm. All the socialising and "cooler chat" happened over pints of Guiness in the pub. The folks with kids would have one or two and then go home, or not drink at all and then go home. The less attached folks stayed on for several. But everyone came to the pub at 5, regardless.
I've worked with German colleagues who were ex-large-consultancies and they all said the same thing about working in the USA; that Americans spend a lot of their day chatting and stay in the office much longer. It drove the Germans crazy, "they would be so much more efficient if they just stopped talking and did the work!".
I'm not holding Europe up as an example to emulate; I don't think Europeans are that much happier at the moment, particularly the UK, but I wanted to push back on this idea as work == social space.
I want to call out that while generally, Irish working hours are pretty capped, most people at most companies definitely don't go to the pub at 5pm. I am Irish, and work in Ireland (but mostly for multinationals) so 5pm pub time (unfortunately) doesn't work when you need to talk to California.
Additionally, I normally agitate for the whole 8 and only 8 hours of work, as lots of professional people in Ireland are quite driven (or people pleasing) and tend to work longer hours.
That being said, there are some employers where this definitely is a thing (particularly on Thursday or Friday), but it's 100% not the standard.
I'd love to see a dedicated tool that does "virtual office hangouts" well, where you can spin up rooms, share screens/files/text, easily drop in and out, and see where people are. There are a few out there that come close, but I haven't seen any that let you browse to see various groups/individuals to match walking the halls.
We tried that on the team when Covid hit and we all went remote. Lasted like a week and we were sick of it. Never reintroduced.
If you have asd or adhd (not uncommon in programmers) it can be a definitive minus for well-being. But even if you don't, between office politics and idiotic corporate mandates, it can be draining.
Especially as for the average office worker, originally you had an office of your own or at worse with one or two other people, then starting from the 80s you had a cubicle, then we got the hellish open plans. You're asked to focus on a screen and a codebase in an environment full of distractions, and full of activity around you.
And that's before we added any commute, and preparing for the commute, which can easily eat an additional 1-2 hours of your day, every day.
They don't drown out enough even with large, well insulated cups. So you add noise cancelling. Which drowns out more but not everything. In fact it keeps some very annoying stuff around that is suddenly actually audible VS being drowned out without the headphones. And having noise cancelling on for 8 hours straight for days in a row actually creates some significant pain in my ears. The next idea is music to drown out what's left but that just distracts me too.
Remote is the only good way.
In fact, being remote means I have "social interaction budget" for the family again VS it all having been used up during work hours (being an introvert)
You could try using white noise, either an app or if you have a Mac or iPhone they have native white noise generation (Accessibility -> Hearing -> Background Sounds iirc)
I just googled this and what I found was this for example:
The Sony WH-1000XM3 is much better at canceling noise above 100Hz than the Bose is. However, because the Bose QC35 II can block out more sub-100Hz noise, it does a better job at killing unwanted car engines and low rumbles.
One thing that immediately turned me off when finding the Sonys on Amazon: It says "Alexa". Sorry, immediate and 150% no thank you, see you, bye.
It can also encourage ear infections and clogging of the eustachian tubes, because covering or plugging your ears slows down the self cleaning process.
At first you won't notice, but after a decade, these problems will slowly creep up on you and fixing them is very expensive, because you're basically slowly deforming your bones.
I personally wouldn't let kids/teenagers use headphones that apply any amount of noticeable pressure.
Remote work is an interesting topic in this debate because any change in any direction (more remote work or less remote work) provokes claims that it's the reason for declining happiness.
I've managed remote teams for years, and I lean more toward your interpretation: Over the years I've seen a lot of people turn over in remote roles because they thought remote work was going to be the best thing ever, then they slowly slid into unhappiness in the isolation. (Before you downvote, I'm not claiming this is true for everyone. Remember I work remote too!)
I think it's a good idea regardless of healthcare availability
Taken at an absolutists stance you could easily push that argument down (are you against ALL of modernity?!). But the overall spirit of the idea is one worth exploring.
I can say that I would personally fall into that camp and that I am fairly happy, to step out of the hustle and not be a cat chasing its own tail. But the said effect of this is a form of graceful poverty. To be a poor master rather than a rich slave. That is a very difficult sales pitch.
But I am convinced we will take a turn more towards that flavour of thinking only once we have busted out the bottom of the bucket with business as usual. Maybe we need to military budge to grow to $5 trillion dollars abd then people will say "Enough!" I just hope that we are wise in the path towards it, I fear we will not and that we throe the baby out with the bathwater.
There is a brazillian saying that goes something like, when it floods you have to wait until the water is at you hips before you can swim. maybe this is the path forwards, to endulge in our folly.
Don't get me wrong, I love Taoism and Buddhism. But, from what I understand, they are not very pro-civilization and pro-progress.
The goal of Buddhism is not happiness anyway it is the total cessation of suffering. If Buddhists are scoring high on happiness surveys they are doing it wrong.
While they have the right idea about not leaning in to hard on the progress narrative, if it basically became a movement of apathy and non-science, it is basically regressing back to the stone age.
There is a possible middle ground but how we get there is anything but clear.
And the idea of a buddhist doing anything to change the world is also impossible to me, isn't it all about accepting reality as it is?
It isn't about total passivity, but trying to not to excessive force a position. If you fall in a river, to be passive is to float with it. But the smart move is to swim to the side. Don't try to swim against the flow but with it.
The whole society has lost its goal when the only target is to maximize money.
As a commutative operation, then, also Money = Time. Humanity and Money are both driven to create more of themselves, but as long as the growth of money is allowed to outpace the growth of Humanity, money will become the dominant life-form once there is more of it than there are humans to be the Time-unit. The only thing keeping it from happening before now was the lack of an instantaneous global means to transact.
I think you misread. I literally used myself as an example and am definitely not that wealthy :p
> because they think it will be beneficial
The Capital-class have, on the other hand, definitely constructed a world where this is true for us as individual. However I am talking about the effect on Us the collective-singular.
Really, if you didn't have a job you'd be working much harder for less. The vibes say that's bullshit, but whatever.
There is no real meaningful competition between money systems. Every nation has one national money system and it's a government mandated monopoly.
Your options are basically complete autarky or using the national money system with nothing inbetween. Even if you were to use a cryptocurrency, you'd still need to pay taxes in USD.
Then there is the fact that cryptocurrencies don't really meaningfully change the rules either. You're supposed to accumulate them forever and profit off of latecomers joining in it at inflated prices. Meaning the supposed competition just amplifies the worst part of money that people would rather get away from.
Anyone who earns an income from work is by definition going to be a "latecomer" by the end of their career. Basically, you're defining yourself by the first few years of your career, e.g. buying thousands of dollars worth of BTC in 2013. By 2026, there is not much point buying more BTC.
Money is given an inherent bias towards the past being more important than the present or the future, which thereby inevitably causes the collapse of the future, which then becomes the collapsed present through the simple passage of time.
It's really bad in tech right now because the college students have been reading Blind and levels.fyi for years and think that if they're not making $500K TC they're never going to afford a house. They hit a very harsh reality when they graduate and realize their degree from an average state school and job search in a city that isn't the Bay Area, NYC, or Seattle isn't going to give them those $200K starting salaries they expected with a CS degree. Lately there's another sad discovery when they realize that nobody wants to hire a junior with no experience into a remote FAANG job.
Social media doomerism is also convincing a lot of them that everything is impossibly expensive. You wouldn't believe how many young people I've talked to who have household incomes in the $200 to $300K range who tell me they'll never be able to afford a house or to have kids. When you're immersed in doomer headlines you can lose track of the reality that people are raising families on much less than that all around you.
They know that, they just don’t want their kids to go to school with the kids in the bottom 4 quintiles. Also, I probably would have foregone kids if it meant I was not going to be financially independent by age 50. Incomes are too volatile, and healthcare too expensive to be in that age 50 to age 65 period where a healthcare issue or loss of employment can derail you forever.
It isn’t enough to be middle class, to have the proverbial white picket fence. The reach now is for glamor and wealth, which is by definition out of reach for the majority.
If that’s the ideal you compare your own life to, you will be unhappy. And the debt, etc you take on to mimic it will make you even more unhappy.
The shift was already happening pre-internet, but social media took it to the next level.
Does just being able to live mean getting a new phone occasionally? Getting a coffee/treat once a week? A job that doesn't leave you in physical pain, sometimes permanently?
Happiness is the gap between expectation and reality. Our expectations are very high without sounding unreasonable.
This is the shift I'm talking about– maybe we don't conciously yearn for glamor and wealth, but what we see as normal is a luxury lifestyle compared to previous generations.
Most people in this conversation on HN seem to just be talking about a regular house and a lifestyle that would’ve been normal for a manual laborer 60-70 years ago.
Sure, you can have another post-war economic boom if you're willing to go through another world war to get to it and a drone doesn't get you. You're in luck, seems like we'll be having one soon.
Yes, real wages have been on the rise for the past few years. With the exception of the somewhat artificial COVID peak, median real wages are the highest on record: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
A lot of major necessities like healthcare and housing have outpaced CPI.
Unnecessary stuff (electronics, appliances, other tech) did not, and generally it is becoming cheaper (Planned obsolescence is another topic though...)
With the backdrop of it coming from the organization that is supposedly supposed to be managing inflation... :P
Rent as percentage of income is up. Groceries as percentage of income is up. Medical insurance as percentage of income is up. etc.
People aren't stupid. They can see and feel this.
Yes, it's nice that computers and phones are super cheap and powerful. That doesn't help people eat.
It was nice, but that's quickly changing now that the consumer market is being ignored by chip makers who'd rather sell to companies building data centers
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...
While one could meme about being introverts, I just feel like the writing in older media, movies and other records of the time makes me feel people back then were just more comfortable with each other, more practiced in natural social interaction, and this lack of understanding has not only made modern media less compelling, the fact that we don't understand in general what people are really like has been a detriment to the fabric of society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
It's not what we, or even your mom's generation built (taking some liberties here, assuming your age). Whatever ideals the US stood for have been long gone.
Benjamin Franklin, when asked "What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" responded "A republic, if you can keep it”. The answer is clear today.
Yes.
> Can I afford a home?
No.
There's an important lesson somewhere here.
No issue in using LLMs for polishing writing but when the tone is impacted in this way, I can understand peoples aversion to it. Especially on hackernews, where i guess people speak with LLMs a lot more than other people, and are able to even subconsciosly pick up on these cues.
Multiple generations have now been born into an economy intentionally engineered to deflate their buying power.
Caste of trillionaiers who could destroy nations and cultures simply because they feel so.
I'm from the UK, it isn't in great shape. And the EU isn't either. The west in general has problems, just no where on the scale of every other country.
For all intents and purposes, every single supply chain devolves to a cabal of suppliers who have no downstream capacity. As such, even if someone downstream wanted to shake up their competition, they can't get the supply to do it. Covid didn't cause this, but it did make it obvious to even the dumbest businesspeople. Consequently, all the businesses across the chain have settled into extraction knowing that their position is unassailable.
The problem is that the general public fails to diagnose that the issue is monopolistic control, and that the solution is to keep breaking these cabals up everywhere, aggressively.
And the bulk of the population who by global standards might be middle class in terms of dollar income, are nonetheless struggling with multiple jobs, huge health care and kids education costs, no vacations.
Who could be happy?
Just to state the obvious: 2020 was the year of COVID, which played hell with peoples' social lives.
And I think it's been pretty well-proven that happiness is largely driven by the strength and quality of our social relationships. Anything that cuts us off from our friends, or prevents us from forming new friendships, is going to be visible in the happiness data.
Judging by the stats, we haven't dug ourselves out of the post-COVID hole yet.
> "everything is going bad because people are atheists"
I don't think I have ever seen anybody express either of these opinions on HN, and if they tried, they would immediately get downvoted to oblivion.
Even the "superstars" (Krugman, etc..) are posting this is that could have been posted on twitter, with the same level of outrage and polarization, but at least the content is well structure, and they are allowed to use sentences in paragraph, with quotes, and figures, and links, etc...
Yes, I know, it's called blogging. I'm saying that the new hot thing, in 2026, is blogging.
And we're a lot better off than median. I can't imagine how crushing it's been lower "down the ladder".
I remember a certain Dave Chappelle show a couple of years back where every single one of the ~10,000 attendees was about 20 million dollars poorer than the average net worth in the room.
Then a couple years later, not so much.
The point I intended was that we were doing pretty great, and on paper should be doing even better now, but are actually doing less-great (though, still, can't truly complain). If that's how it's looked for us... I mean I look around and imagine trying to get by on a median household income, and holy shit. It seems a whole lot tougher now than it did when we were sitting around median, years ago.
Even less if you need to pay for your own healthcare outside of working contract.
I know its very luring, but its a one way trap into misery and ruined life one way or another. Doesn't matter how well current economy is doing, what are projections etc. thats a basic 101 mathematics.
And private schools aren't the killer. Daycare is. Daycare's gotten stupidly expensive, and with so many families where both parents are working it's necessary in order to take care of children younger then nine or so who can't be by themselves at home. Most people don't live near family that can take care of those kids these days, so it's either professional childcare or nothing.
As for expensive hobbies? Dude everything's fucking expensive now. Gaming's gone from $129 for a PlayStation 2 and $40 for a game ($234 and $72 in 2026 money) to $649 for a PlayStation 5, $70 for a game, $30 for the three additional packs that were split from the base game to drive up profits, and $10 every month for PlayStation Network access. Want to go collecting vintage sports jackets? Good luck outwitting the scalpers buying them all in secondhand stores for $15 and then selling them on Etsy for $120. Want to get into crocheting? Either brave the yarn from sketchy Chinese online shops that likely won't even hold up to a single hook or pay $20 for a roll of it at Michael's or Hobby Lobby because every other crafts store was murdered by private equity. Collecting Pokemon or Magic The Gathering cards? You're lucky if the store display box isn't empty from scalpers filching them all to resell the meta cards online for 20% more. Learning an instrument? With the recent closings of so many luthiers and the wood import shortage from tariffs buying even the shittiest guitar is like $175 now, where as six years ago you could get one for $100.
That's not even getting into how many more bills and monthly subscriptions there are now compared to twenty five years ago that suck people's money away.
To put that in an example, during covid lots of people who never made more than $12/hr were suddenly able to hop into jobs (lateral movement) paying $20/hr.
In there head they almost doubled their income, and placed themselves in a much high social class. But that is not how it works. $20 simply became the new $12, and they were pissed as all hell when realized they went nowhere.
If you work as a cashier in city Z, you will live the life of a cashier in city Z, regardless of your pay.
Inequality has grown to the point where the majority of younger people now have no hope of ever owning a home, and even large parts of the country are struggling with something as basic as food.
The HN crowd lives in a top 5% bubble and often forgets how bad it is for most people. All this talk of "money doesn't make happiness" is terrible. Money for basic necessities is the problem here.
It’s about being able to provide the necessities AND having income security. I remember reading about a study that said poor people who have to scramble to deal with all of the extra steps that accompany being poor (no credit cards, maybe no bank account, dealing with getting utilities turned back on, etc) is the equivalent of losing about 15 IQ points from your optimal.
It’s the difference between being able to work “in the zone” / flow state frequently and being always stuck in “fight or flight” mode. One makes you successful while the other actively sabotages you.
Perceived happines. It's hard to talk about happines with a person with an empty stomach. But I was much more happy when I was young and poor than I became a not poor but no longer a young one.
Is there any other kind?
Please stop repeating this myth. Look further up the thread for gen Z homeowner statistics.
And if it's all doom and gloom and "go outside and you kill grandma" - are we surprised they get sad?
If they've got money and they aren't worried about paying their bills or the price of food or the price of gas and they can afford a nice place to live and can afford to send their kids to college and can take at least one big vacation a year and they're spending their time going out with their friends they aren't losing much sleep over news stories that mention war in Somalia, or some politician's latest scandal, or how deforestation is threatening the habitat of a bunch of animals. They might not like what they hear, but they'll feel pretty happy about their life.
When their standard of living declines and they have to cut back to make ends meet and they watch their children struggle in ways they didn't have to at their age and their grandma actually dies because she went outside people start to get upset and suddenly the constant news stories about the latest pointless trillion dollar war, and the politician stealing from taxpayers, and the huge decline in wildlife populations starts to hit differently.
There were major jumps in suicide during the lockdown and in the next two or three years after.
Don't believe the propaganda that Nordic people are happiest. I reckon it's probably one of the Pacific islands.
Yep, this. It's been worse everywhere since then. I didn't know how much I'd be missing the days of 2014-2018 right about now. If only I knew how good we had it.
>Don't believe the propaganda that Nordic people are happiest.
When you have the highest rates of suicides, coffee, alcohol and antidepressant usage, you're only left with the happy people ;)
There was a pretty large check from the government to workers (which supercharged some people risk-taking in stocks, crypto, events betting, sports betting). It became the year of WallStreetBets and meme stocks.
White collar people were working from home, which eliminated tedious commutes but also blended together work and home life. I’m pretty sure one of my sisters snapped dealing with several kids doing Zoom schooling and teaching her own classes over Zoom.
Many Americans reconsidered what is important in life. Another one of my sisters was “an essential worker” but wasn’t (and still isn’t) paid well and the health benefits didn’t increase even when the likelihood of getting a debilitating disease did.
It was also contentious politically, with a major election. I cut off half of my family after they went down the QAnon / Election Theft rabbit hole and they began to inhabit a completely different reality than I did. We all reacted to extreme stress in different ways and one of those ways was to distrust American institutions.
There are some post-2020 things that happened. Interest rates rose in 2022 for the first time since 2009ish. Lots of tech companies hired like drunken sailors during 2020 and began to layoff once the interest rates rose environment started to curb spending and investment. Twitter was bought and most of the staff was cut, giving other executives in Silicon Valley cover for attempting the same.
To stay with your theme of social lives changing, I think my personality has changed a bit where I am less likely to socialize with strangers (like in a 3rd space), to go out in the evenings, to hang out with coworkers.
0% interest rates was insane when most cash cow workers simply shifted to working from home (sorry, I know it's harsh, but hourly workers are not the backbone of the American economy). The gov also froze student loan payments, and froze rent payments. It also payed full unemployment and for longer. Oh and PPP loans....
It was an absolute money bonanza, and way way far beyond what was actually needed.
Young people should react by voting in people who will defend them. Instead, they joined the elderly un voting for Trump. Go figure.
Young voters (Gen Z) went Harris by 10 points.
People in the first ~1/2 of middle age (Millennials) slightly favored Harris.
It was the second ~1/2 of middle age (Gen X) that were pro Trump, by 6 points.
Boomers had the best turnout. 31% of eligible voters but 40% of actual voters. Gen X was 28% of eligible voters and 26% of actual voters. Millennials were also 28% of eligible voters and were 25% of actual voters. Gen Z was 13% of eligible voters but only 9% of actual voters.
Also, gen z favored Haris by ONLY 10 points ? As in 55/45 ? Isn't the stat usually more on the order of 60/40 (if not 65/35) for this age group ?
Gen Z went for Biden by 24 points, but the shifted right for 2024 so only went for Harris by 10.
Millennials were similar, going for Biden by 19.
Gen X favored Trump in 2020 by about about 6% and in 2024 by about 8%.
Only Boomers have moved left. They favored Trump by 8% over Clinton, about 5% over Biden, but then only 1-2% over Harris.
And also, America did nit had two years of lockdowns.
Six months into the pandemic only a single acquaintance claimed to have had the disease. A year later and there were only 3 such people. To this day I count no more than 5.
I believe that the story of the pandemic has yet to be written. IMO the "powers that be" panicked and drove the population into mass hysteria. Or perhaps they used the pandemic to achieve political ends.
There were definitely cases among certain populations: esp. elderly and immune-compromised in some cities. And there was a world of mismanagement: masks, ventilators, makeshift hospitals, quarantine facilities, etc. Lots of money was made and lots of money was given away by various governmental entities. There's no accounting for it.
Maybe you can be the person who does the study that, once and for all, justifies the wearing of masks during Covid. I only wore a mask when I was told to. But I am healthy and lucky and somehow avoided getting Covid. Or maybe I caught it but didn't know b/c I was so f'ing healthy. Who knows?
It's, like, slightly uncomfortable. Slightly. As the other commenter said, people complained not because there were legitimate complaints, but rather because they were big babies.
I believe you could've asked them to do anything and they would have complained. It wasn't the mask. It was the concept that they would have to do something simple for the greater good, and someone else was asking them to do it. Meaning, they were (are?) fundamentally stubborn, individualistic, and selfish people.
> And there was a world of mismanagement: masks, ventilators, makeshift hospitals, quarantine facilities, etc. Lots of money was made and lots of money was given away by various governmental entities. There's no accounting for it.
There were greater priorities at the time. I truly believe many governments operated with what knowledge they had at the time. It's all too easy to judge past actions with current knowledge.
> I only wore a mask when I was told to. But I am healthy and lucky...
I am glad you are healthy and lucky. But why do you hold such contempt for your fellow humans who might not be healthy nor as lucky?
I'd be miderable too if I learned my entire worldview, and that of my countrymen, was dangerously wrong and there's no way to really fix it.
There was no asking, if the country was asked then the term "lockdown" wouldn't have been used. On the other hand, there were no soldiers on the street forcing everyone inside. People chose to do it and maybe that's where the social strife really comes from, people realized they just do what they're told by authority and they're not the free-thinking individuals they thought they were.
I'm still amazed at the level of total, blind, compliance of the US population. I expected riots in the streets but there was nothing. At least traffic was less. And HN was especially depressing, any mention of "lockdowns" maybe not being the best idea or what Sweden was doing was totally shouted down. I'll never forget that.
I don't know how people are so delusional to think lockdown was a lockdown. Did we... did we have the same COVID?
I went to work every day, in person, at a restaurant. I served people every day, in person, at said restaurant. I went shopping at the grocery store. I went to the park, to the mall. These were all "essential jobs", somehow.
The only thing that changed is they put those little stickers on the ground telling people where to stand. Oh, and I wore a mask.
if you lived in Texas, many people would agree with your assessment. I lived in Massachusetts and I can tell you that was not at all my experience. All communal venues including the beach???? were shut down. there was extreme social pressure to never step outside. I know this sounds like a made up story, but i literally had friends accuse me of killing their grandmother because I as a healthy 24 year old wanted to go to a concert AFTER vaccines were available.
If you lived in a primarily liberal culture, the authoritarianism, virtue signaling and hypocrisy were completely insane.
my little brother didnt get a senior year of highschool or freshman year of college, and yet people like you claim the only thing that happened was people didnt want to put a piece of cloth over their mouths. Its extremely disingenuous and i can tell you my brother has not been the same since covid.
Perhaps so, but in 2020-2023, it appears that the harsh imposition of Massachusetts was not in vain when compared to states like Texas, for example.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/deaths/covid19.html
Sure, correlation does not imply causation, but correlations do imply associations.
> Its extremely disingenuous
It is also extremely privileged and entitled. More Americans died from Covid in a few years than the sum of US solider deaths in all US wars combined from 1776-2026.
Nah, no one who seriously thought this has come around to the truth.
[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/coronavirus-san-clem...
[2]: https://calmatters.org/health/coronavirus/2020/03/coronaviru...
Because we didn't know better yet. Note the date; April 17, 2020; just a couple weeks in.
Restrictions on outdoor activities were rapidly lifted once we got a handle on how spread happened.
All playgrounds will be closed. Fitness zones and exercise equipment will be closed. Parks and trails remain open for outdoor, passive use for individuals or members of the same household. Masks and physical distancing are required. No group gatherings are permitted
https://covid19.lacounty.gov/covid19-2-2/closures/
Emphasis mine
Edit: and for reference, because I do think you have a point, the George Floyd protests started months before November 2020.
See also: Schools wiping surfaces instead of opening windows.
Washington state continues to close park/trail facilities through July 2021: https://www.wta.org/go-outside/social-distancing-hiking-in-t...
I agree with you that some protocols were dumb. Schools should have opened windows, or added UV-C lights, or replaced high-traffic surfaces like doorknobs in large common areas with antiviral materiel, added foot-use mechanisms for opening doors, and so on. Or, if it was too expensive for any of that, asked cleaning staff to spend more time on high-transmission areas like bathroom faucets and doorknobs even if it meant less time elsewhere. But I think there's something more than just outdoor vs indoor going on.
Also the CDC who said you had to stay six feet apart even outside who then were OK with people gathering close together during protests and shouting (specifically called out by the CDC as a risky behavior).
We know ventilation matters. Public health officials flubbed this one pretty reliably; schools and doctors' offices should've had HEPA filters in every room instead of clorox wiping everything obsessively. Outdoor protests, in hindsight (and of either kind), were a nothingburger for COVID spread.
“I want to visit my aunt in her nursing home.”
“I’d like to do some gardening in my Michigan backyard.”
The issue wasn’t risk/reward tradeoffs, it was who was allowed to make them and who was not.
Large indoor gathering.
> “I want to visit my aunt in her nursing home.”
Indoors and high risk population.
> “I’d like to do some gardening in my Michigan backyard.”
When was this banned?
It’s nice that you have all the answers when it comes to risk/reward tradeoffs. Trust the Science!
A note about this:
> Curiously, the state’s list of “not necessary” items doesn’t include lottery tickets and liquor, which stores can continue to sell.
Alcohol withdrawal is deadly. No one needed a bunch of extra ICU cases. (I can’t speak to the lottery. I wonder if there’s a legal issue there, though.)
Boy at the time they seemed panicky and capricious. Wrong?
I have a memory. (And my wife used to be an ICU nurse, in this particular case.)
https://www.uchealth.org/today/alcohol-withdrawal-in-hospita...
"For severe alcohol-withdrawal cases, hospitals often respond with heavy sedation, sometimes to the extent that the patient has to breathe through a tube on a ventilator."
Surely you can see how "more patients in ICU needing vents" would've been a problem?
(This is, incidentally, why experts are important. Liquor stores being essential businesses doesn't make sense to laypeople. Here, for example, is an article from April 2020 attempting to explain it; this info was out there! https://www.allrecipes.com/article/why-are-liquor-stores-con... But people prefer the uninformed dunk.)
> Boy at the time they seemed panicky and capricious. Wrong?
As Donald Rumsfeld once got mocked for saying, there are known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns. There were a lot of unknown-unknowns at the start of COVID. Sometimes they absolutely missed the mark. I'm still mad about them not prioritizing ventilation and better masks than cloth. But it was a period of mayhem.
Agree, but we don't live in a technocracy—or at least we usually don't.
If the government had widely publicized the (imperfect, of course) thinking of experts and allowed informed citizens to make their own tradeoffs, I don't think anyone would have complained. That's how our system works, even when there are negative externalities to some "undesirable" behaviors. And if those externalities are so undesirable (second-hand smoke, say) as to restrict them, our democratic representatives pass laws to do so.
Covid wasn't like that. Suddenly every governor & city manager had near-dictatorial "emergency" powers to implement whatever restrictions fit with the risk/reward tradeoffs of whatever experts happened to have their ear. Some of these experts were right, some of them were wrong.
I guess the question is whether Covid was so terrible a threat as to demand that kind of subjugation to authority. I'm not an expert, but I am a voter, and I am fine looking back and saying with hindsight, "No, the use of those powers was in excess of what was reasonable, even given what was known (or not) at the time"—and voting accordingly.
To this day, Americans hatred of air purification is so strong that they will actively spread FUD about how “stronger filters in your furnace filter are bad cus it’s not supposed to filter air and it’ll make your machine work harder”. As it turns out, an enormous amount of poor air quality comes from all kinds of heaters.
Americans deserved to reap what they sowed here. I lost a whole lot of my sympathy/empathy for my countryman due to this. I regret that I didn’t switch to one-way masks as a way to further revel in the low trust of my society.
Notice how people that complained about this never ever quoted any stats? That's because its absurdly rare in practice. But the DFP policies did have a measurable impact. In Oakland alone, an extra (as in above the average for Oakland) 2500 or so murders have occured since DFP policies went into practice. So as someone who lived in Oakland, I want to you hear this. You are responsible for killing thousands because you didn't bother to look at the stats for violent crime. I literally saw people die on the street for the first time in my life because of you. 1000s, just in Oakland. That's you...you are responsible for that. I want you to know that.
Nah.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/16/oakland-homi...
"But as Trump was making these comments, Oakland was in the midst of a historic drop in homicides. The Bay Area city ended 2025 with 67 people killed, according to data from the Oakland police department, half of its 2021 high of 134."
Where is this 2500 murders thing coming from?
Can you point to it on the 1960-2025 chart? https://imgur.com/a/qCwbU9z
If we were less lucky and it turned out to be super deadly and only solvable with more cooperation, that would fall apart here.
Vaccines made a huge difference in whether or not when you ended up getting it you got a severe case with a significantly higher risk of hospitalization or death or got a case that was just in the mild to really annoying range.
The USA got off lockdown lightly in the main. Continental Europe, Canada and Australia all went nuts with it. Especially the Northern Territory and State of Victoria.
The Dallas County judge was driving my neighborhood berating people for walking their dogs and telling them to get inside. It was totally insane, i couldn't believe what I was seeing. I met him at a fundraiser once and asked him why he wasn't wearing a mask. My wife's friend (hosting the fundraiser) asked me to leave. His little hobby authoritarian regime during that time was the stupidest thing i'd ever seen but what made me the most angry/shocked is everyone just complied.
/I live in Dallas, TX. The judge is Clay Jenkons https://www.dallascounty.org/government/comcrt/jenkins/
The complete societal inability to adapt seems to be bigger issue in USA.
Neither Europe nor Canada are as much affected despite having more lockdowns. It was not lockdown as such, but something else about Americans
The contradictory messages from every levels of government for years did a lot to break the underlying faith in the system.
There were protests in China but most people never got to hear about them due to heavy censorship. In Australia, indigenous youth started to "go bush" for the first time in many years to avoid living like that. There were also anti-lockdown protests in various countries which were subjected to media blackout. In Australia when their truckers tried to organise protest, internet and phone service was withdrawn from them.
Many more things we never got to hear about.
By the way, the UK is in a complete mess due to Covid. It destroyed at least a seventh of its businesses. Probably more when we omit the ones that died off in 2022- as a delayed result of it.
There were truckers' protests in Canada and Australia (the latter resulting in internet and phone signals being cut in some areas.)
If anything, it made me realize how uninterested in being governed Americans are, and how pervasive this attitude is. Lest you think it's all 'MAGA' types, consider my brother who lives on the Central Coast of California in a heavily hispanic enclave. We visited a few times.
Despite California being one of the strictest states, I don't think there was a single sign or signal that anything was going on. My sister-in-law's large hispanic family continued to hold every family event indoors or at parks, without masking, or anything. We had a great time with the cousins.
Our church continued to meet in secret, flaunting the spirit of the law, if not the letter, and people were fine. COVID ran through once at the beginning, and then we were just there laughing at the government. Great bonding time honestly.
Individualism is the propensity to do whatever is best for the individual, even if it hurts the collective. Collectivism is the propensity to do what's best for the collective, even if it hurts the individual.
Wearing masks and social distancing helps the collective. But because Americans are highly individualistic, and doing so is ever so slightly less convenient than not doing so, many people decided not to wear masks or social distance.
Oftentimes what is best for the individual and what is best for the collective are one and the same. That is the only reason America works at all. COVID was not one of those times.
On a local level covid restrictions seem to have had as much to do with economics as they did politics.
Not everything is supposed to be read literally. But this seems to be the Abundance author so maybe it really is unironic and that tediously sincere.
> And I think it's been pretty well-proven that happiness is largely driven by the strength and quality of our social relationships.
Everyone who has enough money to not worry about money agrees.
> Anything that cuts us off from our friends, or prevents us from forming new friendships, is going to be visible in the happiness data.
Great news for the developing countries with healthy social connections. Not so great news for a country with great wealth and income inequality and atomized connections.
Most of the actual important issues were solved or on the way of being solved, so people slowly started to make the trivial problems seem way grander than they are. Hedonistic adaptation is part of human nature, and the cycle has been seen in history many times in many civilizations.
Meanwhile, ironically, in societies where there is significant hardship every day, whether its going out and farming or having to work harder for your meal at home, dealing with adverse weather, and other things, you tend to see way more inclusion and coherence between humans, because they really never get a chance to get accustomed to a good life.
Trump is a product of the idiocy of the American electorate. He's also a product of the forces that have worked for many, many years to have a guy like him run the country. Trump is what you eventually get after the Reagans, the Nixons, the George Wallaces have sown the seeds.
(I do agree that Mr Trump is a shockingly bad president in oh so many ways. But the malaise being described here doesn't seem to have started in 2016. Not every bad thing is his fault.)
Im not trying to be insulting either - most of USA doesn't seem to give a shit, so I don't either.
1. The fear companies had of raising prices went away thanks to inflation. It's when dynamic pricing in various forms (eg RealPage for rents) really took off. Supermarkets started engaging in essentially unspoken collusion. This tends to get labelled as "price leadership" rather than "price fixing" where the only difference is the first is legal and the second isn't but they're otherwise identical; and
2. Governments around the world engaged in massive wealth transfer to the wealthy, which creates asset price inflation, particularly with housing. Some countries tried to claw some of this back with so-called windfall profits tax. Personally, I think there should've been a corporate tax of 80%+ for 2020-2023 (at least).
The usual tool that governments use to tackle inflation is monetary policy. The theory goes that you raise interest rates, it makes borrowing more expensive and it dampens the heat in the economy. That's true but it's also a very blunt instrument. It hurts everyone from the biggest borrowers to people buying homes.
What never gets serious discussion let alone policy discussion (at least in the US) is fiscal policy, secpfically taxation. Temporarily high corporate taxes would've had a similar effect on tempering M&A, share buybacks, etc but it would've only targeted companies who were profiting from, say, a huge spike in oil prices.
But there are other factors too that existed before Covid such as private equity, which is simply buying up all the competition, making everything more expensive, paying back an LBO and then loading up a company with exploding debt so some sucker down the line can buy it before it blows up.
No, it was government mandates that played hell with peoples' social lives.
What did the government mandate about your social life?
On my trip to Austin a couple of years ago it'd got really expensive. Even food where normally you could walk in a shop and get something for not much, a basic sandwich started from $8 and when I came out some lady followed me and said could she have some she was hungry so I gave her half and really was hungry. I've never really had that in the other fifty countries I've visited including in Africa. In London you get Roma sitting around with 'hungry' signs but they are all fat and well fed and want cash. It's odd.
But, all that said, its probably not wise to generalize an experience about Austin to an idea about the US as a whole. At best, you might generalize it to ideas about large US cities.
Because those city centers have remained the same size while demand for living there continues to increase
More demand for a fixed set of land drives prices up.
Those city centers today are not equivalent to the same city centers 35 year ago.
This works because both you and GP specified "[free-standing] house". This is not true of homes, where multiple homes can occupy the same land - just 15 feet higher or lower
Perhaps someday more American cities will discover the third dimension, allowing for cheaper housing
The dream/desire is the thing.
I think you might be a little out of touch. Plenty of people dream of owning any kind of real property.
Gonna buy me a condo
Gonna buy me a Cuisinart
Get a wall-to-wall carpeting
Get a wallet full o' credit cards
I'm gonna buy me a condo, never have to mow the lawn
I'm gonna get me da T-shirt wit' the alligator onSo you also can't just build a new city in central Nebraska and have everyone move there for cheap.
This is besides the entrenchment that happens when industry is in one place for a long time.
Aunts and uncles picked up homes in SoCal for 150-200k in the 90s, now worth 1-2m in some cases, but in any case, it seems unreplicable today.
If there’s a new frontier to capitalize on, a lot of us seem to be missing it…
Not exactly rocket science - if there's money to be made and people aren't making it then something is stopping them.
Uh, no it wasn't? I was living there and continued living there for the next 30 years. It always felt about as dense to me as it did back then.
This is why its so expensive. Demand for housing has increased but supply has not. The government refusing to allow densification in the face of increased demand means prices skyrocket
I'm sceptical that not generalizing will be the smart move. The world is more and more connected these days. A person in Rural Town A and a person in Urban Area B and a person in Whole Other Side of Planet C all have access to many of the same goods and services, and almost all the same information as each other. Price and supply information and news from areas are all available instantly in contexts far removed from where they originated, and are having ripple-effects in areas beyond where they'd be logically applicable because communication is so cheap and low-friction. I think we need to generalize more, because those who set prices are definitely going to be generalizing and trying to pull prices towards the highest possible profit margin. Only commodities get supply-and-demand price cuts. Everything else gets inflation for any valid reason and deflation for no valid reasons.
At least you can be guaranteed for certain you won't be going hungry in Istanbul, Warsaw or Amman.
Of course many do struggle, and that should not be dismissed by pointing to the past. But it nonetheless strikes me as naive to believe that people today are hungrier than at any point in recent history - the obesity crisis, and its lack of discrimination between social classes, should at least in part demonstrate this.
In my opinion, such exaggerations mostly serve to discredit and distract from legitimate complaints about the cost of living today.
The obesity crisis is in part because of the unavailability of nutritious food and the proliferation of cheap junk masquerading as food. But even that is getting expensive these days. Actual food prices have been going on an uptick since the 00s.
I will make my stand on the fact that more people lived better during the 90s in the West than now.
The average price people are paying for a new car now is (in constant dollars) about twice what it was back when I got that '89 Civic, but that is because a larger percentage of buyers nowadays are buying bigger and/or more luxurious cars.
It's quite remarkable when you take into account how much more technology and safety features are in new cars. My '89 Civic didn't even have cruise control.
The existence of some base model Honda Civic or similar doesn't imply you or anyone can actually buy one.
For example in 1989 the Honda Accord ranged from $11.5-18.2k depending on trim. Converted to today's dollars using CPI that is $31-50k. Converted using the Social Security indexing factors [1] it is $38-60. The SSA indexing factors are probably better for comparing car affordability of infrequently purchased big tickets items.
The range of new Accord prices right now is $28-39k. They are all readily available. Honda lists 11, 20, 24, 12, 11, and 21 available nearby for the LX, SE, Sport Hybrid, EX-L Hybrid, Sport-L Hybrid, and Touring Hybrid trims.
The 1998 CR-V was $18.4-$21.1k. Converted using CPI that is $31-43k, and converted using SSA indexing it is $44-50k.
New CR-Vs today are $27-42k. (I'm omitting the $50k plug-in hydrogen fuel-cell model which is not readily available). They are all readily available, with Honda listing 15, 50, 48, 118, 49, 96, and 84 of the LX, EX, Sport Hybrid, EX-L, TrailSport Hybrid, Sport-L Hybrid, and Sport Touring Hybrid nearby.
[1] These are what the Social Security Administration uses for normalizing across years when computing total contribution amounts. This is based on the mean annual salary.
What is the basis for you to assume this and not, for example, the fact that people simply spend a bigger percentage of their earnings on cars now?
You can definitely buy the base model Civic that you see online. It was only during COVID that you couldn't due to inventory shortages.
There's a regulatory required number (it's not many) of those supper stripped down below the base model cars they have to make to advertise the "starting at price" so you can find them if you really try.
I know this because I know an old lady who (close to 20yr ago now) sought out the super base model of the.... wait for it.... first year of the CVT Nissan Altima! It didn't even have a radio.
It proved to be really reliable because it was well cared for and not driven hard, she gave it away to a nephew a year or so ago.
I genuinely do not believe a 2025 car will usable on the road in 2035 (a mere 9 years), yet known 15 or 20 years from now. They are all too hamstrung by technology and whilst some of the technology is an improvement, a vast majority if malicious.
If it is you'll probably be forced to pay a monthly subscription
Even shopping for a few basic groceries felt like I was paying dollar amounts more than I would expect to see at home but in a currency that's worth 1.3x+.
When I visited Vancouver from the Bay Area things only felt cheaper accounting for the exchange rate.
https://creditcardgenius.ca/blog/most-expensive-cities-canad...
I think US grocery prices are higher because there's not really a goal of keeping them lower. Subsidies could be structured to ensure that they help the consumer, but they aren't. And so on.
Food is expensive and no one is getting rich from it. It's a strong sign you are in an advanced economy, and will be having it hard if you aren't part of that "advanced".
Attach the subsidy to the eventual retail price and they would at least be a little lower.
The US prices are the same as the Canadian prices, despite their dollar being worth 30% more.
Wild
Like the article states, when housing goes up everywhere, it means that even the lowest wage workers need to be paid a lot more to survive, so the reason basic sandwiches are so expensive there is that entry level pay is now about $25/hr.
The other issue you saw, homelessness, is especially concentrated in Austin. Austin is perhaps the most liberal city in deep red Texas, so homeless people flock to Austin because it has good services and a generally sympathetic populace, and some rural conservative locales have even been giving homeless people one way bus tickets to Austin.
I guess the good news is that Austin built a shit ton of housing since 2021-2022, so housing prices (including rentals) are falling faster in Austin than anywhere else in the US.
Commercial property and property tax rates are insane in Texas. It's not the pay, because in towns were pay is less prices aren't much lower.
On work trips over the past year I’ve had to buy tools at Home Depot, supplies at IKEA and Walmart, groceries, hotel, etc. I was in both large and small cities on the east and West coast … and the pricing is the same.
The drill I bought for $279 USD is $279 CAD. The IKEA cabinet I got for $199USD is $199CAD, etc..
Note sure what is going on with US prices, but Canadian making $17/hr minimum wage are struggling. I can’t imagine how Americans do it..
Canada CAD$298: https://www.homedepot.ca/product/milwaukee-tool-m18-18-volt-...
First drill I opened.
That's Austin & life in the 21st Century, friend.
I grew up ATX-style in the 90s, and cannot afford to live there anymore. But also chose not to years before then.
There're still a few regions where living hasn't gotten life-prohibitive, yet (my answer: anywhere there is a Cookout and/or Pal's fastfood restaurant).
But nothing is cheap, anymore.
The houses got expensive because homeowners wanted housing to be an investment, so they voted for laws that make it harder to build or densify housing.
Cars are expensive because the government puts tariffs on perfectly good imports to protect the American car companies. The American car companies produce garbage, and even the electric car companies like Tesla and Rivian are producing super-high-tech luxury land yachts. The government incentives are also captured to produce huge trucks, and many states don't have regular inspections, so lifted trucks are common. The companies don't want to build and sell small cars because the perception is that a small car is going to get pancaked in a crash with a bigger, heavier car. Gas prices don't matter because the government artificially suppresses them, sometimes with war.
Corn and dairy are cheap because the government subsidizes them at the behest of the corn and dairy lobbies, which use small good ol' boy farmers who don't even exist as their marketing. A lot of the corn goes to ethanol for fuel, even though it's a crappy fuel and an acre of solar panels results in many more miles of EV driving than the same acre of corn ethanol. So you can also get a cheap soda and a cheap cheese pizza, but a lot of the food pipeline is captured by seed monopolies and middle-men. Somehow milk became a bit of a right-wing meme, and it's basically a naturally-occurring dessert, so people love milk even though it's not good for you and not a good way to get nutrients.
> Even food where normally you could walk in a shop
You aren't supposed to walk in America. You're supposed to drive. Don't get me started lol
Housing, education, and cars, all typically financed via loans, all exorbitantly expensive.
When the money being lended is digital and not backed by anything it’s even worse.
(Yes, I know "usury" has had other meanings, but this is the current, common definition, and if you're going to use a word in a way that's uncommon, you should be prepared for confusion.)
"In many historical societies including ancient Christian, Jewish, and Islamic societies, usury meant the charging of interest of any kind, and was considered wrong, or was made illegal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury
Low interest rates (i.e. freer moneylending aka more usury) increases house prices.
From Webster's 1828 Edition:
U'SURY, noun s as z. [Latin usura, from utor, to use.]
1. Formerly, interest; or a premium paid or stipulated to be paid for the use of money.
[Usury formerly denoted any legal interest, but in this sense, the word is no longer in use.]
2. In present usage, illegal interest; a premium or compensation paid or stipulated to be paid for the use of money borrowed or retained, beyond the rate of interest established by law.
3. The practice of taking interest. (obsolete)
"That is why [a ban on usury] was encoded into ancient religious traditions"
So they obviously meant the old definition, which encompasses all moneylending.
Not been shopping for a house recently?
Avg house price in my city doubled in the past 5 years.
This posture contradicts quite a few testimonials we can read about everywhere, including here in HN.
Maybe it's the salaries, then, that are half what they should be?
The authors are clear about this:
"The standard view of housing markets holds that differences in the flexibility of local housing supply - shaped by factors like geography and regulation - explain differences in how house price and quantity growth respond to rising demand across U.S. cities... Our conclusions challenge the prevailing view of local housing and labor markets"
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33576/w335...
edit: I do think it's a good paper!
Cheap Chinese shit is like mana from heaven for the poor and couple that with Dutch frugality and America is saved.
I predicted a massive price hike way back in the summer of 2020, because somehow we were going to have to pay for the lockdown, and many people didn't believe me. Now it's here, people are trying to tell me it was too long ago, even though economics can run in ten or twenty year cycles.
I have never seen someone in america starving.
And Trump is probably malnourished but it has nothing to do with means.
On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people. Despite all the hype of Altman and whonots, I feel like people just don't have a positive view of the future of their careers due to AI. And once you lose hope it's just downhill from there.
Also I feel like society still hasn't recovered fully from COVID, so many third places gone, restraunts closed, etc. It's getting there but people are isolating more and more. I'm in my late 20s and I just haven't felt like my social life is even half of what it used to be before COVID.
I grew up in the 80's. College in the late 90's. Start of career in the mid aughts. Went through two dot com busts, and have seen a lot of shit. The one thing that my generation (Gen X) seemed to have was always some optimism for the future. Some hope that as bad as it is now? It will eventually get better. The economy will recover, tech jobs will come back, new companies will start up, things will get back to normal.
There seemed to be so much open road with our generation. We knew we were at the forefront of something really special. The road to being successful was pretty standard. Go to college, get a degree, start a career making 40-50K. Get married, buy a house, have kids, live happily ever after.
That seems to have dissipated with Millennials and has gotten worse with Gen Z. Even college for Gen Z is like, "I don't know, is it really worth it any more?" How do you pick a career in something that may or may not exist in a few years because of AI? It just seems like we were the last generation that really had so much hope (regardless of which party was in the White House or controlled congress) and it seems that kind on relentless optimism for the future has dimmed immensely over the past few years.
I'm grateful for the time I grew up in. I'm not sure I would be able to handle the amount of pressure and stress that young people have to deal with these days.
In retrospective this looks like a depressing joke to me.
The vibe among Gen X was that the west was going to get invaded / nuked by the Soviets or economically crushed by the Japanese.
However, my perspective has gotten a lot worse the last couple of years. Enshittification, corporate consolidation, tech market, AI, etc. I didn't once worry during the dot com bust, or the financial crisis, or the outsourcing boom.
It feels VERY different this time.
Basically it feels like tech was the last place where you could do well and outrun the long term real wage stagnation the country's faced since the 70s. And it's not anymore.
Yes AI can change the situation durably, but it's not the first time developers get a new tool that gets them more productive. We've seen that with compilers, IDE, frameworks, etc.
I wasn't a father until late in life and then all of a sudden, everything is easy.
The moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, every moment has meaning and purpose. Nothing, no meal, no evening, no dollar is wasted.
As my children grow - the only question is how long do I have until I have grandchildren. After that - how long until I no longer have skin in the game?
I do full time AI stuff and it is meaningless other than the provision it provides.
I would not recommend avoiding the biological imperative. Reproduce. Everything else after that moment is clarity.
I'd like to point out that experience is far from universal. Parenting beyond "feed and shelter them" is a minefield of ambiguity and conflicting evidence.
I agree. I think we should just stop.
You're telling me there is a faceless, non-judgemental, never exhausted tutor just sitting there waiting for my curiosity to strike up a conversation? How absolutely fantastic. We're spoiled with information.
do you have kids? Family? That is the ancient receipt for a great and happy life.
I feel like it should (but doesn't) go without saying that people should think carefully about having kids no matter who they are or how satisfied, but especially so if they're unhappy.
Well then you get your 60s and your focus changes. Kids become adults. Family is the true legacy. We didnt come so far as society searching for netflix and chill.
> I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge.
You cannot just relax, because guess what, some human beings depends on you. But yeah, some phases are harder than others.. but thats life.
2) this may sound weird, but I do think that if you want to be a good parent (and please note, I don't actually have kids yet, so ignore this advice if it doesn't ring true) is finding ways to get your 'alone' time despite family responsibilities. I'm also an introvert, but my 'recharge' time is stuff like meditation and solo-programming and math time, so that's pretty easy to do, just set aside a few hours a day to recharge my batteries so I can be fully present for my family the rest of the time, I can see that fighting in a foreign civil war isn't exactly the type of thing you can fit into an hour in the morning before the kids wake up, but if you have similar introverted activities that recharge you that can be more easily done alongside family life, I would argue that you'll be doing your family a disservice not to do them- they deserve you at your best, which means you should give yourself time do fully recharge yourself so you can be there for them the rest of the time.
That 1.3% or about 5 days is my vacation.
I went' from ~60% free time to 1% and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
If you already have a fulfilling and happy life without children though you are throwing a wrench into a good thing with a dice roll of how it's going to turn out. Turns out, I'm not the kind of person that finds raising children fulfilling. If my life was already unfulfilling, then that wouldn't have made much difference and at least added a distraction.
There's no one to blame but me for that, but I'm here to pass on the experience.
Of course what's interesting is that while you do have the obligation to provide for and take care of your kids, you don't have the obligation to enjoy it or find it fulfilling. But people get offended if you don't, which I've never understood, as there is nothing dishonorable about it.
"If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though. I was extremely, extremely satisfied with my life before children. My kid is wonderful and healthy but as an introvert I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge"
with
"I was doing stuff like fighting in a foreign civil war and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea." ?
Both sentences dont add up, at all.
Two lovers entwined pass me by
And Heaven knows I'm miserable now
I was looking for a job, and then I found a job
And Heaven knows I'm miserable now
In my life, oh, why do I give valuable time
To people who don't care if I live or die?what? We went through so many bad periods in our history..is it sarcasm?
I'm wondering how on earth are people supposed to provide for a family these days?
the techno optimism has been absolutely insane. celebrating that people won't have jobs anymore, that robots will be doing everything and that how the human species is just a stepping stone or something and if you resist you're a "specist" (famously said by Larry Page)
Times are not easy, but they are not doomish. Or, every decade there were doomish periods where you could have the same view. every. single. one. How would you feel in late 30s when big part of the world was visibly inching to global war? This is nothing and nobody knows where this current moment will lead us to.
And at work? Yeah, the clock is ticking, and in this transitory period people seem to be happily ginving up on thinking and their agency. Execs are getting more and more sociopathic. Young people more and more disenganged. The planet is getting worse and worse.
At this point I really regret that I brought my kids to life, because I'm pretty sure it will be mostly suffering that they will experience.
Rustin Cohle:
Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of non existence into
this... meat, to force a life into this... thresher. That"s... so my daughter, she
spared me the sin of being a father.I can't relate to any of the things you mentioned. I have deep relationships with lots of people, across entirely different types of groups. We see each other regularly (weekly, sometimes more), we do fun things together, we go to events and plan trips, we always have things to talk about, we have hobbies and communities to connect with even more people. We make new connections and friends constantly.
You probably prioritized the wrong things at some point in your life, like the values you hold or the place you choose to live in. You can still make changes to those choices.
My life and the life of everyone I know is immeasurably better since COVID. That's not meant to be a brag but I hope it serves as a wake up call that your experience is not the only one.
My id wants to be happy, but my collective unconscious wants to doomscroll.
We need to be the change we want to see.
There are significant structural issues in society that present headwinds for average people trying to build a fulfilling life.
Oof, yeah, that definitely doesn't help.
I agree that it's tough to break into social circles not only as adults but also younger people, because everyone spends so much of their time doomscrolling on the internet filling their heads with negative emotions from things they can (and at no other point in time could) control.
Hindsight is 20/20 for some but that's why I prioritize my friends and my community and I don't make plans to move away to have a giant empty house in the middle of nowhere, and I don't make plans to take on a job that will have me drained and unavailable, etc. I recognize the massive positive influence they have on me (and I on them) and I take great steps to nurture it, no different than my family or my career or anything else of material importance to my way of life.
In any case, you need to invest time and mental and emotional energy into it, now more than ever. People yearn for community but no one wants to work for it. Be available, be present, reach out, make plans, forgive, be adaptable, be fun.
If you compare apples to apples - say my average atheist friend who is a director in a FAANG and also my religious friend who is also a director in the same FAANG.
The former lives by themselves, spends their money on fun things like cars and "toys", etc. Don't get me wrong, wonderful guy (hence friend) but doesn't have those traditional things that historically have been correlated with a fulfilled life.
Meanwhile my religious-FAANG friend has 4 kids, lives in a community where everyone knows each other, lives much closer to family (intentional choice) and just overall sees his life, both the ups and the downs, as part of something purposeful and meaningful.
I would say my religious friend has much more intensity and drama/richness in his life, and maybe no time for "sadness" which I actually think is the right way to go.
I like talking about these 2 guys because outwardly they are apples to apples (same career, similar degree, etc.) but I think this generalizes well to my other friends too. At whatever level of "secular" success and safety, my religious friends just somehow seem more grounded, more belonging in their lives compared to my atheist friends, deal with setbacks better, take a more long-term view and in that traditional sense have more "to live for" than themselves which is very healthy.
America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization. When I came to the US in mid-90s (as an atheist) over half the population attended religious services regularly. Obviously that number is nothing like that today. So what registers to us as an overall change in society (fewer kids, less happy) is actually the proliferation of non religiosity in society and the corresponding magnification of the kind of challenges non-religious folks face.
As a sort of comical but sad example, most my atheist friends "would want kids" but have 30 reasons why it's impossible, between economics, politics, etc. Meanwhile my religious friends just have kids.
But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning.
The spiritual crisis also explains why people aren't having kids. If there's no point to anything, why go through all the work and hardship? Parents often want to bring more happiness into the world. But if you're deeply unhappy, the logic changes.
Much unhappiness is not due to the fact that the world is too hard, but that it's too easy. You show up to your job and don't do any real work... and nothing happens. There are no real life or death decisions you'll make.
Life now is hard but you're not going to die in a bomb attack. So lots of our energies are turned inward, on ourselves.
The scenario you paint is one where everything has been stripped of meaning. One option is to seek more meaningful work and social relationships, on an individual level, and/or on a societal movement level. Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people, to anethisize oneself to being a miserable wage slave with a miserable life.
I'm very much an atheist and a positivist too. I rejected religion growing up.
But we don't have to cede the concept of spirituality to organized religion. Spirituality is so much more than that. It's about purpose, connection, and what it means to be a human. You can practice spirituality by meditating at home, just sitting with your thoughts and feelings. No delusion or supernatural beliefs required!
When you talk about the future of mankind, our role in it, and what's the most meaningful way to live our lives -- that's what I mean by spirituality.
Ooh, how about zeitgeist? I like that word. Then you'd still have spirits, but rational German ones.
Yes, I'm pro-science and rational thought, but I'm increasingly thinking people like me have spent too long in left brain land and need to explore some of the deeper, subtle, and more intuitive parts of what it means to be a human, if that makes any sense.
Religious people tend to be less lonely , more likely to be married and have children, and more happy and less likely to experience mental illness, on average.
It’s certainly not true for every religious person nor the opposite for every atheist, but the effect can be seen across populations.
A friend j got the epic ski pass, so he skied at 43 resorts this winter with his wife and kid all across the US. From Baltimore to Tahoe through about 25 states.
I thought it would be awesome, he said it was shit. Because one corporation owns all of it, they’re all identical. Same signs, same food, same rules. No adventure, nothing new at each resort . Giant monoculture.
That’s how I feel when I’m in the US.
And it was boring monoculture
In my experience friends and family are the primary contributor to happiness. Provided they are good people. Else its a train wreck. It doesn't matter if they are religious or not.
I don't think you're wrong to analyse your friends, I think you're right that Americans pivot toward religion (or the ill defined "spirituality") when they feel they lack that something else.
But in many other places, including where I live, it's natural to lean on philosophy, personal connections, family, teaching, social work or any other "deep fulfillment activities", and in fact the kind of empty success you describe is frowned upon, among atheists just as much as among religious people.
Philosophy is part of the basic school curriculum from secondary school, and dealing with the big questions is not left for mass.
I find this an oft repeated meme. The men to whom we own our scientific understanding were all deeply religious (not just lived in a time when everyone went to church)
For example - Darwin had trained to be an Anglican vikar prior to his journey on the Beagle and wrote to his future wife letters full of discussion of divinity.
Newton was obviously deeply religious and wrote more about religion than about physics. In fact his view of gd as singular was considered to be heretical by the Anglican church but was perfectly aligned to the old testament - what I am getting at here is that he didn't just happen to have faith by default but had a very deep and personal one. At the conclusion of principia Mathematica he wrote tons friend that he believed this work would make it obvious to a thinking man that presence of gd.
Georges lemaitre who came up with the big bang theory was a Belgian Catholic priest. The secular science at the time was adamant about the Greek model of the eternal universe, and we owe our modern view of it to someone who came into the situation already believing a moment of creation.
Einstein was famously a non practicing jew who nonetheless at age 11 had taught himself Judaism and later in life advocated for he study of talmud. I can't claim him to be a practitioner but his own writing speaks to a certain expectation of how the universe ought to be (that was later proven out in math) and a belief in a sort of spirit of the universe. The point isn't that he was an orthodox jew but that he is very far from a modern atheist.
So I don't actually agree with this idea that religion is non scientific when we owe our deepest scientific understanding to men who saw themselves and the universe through a religious lens.
That's not to say that there's no ignorance in some religions and among some practitioners but rather that religion at its best can claim really significant contributions that I don't think are matched by atheism at its best.
> that I don't think are matched by atheism at its best
There are plenty of scientists including Feynman and Hawkings. These are unrelated things.
Much as how Erdos talked about 'proofs from the book', I believe that mathematical and scientific truths exist 'in the mind of God', ie, the universal consciousness, which, by definition, is aware of everything, already knows the truth that we seek, and the process of mathematical and scientific discovery is therefore simply a process of learning more about God. The flow state that one enters into when working is, in my mind, a sort of communion with the divine, which leads to the creation of great work.
This is similar, in my mind, to Michelangelo's quote about "seeing David in the marble and setting him free" - the statue already existed in the universal consciousness, and this consciousness guided Michelangelo into bringing it into being.
The proof of $THEOREM exists, your job is to find it, and the universe will gently nudge you in the right direction.
But obviously, that's just my opinion/point of view.
You could just as easily believe that the universe is not conscious, and truth is discovered simply by a combination of luck and effort, and that would probably work just as well ^^
Can you justify that claim?
>> plenty of scientists including Feynman and Hawkings.
Feynman is a good example of that. He was raised in a religious family and went to synagogue every week. His dad challenged him to continuously challenge the orthodox knowledge which I suspect the father himself saw within the talmudic tradition etc.
As feynman rejected Judaism and religion in general he nonetheless hung on and hugely benefited from the approach his religious father instilled on him. Similar to what I said about Einstein above I am not trying to claim feynman for religion but I think he's very far from "today's atheists" if that makes sense. If feynman didn't have his father (for whom religion was integral) I doubt he'd turn out who he was.
>> These are unrelated things
As per above I don't see it that way.
Can you?
> Feynman is a good example of that.
"Do you call yourself an agnostic or an atheist? Feynman: An atheist. Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this."
> > If feynman didn't have his father (for whom religion was integral) I doubt he'd turn out who he was.
Right. If we are just gonna reach for stuff like this then I'm gonna say Feynman wouldn't turn out to be who he was if he believed in religion.
> As per above I don't see it that way.
Belief without evidence. Hey I get it now!
How could there have ever been religious men of science?
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you. - Werner Heisenberg
> How could there have ever been religious men of science?
Oh I have no problem with this. There will be religious scientists and non religious scientists. Just like there will be scientists who like red vs scientists who like blue. Being a scientist doesn't mean they are immune to broader cultural trends.
disagree.
Colonization is done by force, evangelism is, in theory, consensual.
If I tell you "hey, have you tried the Emacs text editor? It's great, I love it, I recommend it to everyone looking for a great text editor, if you'd like I can show you how to set it up", that's not the same thing as saying "I claim your computer in the name of King Stallman, use Emacs or die".
Also you somehow skipped over the track record of the atheist regimes of the 20th century.
Which is why if anyone starts claiming that “religion is good/bad” in simplistic terms, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. It is far too broad a label to make such declarations.
But this is a straightforwardly transparent attempt at apologetics. It looks weak when it goes up against answersingenesis.org, and a rabidly (maybe not literally, yet, but give it time...) culture of opposition to basic science, such as vaccination, among many evangelicals.
Ultimately the claims of religion are moral, and they're on very thin ice when religion has such an appalling history of support for slavery, torture, murder, exploitation, grift, war, paedophilia, and biblical literalism.
The usual argument at this point is a No True Scotsman. All those other religions do these things. Never the claimant's own.
But for every Pope Leo - who seems like an unusually decent example - there are five Kenneth Copelands, and an apparently endless series of scandals and court cases featuring youth pastors and grifting megachurch multimillionaires.
Personally I'd rather not be in any community that trades comfort for complicity and/or denial, no matter how nice its social events feel.
Community in practice should be wider than that.
There's some extra stress involved in finding your own way, especially in a culture of forced competition.
But you're far more likely to see atheists trying to progress public ethics than religious believers, especially in the US.
But that's a problem with American evangelicals, not religion as a whole. The earliest universities were sponsored by the church; and the works of ancient scholars were preserved by Catholics and Muslims.
> Ultimately the claims of religion are moral, and they're on very thin ice when religion has such an appalling history of support for slavery, torture, murder, exploitation, grift, war, paedophilia, and biblical literalism.
Sure, but religion also has a long history of fighting against those claims; a lot of slaves adopted Christianity, and used it as a tool to fight against oppression. It was also a large part of the civil rights movement; Martin Luther King Jr was a Baptist Minister, and Malcolm X was a Muslim.
> and an apparently endless series of scandals and court cases featuring youth pastors and grifting megachurch multimillionaires.
Plenty of grift among the sciences too. Look at the replication crisis, or companies like Theranos and FTX. In the United States, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death.
> Personally I'd rather not be in any community that trades comfort for complicity and/or denial, no matter how nice its social events feel.
You should probably stay off Hacker News then. For example, plenty of people here celebrate electrification, even though the raw materials needed for that are mined by children and slaves.
> But you're far more likely to see atheists trying to progress public ethics than religious believers, especially in the US.
I'm curious, do you have any examples?
No it's not; this claim comes from a flawed study that even the BMJ's then-editor-in-chief has admitted was poorly researched. And even if the numbers were accurate, the number is for medical errors, not malpractice. It's an important distinction that matters to your point.
Why? Because the Christian view was that God was a reasonable God, and He made the universe. And because He also gave us reason when He made us, we should be able to understand the universe by reason. All these men, from Newton down to Faraday, looked at the universe and expected to be able to find out how it worked, because of their religion.
Their religion didn't lead them to a non-scientific worldview. Their religion led them to create the scientific worldview.
In fact Christianity halted scientific progress in the West for around a millennium. Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence.
Well maybe not scholasticism.
https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
> As we’ll see, the Roman Empire was never close to an industrial revolution – a great many of the preconditions were missing – but the idea that it might have been on the cusp of being something like a modern economy did once have its day in the scholarship
> Early tinkering with the idea of using heat to create steam to power rotary motion – the core function of a steam-engine – go all the way back to Vitruvius (c. 80 BC -15 AD) and Heron of Alexandria (c. 10-70 AD). With the benefit of hindsight we can see they were tinkering with an importance principle but the devices they actually produced – the aeolipile – had no practical use – it’s fearsomely fuel inefficient, produces little power and has to be refilled with water (that then has to be heated again from room temperature to enable operation).
> Apart from the use of steam pressure, the aeolipile shares very little in common with practical steam engine designs and the need to continually refill and heat the water reservoir would have limited its utility in any case.
It could have easily been improved as later models were. It would require large amounts of fuel and water... Which the UK did centuries later I suppose. But one would not expect good fuel efficiency in early prototypes.
They had a universe in which the gods did random things for random reasons. That didn't lead them to expect a rational basis for the construction of the whole universe, and so they never investigated in the way that early modern science did.
That's ridiculous.
> Because the Christian view was that God was a reasonable God, and He made the universe. And because He also gave us reason when He made us, we should be able to understand the universe by reason. All these men, from Newton down to Faraday, looked at the universe and expected to be able to find out how it worked, because of their religion.
That may be true, but that doesn't suggest that people who were secular could not have been curious about how the universe worked. Sure, that's a neat path for the religious to decide to embark on a scientific journey, but I expect if there was no religion at all, that scientific journey would have started earlier, and progressed faster. History is littered with scientists unable to publish their work (through threat of pain and death) because it conflicted with church doctrine.
Much more popular is "believe and do not doubt".
Also: Jesus' response to Apostle Thomas after his resurrection from the dead is recited during every Easter mass: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
Enlightenment runs contrary to Christian Dogma - Enlightenment advocates for the separation of Church and State.
Sorry pal, but Christianity is firmly against free thought....
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
Sorry pal, but Christian Church is firmly in the "believe and do not doubt" camp.
Existence itself is beyond science and this is trivial to prove. Everyone with an above room temperature IQ can understand Aristotle's Prime Mover argument.
Note that this concept (which again, is at least as old as Aristotle) has nothing to do with religion.
Please don't forget to state the axioms before building the proof.
This can be good, you know. I mean that was the original purpose of religion.
The idea is that everyone will be good if they are afraid of judgement day. But science came along and took that away. But science (or should I say naive "scientists") did not substitute it with something that works as well. Not even close. It didn't even try.
No, it's not. Non-factual, non-evidence based worldview is part of the problem humanity has right now in the post-fact era.
>The idea is that everyone will be good if they are afraid of judgement day
I reject the notion that people can be good just because they are afraid of some powerful entity judging them. People are good because it's the right and rational thing to do. If they aren't good now, the environment is to blame which made them bad people.
>... "scientists") did not substitute it with something that works as well. Not even close. It didn't even try.
It's not the job of science to make sure people don't do bad things. Science can point to a problem, it's us, the people, who need to solve the problem.
Even you seem to agree that there is a notion of a "right" thing.
A "Rational" action can totally depend on what you want to achieve. And also considering the fact that "rationality" is not equally distributed among the people, it follows that there need to be some kind of gospel that needs to be followed so that everyone will do things that are collectively beneficial...
>It's not the job of science..
Isn't the ultimate goal of science the betterment of human condition? If you agree that, I think it is indeed the job of science to suggest a proper replacement for the stuff it is overthrowing...
Also the US is a very religious country compared to western or northern Europe where people aren't particularly sad.
Not like the entire point of the Renaissance was to ignore the scripture and stop acting like it was true and to start actually doing experiments in reality
I am a full atheist, living in Switzerland. The community is strong, the neighborhood too and the city is a charm (Geneva). 3 kids, coding and spending my time contemplating humans at their best: having fun and getting on a higher ground. I don't have an answer regarding the bigger picture but I will surely think about it and get back to you.
EDIT As I wrote in another comment: confronting the truth (whatever the spirituality behind) in itself doesn't make someone unhappy, it's the sense of losing one's footing that does. In many ways, America was built along those lines.
Not a lot of "average" going on here.
Small personal example - we are undergoing home renovation right now to create a larger dining room that can accommodate better our extended family. I see this kind of behavior among friends and family who are religious and can afford to.
If I understand correctly, connecting the dots from the article and your comment, beginning in 2020, everyone moved away from religion towards atheism in some kind of rapid shift?
Is this supported by the demographic data?
Living close to family is surely the single thing most could do to immediately improve their happiness.
(while not all of us are lucky to have welcoming family, the way people in the US are willing to uproot themselves and move across the country where they know nobody is extremely harmful to their senses of community)
We're not, I promise.
Can you provide a reason to care for someone that has nothing to do with religion and nothing to do with a personal/societal gain?
Otherwise, why does Religion need a punishment like Hell at all?
Sure: because I want to. That's it. I don't need a justification. I don't need a god up in heaven threatening me with eternal punishment if I'm not good to other people.
I just think caring for other is a good thing, and not caring about others is bad. I didn't need religion to help me draw that conclusion, and personal or societal gain has nothing to do with it. I think it's the right thing to do, so I do it.
You can dive down into the depths of it and think about whether any supposedly-selfless act is truly selfless. "Well, sure, you helped out your friend, but that made you feel good, right? Selfish!" But I don't buy that line of reasoning. Even if helping someone does make you feel good, so what? That's good too! But maybe sometimes it doesn't feel good. Maybe sometimes helping someone is difficult, and causes hardship. But people do it anyway. People who aren't looking to a religion to guide them.
You claim that, because for religious believers this desire to help people is driven by faith rather than what you would term self-interest, it's somehow more resolute. But I'm unconvinced that that is the case, nor that people consciously or not, weigh up decisions to care for others in such a calculating manner.
If the divine impetus made you infallibly caring, I would perhaps concede the point, but I haven't see much evidence of that so far.
As for your last point - we're all sinners and we're not perfect. The calculation is there, but the individual's faith and/or abilities might be lacking.
Is there an effective difference outside of that person's own mind? It's still a reward-based system where people only do Good because there is some reward waiting for them, be it from other people or a God.
You seem to be latching onto "common decency" as the only reason atheists do nice things. If that's truly what you believe, I think maybe you should get out more, and talk to actual atheists about how they live their lives.
When I decide whether or not I'm going to help someone, I don't sit down with a calculator and determine the benefit to myself, vs. the burden, and only do it if the balance is in my favor. I do what feels right, or at least I strive to, even if doing so might be a net negative to me.
Why? Because I think that's the best way to live. The best way to be happy. The best way to build a community. The best way to enrich the world, one situation and one person at a time.
Religion isn't required for a moral code. If you believe otherwise, you're sorely mistaken. And this idea that religious people are more likely to do the right thing because of "faith" is just garbage. Orders of magnitude more bad things have been done in the name of religion than in the name of atheism.
Yes.
That's also an extreme oversimplification of religion which describes only a very small number of individuals of most if not all faiths.
The vast majority are not hardliners, and understand the larger component of religion is community and shared purpose.
Ignorance is bliss. Is ignorance therefore good?
I write that as an atheist who is more isolated than I'd like. I'm working on community and connection but it's challenging when one works remotely and relocates to a new town.
While I recognize the community value of religion and the comfort it brings people, it comes at a huge cost that far outweighs the benefits. IMHO, organized religion is a cancer on modern society. I think there's other ways to get the good parts from it but that's a team effort.
Those who abandon the Path are evil.
Those who reject the path to enlightenment must be destroyed!
If anything, Americans are more religious than they were pre-pandemic (reversing a 30-year trend), and yet they're less happy.
But sentiment hasn’t recovered.
Let me first correct my statement, it is a little too broad. In my circle of family and friends, I can readily identify maybe three people, one of whom is now passed, who I think of as Christians in the biblical sense. That is to say, their actions seem to closely reflect an honest attempt to answer the question "What would Jesus do?" The vast majority of Christians in my family are Evangelicals, though, and to be fair this is who I was really thinking of. They like to ask that same question, and then answer it "See Leviticus."
Why do they make me sad?
Because they are judgemental jerks who pretend that the Bible is the most important thing in their life while simultaneously giving uncritical loyalty to a man who is the closest embodiment of an antichrist that I've encountered in all my years.
They have tried to declare ownership of the word "patriot" and defined it as loyalty to their faith, while making a mockery of it at every turn.
They have declared a huge swath of their fellow Americans as evil, not someone to be disagreed with but someone to be bullied, kicked out of the country, or worse.
They make me sad when they try to talk me into hating immigrants, or minorities, when they piously say they cannot in good conscience be associated with the few people in our family who are openly gay, when they pretend to be oppressed by The Alphabet Mafia, when they act all righteous up until the moment when someone close enough to them (like their own child) runs afoul of these 'values'. And even then, more than one of them have disowned their child instead of moderate their approach to faith.
It is corrosive, antisocial, and they cannot seem to stop themselves from dragging everyone else around them into the mud. All I have ever wanted is to be predominantly left alone in my beliefs but loved by my family. I don't put conditions on my love, I am sad when they put conditions on theirs.
I grew up in a fairly religious area. The Christians (mostly Catholics, as my family was) I knew were largely good, friendly, helpful people, with a strong work ethic and what I'd today consider good moral fiber. No one was perfect, of course, but most people seemed to want to do good, and tried to treat other people the way they'd like to be treated themselves.
Today, I can't say the same. Most Christians I run into these days are intolerant people who only seem to care about their own in-group, and paint others (other races, LGBTQ folks, immigrants, etc.) as the cause of all of their problems. They seem paranoid, acting like non-Christians (or even Christians of other sects) are somehow threatening their religious views. They try to force their religious beliefs on others, and advocate for Christian views to be enshrined in law. They speak of Jesus and the Bible, and then treat those around them as sub-human and not worthy of compassion or opportunity. Occasionally I run into a Christian that reminds me of 30+ years ago, but they seem to be in the minority these days.
I'm not saying that this behavior is restricted to Christians (or religious people in general), but it seems a lot more prevalent in Christians these days than in anyone else.
https://kepetersen.substack.com/p/the-gospel-of-hypocrisy-ho...
Sorry pal, it is the white christians who are hypocritical. Their idol is a walking version of the all 7 deadly sins.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/09/white-eva...
No. When polled, half the population said they attended religious services regularly.
Researchers going to churches and estimating attendance found actual attendance was always less than what polls said. If people actually attended services like they said they did in polls, pews would be much more full (now and before).
Also, you know two people, but I could give examples as well - a normal secular family doing well compared to some evangelical family which is not doing well at all.
Also - there are suburbs which have, say, a sizeable Norwegian population. People go to some ELCA church. You talk to them, and a lot of them don't believe in the tenets of Lutheranism - miracles, the resurrection of Jesus etc. But they go to weddings, funerals, services, coffee after services. Dinners, clothing drives. Events around Easter. For many of them there is no belief at all, they just have coffee with their neighbors every week. Technically they are considered Christians, without believing in Christianity per se.
What's less clear to me is why the actual fall in happiness happened so rapidly with the pandemic. People were living spiritually vacant lives well before that!
Maybe read the article? It covers all this, and points out that secularization has been going on for far longer than this happiness crisis. Your assertion just doesn't fit the data.
And let's stop with the whole "just have kids and you'll be happy" garbage. It's lazy thinking, and such a tired argument, and falls flat in the face of actual data. As for anecdotes, I know plenty of people with and without kids with levels of happiness that run the gamut. There's plenty to be happy about with or without kids, and also plenty to be unhappy about with or without kids.
While a fall in religiosity may be part of the cause, I don't think a return to religion is the answer. We need to find ways to replicate the non-supernatural aspects of religion without the weird stuff.
There's a reason no atheist society has historically arisen and thrived in the way that you are suggesting. If it was possible why hasn't it happened. The idea of atheism is ancient - why has it not worked?
We don't need a "society"; having one would be counter-productive, and would even probably be more like a religion.
> I think religion tends to capture something essential about reality
I think you have this backwards; religion tends to capture people who want to believe that reality is something other than it is.
I'll give you one data point about birth rate collapse. In the US atheists have fertility rate of 1.2 (half of replacement) somewhat religious people have the rate of 3.3 and "orthodox" closer to 6.
So you can for example visit a neighborhood on Brooklyn that suffers from a fertility crisis and then cross the road onto a neighborhood that doesn't. Across incomes and education levels - religion and lack thereof correlate almost perfectly with birth rate.
So if you told me China is atheist and suffering demographic collapse - I would say of course. If you told me there are demographic groups within China that are more religious and manage to have more kids that wouldn't surprise me as well although I don't know China well enough. I do see that exact pattern in the US both anecdotally among my vast peer group and in the stats I cited.
PS: I just looked it up. In China religious groups (eg Muslim uighurs, tibetan Buddhists and Christians are obviously prosecuted minorities that manage to have 2x the kids vs national average. Completely predictable in my framework, completely "not connected" in yours.
I am not an atheist. Nor do I think everything is random and pointless. You have 11 comments on this topic. Discussion is the point of this forum.
> religion and lack thereof correlate almost perfectly with birth rate
No arguments there. More religious people absolutely do have more kids. I want to point out that poverty/development and lack thereof also correlate almost perfectly with birth rate. Check out the countries who still have very high TFR.
But I was pointing out that non religious countries still had tons of kids before. Birth control and more choice for women have certainly brought down birth rates. India's birth rate is down to 1.9; And its a very religious country. There has been incredible progress in women's rights and they choose to not have 6 kids.
"There's a reason no atheist society has historically arisen and thrived in the way that you are suggesting. If it was possible why hasn't it happened. The idea of atheism is ancient - why has it not worked?"
Your words. I am saying its not connected to society being great. The population being religious isn't why America or Europe grew to be super powers. If your entire argument is that population is correlated with religion then I agree. I disagree that happiness and the state of a country is tied to that.
> I'll give you one data point about birth rate collapse. In the US atheists have fertility rate of 1.2 (half of replacement) somewhat religious people have the rate of 3.3 and "orthodox" closer to 6.
PS. can you post your sources for those TFR numbers? Because they seem wildly exaggerated. Maybe I am looking at the wrong sources? "Data on religious fertility differentials for the 2020-2025 period in Pew Research Center projections shows a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.9 for Christian women, 1.6 for religiously unaffiliated women, and 2.0 for women of other religions."
Other main drivers of birthrate are education and access to contraceptives. Give people more education and better access to contraceptives, and they tend to have fewer children.
The numbers you've quoted may be correct (a quick search suggests they aren't, but whatever), but they don't mean all that you think they mean. Religiosity is certainly a factor, but there are many factors (more than the two I mentioned) when it comes to birthrate.
> This is your second post in this thread insisting things are unconnected which is of course a commendable attempt to validate the atheist religious belief that everything is random and pointless.
Maybe think a little more critically instead of throwing around unfounded bullshit. Atheism isn't a "religious belief". It's a lack of religious beliefs. And we don't believe that everything is random and pointless. That's a straw man you seem to have chosen to attack for some reason.
Do you disregard it because you don't think they are successful, or numerous enough?
Not in the way it is actually practiced by many Asian societies where believers turn their devotion to what are basically deities: Amitabha in the Pure Land, Avalokiteshvara/Kuanyin, etc. Tibetan Buddhism is chock full of the supernatural.
"Why has it not worked?" suggests that atheistic societies have arisen and they've failed. That's not the case. Atheism has just been historically very unpopular. It's only recently that science has advanced enough to put the "god of the gaps" in a sufficiently small box for atheism to arise on a large scale.
I think, given the knowledge available to us now, religion is obviously fiction. The only difference between worshipping Jesus and worshipping Harry Potter is that the former's authors are very long dead.
It should be, but is it? If this is the case, why has the reproducibility of papers fallen off by so much? In the past, this wasn't the case but it also wasn't the case that society was so secular. In fact, secularism and inability to publish reproducible papers is positively correlated. While I'm not a believer, it does seem to me that somehow without religion, ethics at a society wide level falls off a cliff. I think those non-reproducible papers come from people with no real ethical or moral grounding. In the past I think this grounding was provided by religion. I don't have to like it to be honest enough to see it is how humans actually work. I'm not sure why anyone who is being honest would think that's weird or wrong.
If you want to play the "lack of piracy is correlated with global warming," consider that secularism is negatively correlated with things like child mortality and firebombing civilians. If we're going to blame atheism for anything that has gotten worse in the past few decades then we also need to credit it for everything that has improved.
It's annoying that I need to say this, but: correlation is not causation.
Is everyone in this comment chain arguing from a perspective of, "I disagree with author's assessment" or "I read the headline and I'm offering my own conjecture"?
It tried to, at least, but I'm not sure it succeeded. The growing secularization up to 2020 follows the long-term trend towards unhappiness and peak secularization and peak unhappiness line up too. Happiness has even started to improve in line with the growing return to religiosity that has occurred most recently. The data it presents as supposedly dismissing religion actually makes a reasonable case for religion.
Of course, the reality is that there never one reason. Americans are sad for millions of different reasons. The idea that if we fix that one thing all will become right with the world is pure fantasy.
Are we looking at the same graphs? That's not what I saw.
I come from a highly religious Christian background and moved in the other direction without any ill will, most of my religious male friends who have families have confided in me that they think monogamy and general family values are worn out cultural artifacts and clearly regret buying in even though they love their kids and are entrenched in their communities.
Many already have a first divorce under their belt.
Meanwhile my atheist friends had their first kid right around 40 and are somewhere between 1-3 kids and after a fair amount of relationship churn when they were younger are now in very stable relationships, some very orthodox and a few semi-orthodox.
If the trajectory hold for this generation the same as I saw for my religious parents generation I think the trajectory looks not great for mental health on the religious side.
No, sadness becomes part and parcel of...everything! At least nowadays: New awesome toy! Kid got bad grade. Fun vacation last week! Friend's daughter died. PR riding bike! Dad needs help with a thing.
To your point: Life is rich with living. And yes, friends without kids, etc. talk about and buy toys. Cool! But/and no offense, gotta go now.
Life is rich and richly nuanced.
// religious private schools are sucking up funding meant for disadvantaged children (in public schools),
What does that mean. In our case we pay about 20k a year in town school taxes only to send our kids to a private religious school. So the fact that my kids go to a religious school literally makes my money available to educate other people's kids in the school.
// churches are abused as tax haveans
Anything can be abused I guess. My synagogue is constantly raising money for secular causes like disaster relief and feeding the homeless. The fact that a congregant gets 3k back in taxes on a 10k donation still means he's out 6.
I'm not so sure of that. America has rapidly moved away from believing in some kind of magical spirit in the sky, but they most certainly haven't given up on religion in general. They have latched on to other blind faiths and rituals.
What hasn't typically come with those new religions, like you allude to, is a church; a place where fellowship occurs. That is a reasonable possibility for the decline in happiness. Research regularly suggests that most people find happiness in relationships with other people.
Nothing is ever single-faceted, though.
And yet we elected Jesus.
They're like people who see some pernicious "gay agenda" infiltrating all aspects of their lives just because they see two gay characters in a sitcom. Their fears are just projection. The power centers of the US have always been biased towards Christian conservatism. It's absurd to claim the US has ever been a truly secular nation when it isn't even possible for a President to get elected without professing Christian belief, because it's impossible to get elected President without the blessing of the deeply Christian south.
Percentage of reported practice doesn't allow for the cultural and legal effects of religion, and it doesn't map linearly to influence. Remember the political apparatus of the US is designed explicitly to give rural Christians outsize power.
All the "moderate" Christians who couldn't stomach Trump before suddenly had no choice.
Essentially all Christian denominations + Mormons think abortion is murder. How can a candidate win a majority in a society where a plurality identifies as Christian and therefore probably takes that position?
Secularization of the majority, and the liberal culutral values that go with it just alienates these people more and more around abortion, gay rights, and most markedly, trans issues.
Although the devoutly religious are becoming more of a minority, they are far more homogeneously aligned on these core issues, and therefore easier to cohere around a "right wing" electoral block even when they do not think "right wing" around economic and political / international issues. They're willing to tolerate Trump on a whole pile of things as long as they feel he's accomplishing their "moral" goals -- and so far he mostly is.
Ditto trans stuff becoming a huge concern all the sudden. That wasn't "organic", it's a moral panic ginned up by people with microphones.
There's at least as much cynical-politics-affecting-religion as the reverse in the topics and positions you raise.
[EDIT] My point, as it occurs to me it may not be clear, is that "well most are christian so of course pro-choice or other 'liberal' positions struggle" is not a great explanation of what's going on, because that association isn't so guaranteed as this suggests. Things like social and economic justice are heavily connected to and promoted by christianity in some countries outside the US, but much less-so here. Historically, they have been here, too! More-Christian or less-Christian isn't the only axis here, what "Christian" tends to mean as it relates to politics hasn't been static, and that change has been in no small part driven by elite opinion and propaganda for the purposes of capturing religion for political ends, not from grass-roots demand.
The real problem was that Hillary Clinton was just not a particularly good candidate, but she was pushed hard by the establishment because it was "her turn". The last-minute hand-wringing about "her emails" is what probably put the final nail in the coffin.
> They're willing to tolerate Trump on a whole pile of things as long as they feel he's accomplishing their "moral" goals -- and so far he mostly is.
If that's the case, then these people are not particularly moral at all. I guess that's why you used scare quotes?
You mean that doctor?
Once the corporate tax rates started to drop, deregulation started and employee and consumer protections began being stripped as well. As a result, all that money has been allowed to pulled away by a tiny fraction of ultra wealthy, non-working Americans.
After 4 decades of these circumstances, this has left the majority in a state where they can't afford Healthcare or virtually any kind of emergency without going into life long crippling debt with no hope of escape.
Incidentally, the top correlating factor with divorce is being unable to pay for 1 moderate emergency with savings. If you can, then it's possible to resave that money before the next one most of the time, but if you can't, the interest will eat you alive.
We Americans are hard-working sheep, and we deserve all the motivational Corpspeak we have to suffer through on LinkedIn posts.
I've worked in this industry (tech) a very long time, and in every job I have peers that boast about off hours work.
We get what we deserve.
But we ended up having a great time. Got used to the piles of garbage, and the fires and protests were scheduled in advance so easily avoided. And I gained an appreciation for the willingness of French workers to stand up for themselves.
I wonder if you still have that view when your car is one of the hundreds that typically get set on fire during protests.
Rioting and the government caving for a minority out of fear of violence is the most undemocratic possible and does not fit in 21th century society. I’m happy to grow up north of France where minorities don’t torch the town when the democratically appointed representatives decide on something they don’t like.
Yeah, I guess we ARE hard-working sheep and get what we deserve…
This exactly, and especially in the tech industry there's so much "If you're not doing this right now you're going to be unemployed in 5 years" nonsense about AI being peddled, mainly by people who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.
Well here's my invitation: rather than resign about how everyones weak and a sheep, take on the perspective of voicing what you want and what you are doing about it and feel free to share about about how even if you've experienced bad things you would rather want to experience goods things. Maybe things could change if you focused on what you actually want over complaining about what you don't?
At the same time like everyone else here I need jobs to pay the bills, and in every job I'm faced with these workaholic types who believe "this is not a 9 to 5 job" is a great motto. You'll find many of these people here, too.
I try to be too useful to fire. But when I was younger places I worked at had brutal on-call situations and limited time off. One place had 15 days of PTO per year, and that included sick days.
What I am doing about it - I do not use social media apps of any kind (since 2017), do not allow my offspring to be on social media, trying to convince my wife she should do the same (she is on facebook still because of marketplace), and absolutely ridicule anyone that uses social media (in a fun way)...
In all seriousness though, I have gone through similar and eventually got back on social media more intentionally as the benefits of it are nice to have (if the cons can be overcome). wish we had a better system to just use social media for us to get what we want though and I wish some agents like open claw could just get us the positives, only.
For example, taking a stand against Tesla, when you go buy one right now, you really don't feel any sort of general animosity from people, even though its morally not the right thing to do.
> We get what we deserve.
Why? You don't actually justify this reasoning in your post.
> That sort of stuff causes pitchforks to rise up in other countries.
(Not that I agree)
ex: 50 years ago, everyone had seen at least an episode of "I Love Lucy" which was the most watched show in the US. With only a few networks and some very popular culture there was more cohesion. Even with political discourse it was often presented in a much less polarizing way.
I would also point the blame at a lot of what I can only summarize as excessive internalized guilt. Often over things you, personally have no impact on. As well as trends towards coddling anxiety. Where the only true way to get past anxiety is to do more of what gives you anxiety, whatever it takes to actually do that.
I'd also say that "rich" is largely subjective, and common, regular expenses have become extremely burdensome this past few years... If you look at the pricing trends in fast food, it seems to have really ramped up since around 2018-2019 and over the top during COVID... far more than inflation alone can justify, and I think is mostly plain greed. People feel squeezed out and it's hard to overcome.
Friendship and community are harder work than your job, because no one makes you do it. It pays off in peculiar ways many years later, if ever at all. It’s senseless effort, but only figuratively. The returns I get are incalculable, but only literally.
See also: the imago dei.
What you’re describing is not “Christian values” but the famed “Protestant work ethic,” a product of puritan immigrants fleeing European discrimination. That ethic is Christian in source but when divorced from the knowledge that God makes you worthy—not your productivity— you begin the long slide into hustle culture, greed, and other current miseries.
Ironically, this is the literal opposite of Christianity. Christianity in a nutshell is "Jesus saves people because we are incapable of saving ourselves."
So, yeah. "Must earn their worth" may sound "Christian", but it's not Christianity.
Blasphemer! That's the primary tenet of the "Prosperity Gospel"[0], the primary form of Christianity in the US.
For shame! You will burn in hell for that. Unless you donate $100,000.00 to Creflo Dollar[1] right now!
Jesus saves us from the final end destruction, and helps us who believe on him through our daily lives. Some people get along fine without religion. What happens to them when the final destruction (from God, not man) gets here depends on whether these people continue to do it all on their own and choose to not believe; or whether they choose to let him in and believe. In either case, Jesus is about the final end of humans which will be done by God and is outside our control, even outside Jesus' control; that is what Christianity is about.
This is true, until they have a medical emergency that breaks them because they can't afford it, or the furnace in their house breaks, or they are reno-evicted by their landlord, or their car breaks down or whatever
You're broadly right that money doesn't exactly buy happiness, but it does prevent or mitigate a lot of unhappiness
Its possible that some sub groups of people learned that work from home gave them more meaning than the rat race. For it to be true across the board? That creates a huge burden of proof.
My second guess would be politics. I have met few people in the last few years that do not seem unhappy as a direct result of our political battles. Families actually breaking up over it, etc.
Now I will go read the article ;-)
There's been a massive increase in high risk behaviors, an increase in road rage, and a spike in traffic fatalities since COVID.
If COVID brain damage affects motor vehicle operation, it wouldn't be so far fetched to say it negatively effects happiness and overall wellbeing. Covid causes a loss of grey matter affecting impulse control and emotional regulation.
If millions of people have brain damage affecting impulse control and we are all collectively quick to anger now, which will manifest as collective frustration and unhappiness.
Not unlike the theory of Lead poisoning causing crime in the 70s and 80s. Our generation may be suffering a similar fate as a result of COVID.
It seems this statement is not fully supported by the data. While there have been mixed studies linking COVID with impacts on grey matter, we can't conclude that COVID infections have impacted grey matter to the degree that it has "affected impulse control and emotional regulation".
It seems more likely that collective stress increased since 2020 due to economic gyrations that have inordinately benefitted the wealthy while the poor and middle class suffer. Governments and society have been quick to dismiss those financial and economic stresses, including efforts to minimize the true realities and impacts of high inflation.
Telling people "you're not financially stressed, you're just brain damaged!" seems like further perpetuation of that gaslighting happening to people in society who are legitimately suffering due to structural disadvantages in the economy.
Not to mention the COVID-era destruction of social connections, third spaces, and lockdowns that promoted increased smartphone reliance/addiction, and increased alcohol consumption. (Schools closed, liquor stores open)
The conclusion was somewhat underwhelming: it's a least two things hitting at once: inflation and COVID, possibly with social media thrown in.
I dunno if he's right, but I'd probably add two more factors: the latest round of the ongoing (for 4 years now) Ukraine war coincided with the start of the decline, and now the rise of AI providing a sting in the tail. In fact it was the total lack of AI writing in this piece that made it such a pleasure to read. It's a rare find nowadays.
Seems like there might be a good lesson in there.
Great food for thought about one's attitude towards wealth: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/climbing-the-wealth-ladder/
In the vein of The Harried Leisure Class, the more opportunities that are available to you, the more likely you are to feel like you are wasting time, need to optimize everything, etc. People are also pushed to be even more individualistic because the cost of slowing down and interacting with the community has increased.
There are many other factors at work but this one seems pretty clear but doesn't seem to see enough discussion.
But i would like to share something that keeps me alive: if i see an opportunity to make someone happy, I do that. If i see someone feeling lost, i try to give them a bit of confidence : will everything around break but they can rely at least on me. A human being needs a human being. Although it is hard, i forgive more. There is so much suffering in the world these days, so many people lost their relatives, got injured, lost homes because of wars, that feeling any comfort these days, feeling "happy" just hurts. It just does not feel right.
I don't recommend moving here, but taking the time to travel for a good month across America on train or by RV could be interesting.
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I think it's important to define rich. Is it high net worth or high income? High income means nothing when you're paycheck to paycheck paying mortgage and bills.
Also, I'd argue that America itself isn't rich. The 1% certainly are rich. Corporations are sure rich. But the rest of us? We're dealing with the world the rich people put us in.
It was succinctly put: the top 10% of earners - those making 250k or more - do 50% of the spending. If you're a company with a product or service, are you going to cater to the 90% or the affluent 10%? Clearly the latter - so as a result the bottom 90% of the country just feels like they're "keeping up with the Joneses" all the time.
Probably a lot of hand-wavy behavioral economics here and I am sure the answer to "Why are we so sad" is more complex...
Remember, entry level cars never generally had air conditioning even in Florida, until the Nixon Recession got underway.
A/C had always remained a distinctly luxury option until "nobody could afford anything any more", then the car companies had to not only cut back plus have layoffs but also target a higher-dollar price point. Where significantly more costly (sometimes nice) options are included, and a bare bones version is no longer an option on the car lot.
Just to survive themselves.
That's what that kind of Presidential malfeasance will do.
Somebody who's getting the most out of a rich country is going to be getting richer even under the worst of conditions, but when the zero-summing comes home to roost, everyone else has to pony up in some way or another to make it come true for the mostly undeserving elites, because of the underlying structure.
Our money, aside from basics on which we don't spend so differently from when we made a lot less money, mostly goes to:
1) Optional but advantage-conferring or life-improving things for our kids. This is probably the biggest single category, by a long shot. This takes the form of lots of stuff.
- Mental health care that we'd have had to forego or spend a whole lot less on when we had lower income. YMMV but this one has hit us hard and we'd feel awful if we couldn't afford to at least try all reasonable options—which has been goddamn expensive. Guessing it's similar for anyone with a kid with chronic physical issues, too. There are things you can spend money on above what insurance will pay for, or to get way faster than the months it might take to work through processes insurance is happy with. If you can, you'll feel like you must. If you can't, you just... can't.
- Taking the kids to the doctor or urgent care just about every time they probably ought to go but it's not strictly necessary ("this laceration ain't gonna kill them... but if they get stitches, it won't scar nearly so badly, so let's take them in" or "I bet that's a hairline-fractured finger bone, and we can do just as well splinting that at home with like $30 or less in supplies... but let's go let them x-ray it just in case it's something worse" or "they might get over this infection but it's trending worse and I'm starting to see red lines in the skin... so instead of rolling the dice, let's go pay the gatekeeping fee to get the antibiotics I'm 100% sure they'll be prescribed after a 5-minute chat with a nurse practitioner, and that'll clear this up in 36 hours flat even though it'll cost us a few Benjamins since we haven't hit our deductible for that kid yet").
- Spending on optional education stuff.
- Spending on lots of activities that might cost as much as $200/wk or require a couple hundred dollars up-front in equipment, giving the kids a broader set of experiences without having to go "no, you can't try all three of those, you just have to guess which one you'll like and then that is what you do for at least a few years" or just "no, that's too expensive" (though, to be clear, many things still are. Most of the more-interesting summer camps still give us pause, by which I mean we have yet to send any of our kids to any of those because they're so friggin' expensive, though it's not quite out of reach of even being a discussion. Though, if we had only one kid to pay for on the same income, that'd be another matter...).
2) Spending at local businesses of a kind and degree we definitely didn't engage in when we had lower incomes, earlier in our life. Gives a feeling of satisfying a kind of noblesse-oblige to help keep local businesses alive, and we get really nice chocolates or great pastries or whatever in exchange.
3) House improvements or repairs that we'd have never done or have tried to defer as long as possible when we were poorer. Sometimes, paying to have a thing done that we'd have DIY'd before. This can be a really big category some years.
4) We don't do a ton of traveling, and don't do any remotely luxury-tier stuff (I think a $150 hotel room is expensive no matter where it is or how nice the room, LOL) but we rarely decide we want to take some kind of trip and then have to abort because we can't find any route to doing it at a price we find tolerable. So we do travel more (mostly stuff like visiting family and friends, or little weekend get-aways in the summer) and spend more on it than we probably would if had a significantly lower household income, though it's a relatively small proportion of our spending.
5) A couple summers when we had a frustratingly-healthy lawn and a goddamn HOA we paid someone to mow our lawn. We definitely wouldn't have done this when we made less money. Tiny amount of spending in the scheme of things, and not something we kept doing, but an example of the kind of little service we occasionally splurge on. Some people spend on this sort of thing basically full-time (or house cleaners, say—we've done that, too, though only occasionally, and wow does that feel weird and uncomfortable to someone who came from a sub-upper-middle-class midwestern background... actually, so did the lawn mowing, and so does hiring e.g. plumbers, I always feel like I ought to be helping them) but we just keep it in mind as something we can periodically pay for to make our lives a little easier for a while, in some circumstances. Damn nice to be able to, but not a big-ticket spending thing for us. It is a category of thing that sees almost zero spending under that 90th percentile mark, though, I bet, is why I bring it up.
6) When basic consumer goods break we usually replace them basically instantly (maybe used if we can, not new, but still). Even if the cost is in the hundreds of dollars. No delays or long stretches of going without like when we were poorer. I'm sure this causes a higher overall rate of spending. Minor, compared to some of the above, but it's a thing.
No clue if we're representative. We spend like we're fairly poor on stuff like cars, and lots of people in our income-range definitely spend way more on that than we do. Ditto the travel thing, I think we probably spend less overall on that than many folks with similar household incomes.
No hugely-expensive hobbies, which is where some folks' money goes I think. None we couldn't have supported about as well when we were at more like the 60th percentile, none that we've opened up the money-spigot on just because we can. We cut down or eliminate collections of stuff we accumulated in earlier years far more than we accumulate that sort of thing, having almost-but-not-quite no active collecting habits between us. Not big collectors. We thrift clothes, still, a lot. I buy most of mine aside from socks, underwear, and knits on ebay, LOL.
A lot of our money also goes to paying for a house in a nice school district (file under: "technically-optional spending on the kids to improve their life prospects") without compromising tremendously on size or house quality, but I don't think that counts as "consumer spending".
Also could be the first to slip back out of reach if too much reversal prevails. That would be more likely the horizons that opened up more recently, and may also be ones that hover within sight but out-of-reach for so many more whom there are growing numbers of again.
I would add that a certain way of looking at it for a proud homeowner is that one of the most luxurious things you can enjoy is the time to do your own lawn and gardening.
Then you know you've really arrived ;)
Because I live in a low cost-of-living city, locally I'm well within the top 1% of income earners here and within the top 5% nationally. My day-to-day life is not significantly different from my next door neighbors who earn 1/4 or less than what I do. Where the difference in spending happens is primarily in three ways:
1. Quality of goods and services
This is expressed in many ways, but maybe the most obvious is basic daily necessities. Health is wealth, and we invest in our health by being much more conscientious about what food we eat, where it comes from, and how its prepared. We cook at home, as do our neighbors. But our neighbors do it to save money vs eating out, we do it to emphasize our health vs eating out. It would probably be cheaper for us to eat out every meal vs cooking at home, but by eating at home we only consume high quality groceries packaged in a way to minimize our exposure to microplastics and other environmental contaminants (although it literally rains microplastics now, so it's basically impossible to eliminate). We have tens of thousands of dollars in equipment installed in our home to filter the water we get from the city so that we are drinking, cooking, and showering with effectively "perfect" water, where our neighbors just use what the city provides that is technically "safe" but contains PFAS, microplastics, and pesticide contamination.
This also comes about in other aspects, for instance I recently replaced the tires on my car. I replaced them on time, within the appropriate wear levels for replacement. I bought the highest quality tires that were available, without consideration of cost. Most of my neighbors drive on tires until they start to wear through to the steel belts, well past being bald, and buy the cheapest tires available. It was $1250 for new tires on my car, mount and balanced and installed. It would have been $380 for the cheapest tires with the same service, so I spent almost 4x as much but have significantly better tires (and I understand the importance of this).
2. Non-essential services that improve our quality of life
We have a company that manages our mowing and landscaping so I don't have to do it myself during hot Texas summers. I am a competent DIYer but hired people to fix my roof, retile my shower, and do various other home repairs I could have done myself but could afford to hire out. We have bi-weekly house cleaning, because while we keep a fairly clean house ourselves, it's nice to have someone come in and clean every single surface on a regular basis which goes far beyond what we do day-to-day, we even pay extra for a housekeeping service that uses ecofriendly products with minimal direct environmental impact (e.g. are not bad for you to be around, like just using plain vinegar in many cases) and trains their staff specifically on using these types of products which require specific workflows to work effectively as the trade-off to being much safer. I have a mobile detailer come by once in awhile to clean and detail my car and my wife's car inside and out, both of our vehicles are ceramic coated and tinted, we got our home windows tinted as well. It's nice being able to get into a clean car that isn't an oven without having to invest a lot of effort yourself. When I was younger I'd go to a self-spray car wash and feed in $8 in quarters and spend 2 hours going at it myself, but now I don't have to deal with it. My neighbor DIYes all their fixes and spends a Saturday doing a 3-bucket wash on their truck when they get time, they clean their own house and do annual spring cleaning around the time the city does bulk pickup.
3. Additional expenses related to health and hobbies
My neighbor has weights in his garage and a treadmill and works out every day. I have a gym membership, my wife does pilates and yoga classes. My neighbors have several hobbies, but they're hobbies that mostly involve minimal equipment and can be done in public places like parks. I have several hobbies, and while some are pretty cheap, several are fairly expensive and require private memberships or land lease/ownership to participate in. I don't know how often my neighbor goes to the doctor, we don't really discuss that, but my family has a Direct Primary Care membership, goes to the doctor when we need to without any concern, and in a few instances we'd use in-home/concierge health services like nurses on-call that can come give you an IV at home w/ fluids + Zofran when you've got a stomach illness. I would guess my neighbors avoid going to the doctor unless strictly necessary and when they do, they go down the street to urgent care and wait in line.
From the outside, or even inside our home, we don't live a significantly different life than our neighbors. We don't life an particularly affluent gated community, we just live in a normal neighborhood in the city in a normal house with mostly blue collar workers as neighbors. But because we can afford it we spend on our health and on ensuring if we're going to buy something its of the highest quality we can acquire. We don't have a lot of "stuff", we don't need a lot of "stuff", but if we get something it's the best of that thing available.
> I wonder just how much of that 50% of spending is stuff that the bottom 90% would actually be competing for
My observation anecdotally is that everyone wishes they had better stuff and could afford to spend on their health, and they may do so sporadically. You don't need to be rich to get a gym membership or to do yoga, you don't need to be rich to shop at a farmer's market or high-end grocery store for /some/ things. But you pretty much do need to be rich in order to prioritize these things over cost and budgeting. Normal groceries are already expensive for most people, so spending even more to get healthier quality groceries is out of the price range to do for every meal, but it's something people do when they feel they can. Does that qualify as "competing for"? I don't know. But I think the economic gap, partly driven by out-sized inflation, is real, and it is absolutely damaging to most people.
EDIT: Just to add on, I've moved around a bit, but lived in this same city nearly 15 years ago and live here again now. The differences in what the average person can afford are astounding. I think most people had access to higher quality food, for one thing, 15 years ago. Groceries are so absurdly expensive now that the average person is struggling to afford anything, much less high quality things. That's just unacceptable as a country, and if you can't get your basis necessities met in a way which enhances your health it is completely understandable to feel bad about the world. I feel bad about the world and I'm far wealthier than most people around me. Our system in the US is broken, and I feel powerless to fix it, even as I am personally advantaged by it.
For example, if you expected your country to have checks and balances and not empower people who tried to damage the democracy, the reality would sadden you.
If you expected to be able to have 2 kids, afford healthcare, not worry about loss of income, live near family in a 2k+ sq ft home, and fly to Disneyworld and Hawaii for vacation, then chances are reality would not have met your expectations. Perhaps TV shows/movies gave you those impressions? Or seeing others' instagram posts?
But if you expected a smaller home, not eating avocados everyday, driving a few hours for your vacations, limited amounts of healthcare, etc, then maybe reality would exceed expectations for more people.
Conscientious shoppers, or those in a cash crunch, might do better with simple, inexpensive foods. For example canned beans cost only $1-$1.50 a pound.
I imagine they are just as, if not more expensive, in places further from Mexico.
It used to be oranges that were the luxury fruit.
My sister and I received fresh oranges in our Christmas stockings every year. Along with nuts and chocolate and goodies like that. Of course, the "Christmas stocking" event was tied with St. Nicholas' Day on December 6, where it was traditional to place our shoes on the fireplace overnight, but the stockings were stretchy and higher-capacity than children's shoes!
Also, the fresh oranges were sort of ironic, because a tangerine tree grew in our backyard. I've always preferred tangerines.
Mom always packed fresh fruit with my school lunches. I had never heard or experienced the trading of food at lunch, and so I resorted to discarding the parts of lunch which I didn't want to eat. Oranges were the first to go. It wasn't the taste of oranges that I disliked, it was the stickiness and the labor involved in peeling them and getting past the rind and pith.
Really depends on the year and the region. Cheap oranges can only follow where the reefer truck and boxcar go.
An opinion columnist for one of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘newspapers’ blamed the decline in home ownership amongst millennials on excessive spending on discretionary food, specifically avocado on toast in cafes.
He suggested that if they cut back on such minor luxuries, they could afford to buy houses.
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/bernard-salt-says-his-smashed...
What do they all have in common English similar economies and relatively similar governments.
However not all would agree with that and each stake holding group has a different take on things.
eg: The Australian home builders industry group, the HIA, throw shade on increased costs and government fees and push back on other hot takes here:
https://hia.com.au/our-industry/newsroom/economic-research-a...
I lived through my peers struggling to get a single house built or rennovated in early 80's and later and watched finnancial incentives made it easier and easier to get a second, a third, a fourth house just as happens in Monopoly
Hand in hand with that, those people with houses as assets could afford to bid higher against each other for that fifth house .. pushing out those younger and just entering the scene.
It's hard to discount the rapid rise of a landlord class as being a significant factor.
In the interests of being purely descriptive: married, college-educated Republican usually meant "someone who in the mainstream who had made it." You were happy with this country and where it was going.
Now, everyone is despairing about where this country is headed, albeit in different ways. No one seems particularly optimistic.
But I choose the original, abstract one - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No house needed; Diogenes can hang. I still think that's a message anyone can get behind, no matter where they are, and if they want to get behind that they're a fellow American in my heart at least.
> 90% of Americans are not rich.
Compared to 250 years ago, about 99% of Americans are rich.
The jokes write themselves
None of his wealth was transferred to him.
Mr Musk's move to the USA was funded by his father, and his first company was started with a loan from his father. The advantages of the family running an undocumented emerald mine in Zambia.
Not 'inherited wealth' I concede, but still not something available to Average Joe.
"The costs of inequality: When a fair shake isn’t"
"One measure of American inequality is the percentage of the nation’s overall wealth owned by different parts of the population. The graphic above shows that the richest 20 percent of the country owns 88.9 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 40 percent owes more than it owns."
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-...
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
- 71% of adults say that their monthly debt payments prevent them from saving.
When we say America, we can't just mean the 20% who are ok. It has to mean the 70% who aren't. America is not rich. It used to be. It is not now.
Not for any meaningful definition of "living paycheck to paycheck". Per Federal Reserve studies, the percentage of the population with no excess income after paying for necessary expenses is 10-15%. That's still a lot of people but it isn't 76%.
For everyone else, it is a lifestyle choice.
Per the BLS, the median household has ~$1,000 leftover every month after all ordinary (not necessary) expenses. That includes rent, car payments, healthcare, etc.
Americans have a crazy amount of discretionary income compared to the rest of the world.
So why don't they take it out of that thousand they have at the end of each month? America is suffering economically and I don't think we help anything when we pretend it's not.
This phrase is used so often, but I don't know how meaningful it is supposed to be
A family might make $300,000 a year and be living "paycheck-to-paycheck" while also maxing out 401k contributions, paying a mortgage on a $2 million home, and paying $80,000 a year in private school tuition.
Are we supposed to think that such a family is in worse financial shape than a family making $40,000 a year but with minimal expenses and a few months of living costs in a savings account?
Mr $300k may have zero months in an emergency account, but be stable in his job as a doctor and not worry about finding work - and may actually "feel poor" because he barely has any "fun money" to waste and feels he can't buy coffee in the morning.
Mr $40k a year may have 6 months of expenses in the bank, saving half his income to FIRE, and know that anytime he wants to he can buy that coffee - and sometimes he does.
Net worth likely says Mr $300k is worth more than Mr $40k - but that may not be true forever, and Mr $40k may be "retired" at 50 while Mr $300k is perpetually working until death.
Who is rich, who has wealth, and who is happy? There are no clear answers.
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/how-candice-m...
Happiness for him was somewhere between having zero dollars and being $33 million in debt. His influencer wife seems to have no humility, has moved to Miami where she can continue her partying lifestyle and going to yoga classes.
Its' both maddening and saddening. To what point does the ostentatious display of wealth serve if it leads to suicide? A few years of looking rich at the cost of the rest of life? We have no choice but to assume he was willing to make that trade-off. So it's angering to think a person would believe that.
On the other hand, suicide is the ultimatum when a man thinks his pleas are unanswered. Being surrounded by old-money socialites, I can imagine the feeling of having to leave the club being a fate worse than death. But how can an average guy have any sympathy for that, much less this guy's own feelings of himself.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/16/facebook-p...
(Well, that's a relief.)
A lot of people are "see money spend money". Regardless of their paycheck amount, they find ways to spend it all. This does not mean they are poor.
Pro football players, for example, are famous for quickly spending their $millions into bankruptcy.
income data alone does not tell a very complete story.
People don't like saying America is rich because it defies their beliefs, but the actual stats don't lie. Every American I know that has moved to Europe (and I have lived there as well, in Munich) moved there with, shock...American money and savings. So they don't actually get the initial start many Europeans do and it clouds their view to think that's just how all Europeans live.
That doesn't guarantee that this will always be true, but given Europe's current trajectory, even with the US's many shortcomings...it's hard to say Europe will catch up anytime soon.
Do you have any sources for this? The reason why I personally don't believe your claim is because every single US citizen I know lives paycheck-to-paycheck, quite literally
Are most of these people allocating every dollar that comes in each month to bills, living expenses, and savings? Sure, but that doesn’t mean they have no money left in the paycheck.
E.g, self-reported but with TikTok noise added.
All of this stuff tries to be factual and scientific about something that is a feeling, really - if you're $80k in debt (not that I know ANYONE like that no, sirreeeeee!) and have no plan and don't even know how much you owe each month, you're going to be stressed and pissed and always surprised.
If you're in the exact same situation but have it all documented and budgeted and planned for (what I call "knowing exactly how fucked you are") you'll be much better off mentally even if not financially (at first, that will follow).
So why does it always end with the judgement falling on one side? Because facts do not a complete case make.
The top 10 individually have more wealth than Iceland, which is 83rd.
The top 25 combined have a wealth of $3.2t, more than Belgium, which is 20th.
What is so sad is how much better it could be in the U.S.… but for some odd notion that Billionaires and Corporations are thought to owe so little and the people of this country thought to deserve so little.
See: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-prod-per-capita?count...
Russia and Iran are the second and third largest suppliers, but their goods are sanctioned. They also 'only' produce half / a quarter of US output.
Also contrast this with, China (#4) and Qatar (#6) that produce 258 and 170 billion m3 respectively.
An American can get a very sad and bad sandwich for about $20 in a mid sized American city. They can get a full meal with fresh ingredients in most of the rest of the world for $10 (no tip either). Some places even under $5.
An American can rent a dump in a high crime city for $2000 a month. They can get a nice home for $500 a month in many other countries.
An American can pay hundreds a month for health insurance that rejects their claims and covers absolutely nothing, resulting in a medical bill of tens of thousands of dollars. Medicines can cost thousands as well. They can pay out of pocket for treatment in another country and it'll cost hundreds, and medicine will cost a few bucks.
The only thing in your list that could be cheaper without underpaying local workers are pharmaceuticals.
The fact that you simply can't save enough to get medical care is foundationally depressing.
PS In the future, those same teachers will need their former students to vote for extra taxes to fund their (the teacher's) retirement. In the words of the janitor from "The Breakfast Club", "I wouldn't count on it".
So perhaps we can cross-reference that to see if health insurance is causal (also 60% of Americans have health insurance and 'losing job' is way more about losing income than insurance).
Where can I found out more about this? I have about $2,500 in medical bills to pay for my kids on my desk right now.
For 4 visits to get regular antibiotics (amoxicillin and ceflex), one just happened to be at night on a Sunday, requiring an emergency room visit. Is that “baseline”?
Americans need to stop telling ourselves this lie. We get so little for our money compared to other countries, and we should be furious.
But I think the average resident of Taipei would trade their street food for a 3000 sqft house with a yard and a pool and a quiet neighborhood and 2 large luxury vehicles.
American agricultural/food practices is a legit reason why food in this country is 20-40% higher than elsewhere. Because capitalists want to squeeze every cent of profit before they fuck off into the abyss.
And then ask your if that person on the median salary has a lot of disposable income?
They might be richer than someone in a poorer country, but the median in the USA, is not rich _in_ the USA.
This seems to be true if I'm flipping burgers at McDs or if I'm on a first-name basis with Warren Buffett.
And by lack of taste I don't mean McMansions. The entire country is a little bit of a corporate dystopia. It's the end result of capitalism running with very little restraint. Sure, lots of people make great paycheques. But cities look and feel like crap, lack good mass transit, lack human scale, public education is on the ropes, healthcare is rationed according the level of wealth rather than need and people make individual choices that are just textbook cases of the Tragedy of the Commons. Good (at least in the short term) for them individually and disastrous for the society as a whole.
america has a wealth per adult of 551,350 germany has a wealth per adult of 256,180
if you exclude the top 10 highest wealth holders in each country its 543,385 vs 252,811.
america's a rich country compared most other countries its also got huge wealth in equality because its top .001% is something that doesn't exist anywhere else
PS The only thing Germany is richer in than the US is snobbery and rudeness. Seriously, I wouldn't live there for any amount of income or cost.
The most luxurious hotels in the world, the most decadent, aren't in Washington. They're in places like Teheran. Like Islamabad. Like Kinshasa. Things like, hotels where 5 prostitutes on standby per room is standard.
The richest people in the world are people like Putin and Xi Jinping. Communists "defending the rights of the people". And whoever it is in the US at the moment don't remotely compare to them in wealth.
And what people are complaining about, in the US, but equally in Germany (well I only know about the Netherlands firsthand, but ... look at the map) is not how good or bad they have it. Simply about "how bad it's getting". In other words, they're complaining this year it's a little bit worse than last year. A tiny little bit. THAT, they can't deal with. Absolute level of wealth? Income inequality? Doesn't really matter.
And the scary question is if they'll go to war over that. They certainly have in the past.
Sure you can afford the best room. But can you afford 100 prostitutes on standby? Choice matters.
Sure you can afford the best room with 100 prostitutes. But can you afford to give 100 of your "friends" rooms with 10 prostitutes each? Can you afford to have the hotel just kick every other guest out at your whim?
Can you afford to just own the entire hotel, have it fully staffed in case you drop by with 100 friends, 24/7? (ie. what Putin does) [2]
How about 1000? (totally not a reference to Erdogan's Palace that one) [3]
To go back to North Korean "socialism"'s accomplishments: can you have such a hotel on wheels?
How about 1000, but give each of those 1000 servants in addition to the prostitutes.
How about ...?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_B52kyj-vA
Housing is actually quite liquid as it is incredibly easy to mortgage. More likely you are overestimating how much housing value is actually there. The majority of American homeowners have already tapped into that liquidity. Owning a house that is worth, say, $1MM on the open market doesn't necessarily mean that your net worth is $1MM.
There is a huge difference between someone with a net worth of 1M (owns a small home, still needs to work for a living) and a net worth of 30M (can get more than 1M per year of capital revenue without working).
And I'm not even talking about billionaires.
Typically, it would seem that is indeed the case from most calculations I've seen. I mean, are you really worth a million dollars if you have to be homeless to access those dollars?
> The culprit has to fit the crime. Most importantly, it has to fit the timing of the crime. What we’re looking for is something that happened around 2020 (uh, seems obvious) and then didn’t recover (ah, that’s the hard part). This timing rules out several otherwise plausible suspects.
You can pile straws on a camel as part of a continuous process and then observe the breaking of the camel's back as a discontinuous result.
Any explanation that doesn't fit the timing (like the "decline of religion" example he uses) may still be relevant. It can't be automatically ruled out, but the timing is a strong piece of evidence against it. The theory needs to include a solid explanation for why the timing doesn't seem to match. I don't think decline of religion has such a solid explanation, but other theories might.
Funny, considering this is an article by an economist. But, isn't "psychology" responsible for investigating this?
> It’s probably not just about phones and social media
The other reasons were eliminated with confidence. This one comes with a "just."
Is it really improbable that "The Sadness" isn't just phones/SM/etc? These do act on core levers of happiness, optimism, anxiety and suchlike. They are social or social-like. Our relationships are big levers on happiness. Otoh you can think through a crude neural stimulus lens. Being someplace noisy, dark, unpleasant or whatnot can also affect mood. Tech usage is pervasive enough that it can plausibly be the factor. It's uncertain, but I don't think this can be eliminated as a possible cause... even a singular cause.
It's also parsimonious (I think) with the anglophone stats,"permapandemic theory"and most of the article.
I'm actually intuitively sympathetic to the writers' economics argument. I agree. Structurally, there is a structural difference between a "chill" economy and a "highly stressful" that isn't much related to GDP (or inflation). I don't think stratification or inequality affect people as much as risk/anxiety... I imagine average happiness will be higher.
But... as this article itself points... the evidence is kind of pointing at "it's not the economy, stupid"
Luckily (or tragically, as the case may be), I think we're at the start of a new media paradigm shift. AI may replace current mediums in large parts of people's lives... and we shall see what changes.
I find that the more I avoid television, radio and the internet, the better I feel because the people in the real world around me aren't discussing wars, politicians, murders and suicides. We're talking sports and good food and, today, vacations I'm going on.
These things don't make me sad. The internet, television and radio make me sad. So I avoid them altogether.
Hard to not see him as an enemy of change and in-favor of elites over workers.
There are so many studies showing that if you just get off of social media, everything about your life gets better. Anxiety, depression too.
There’s money in creating the perception of problems that don’t exist or creating the idea that small problems are much larger than they really are.
There's a stigma against just doing something for nothing, or even doing nothing and being lazy.
Italian and French grandmothers make far better food without calling themselves "foodies" and a 15 year old from those countries has better knowledge and breadth of food.
Well you should know that foodie culture in the US, like almost everything else in this country, is maximally consumerist. This explains the bizarre behavior you've pointed out.
Many of the self-described foodies I've met lacked a genuine appreciation of the cuisine they consumed. It was simply another avenue for them to moralize and project their socio-economic status in a subtle way. Subtle being necessary because this country is supposed to be one of equals.
Identity in the US is tied up not with the relationships in your life or the values that you live by but by what you consume. Food is the ultimate consumable good.
Populations in different countries often have very different pyschologies and societal customs, including propensity or reluctance to be outspoken, to express "feelings", to complain, etc. Populations may differ in how they respond to questions about "happiness"
For example, a country with relatively high "self-reported happiness" may also have a relatively high rate of suicide
If a "happy" population is the objective, then there may be more to examine than simply "self-reported happiness"
And in some cities you actually have both. Where I live we have these big, wealthy suburbs (New Albany for example), Delaware County in central Ohio is one of the top countries by income in the whole country - all suburban. Yet we also have some absolutely fantastic and premier neighborhoods in the Columbus area with prices to reasonably match given the scarcity of actual neighborhoods and such, though I actually think the homes in these areas are a bit under-priced and the large suburban homes a bit over-priced.
1M is also the price of a one bedroom apartment in the city of 8.6M. That is, if you don't want a 45 minute one way commute.
The OP wrote this:
> As an American, I don’t think of the suburbs when I think of rich people.
Which, I think is still the case in NY. Upper East Side, Chelsea, West Village, wherever. $40 million apartments, billionaire's row.... when I think the suburbs yea there are wealthy people there but you're talking $1mm for a house or something. In Ohio $700k - $1mm is pretty common in the suburbs around Columbus (and the downtown neighborhoods). The prices are usually higher outside of the city. I think this is typical, whereas NY it's the opposite. It's a little distorted because NY is so wealthy that you see the suburban prices and it tricks you a little bit, but it's really an inside-out model there and most of America is still priced from the outside-in.
the suburbs around new york are some of the richest in the world. Scardsale, every town near the ct border, rye, huge parts of li, montclair nj and the towns around it.
the average household net worth in westchester which is a huge county is $1m, thats on the same tier as wealthy parts of any major city.
Sames true of the suburban sprawl of the bay area and dc.
Some of these people meet a certain definition of "rich", as in they never have to worry about money. Most suburbanites are not rich by that definition, there's a mix of negative net worth "keeping up with the joneses" types and the single digit millionaires who are a little less flashy and careful with their money.
A useful example - I knew a guy who lived in Naperville and owned an insurance company, drove a hot Jaguar and lived in a huge house. When the housing market crashed, he gutted it and sold off all the parts he could before the bank foreclosed on it.
I’m still working (I enjoy it!). But, having a job is no longer stressful. Small stuff completely doesn’t matter and big stuff barely moves the needle.
I screw up at work? What are they gonna do, fire me? lol who cares.
Doing salary or raise negotiations? Max the band out. What are they gonna do, not hire me? lol who cares.
Rumors of layoffs? lol who cares.
Think Hillsborough/Atherton/Palo Alto, Carmel IN, Newton/Brookline MA, Beverly Hills, Greenwich County CT, River Oaks in Houston, Boulder CO, Scottsdale AZ, etc
This and a few other places like it are where most wealthy people in Houston live. A suburb like Katy is great for a “rich” petroleum engineer and what not. But wealth is something else.
The wealthiest people I see don't live in any particular place. They have houses everywhere — inner city, the spacious suburbs you mention, rural, and everything in between. They don't limit themselves to living in just one country either.
Having one home and seeing your entire life revolve around it is what poor people do.
> eating bad manufactured food
Things have changed dramatically in the last two decades. Food quality has never been better in suburban areas. Every Publix and Kroger has oat milk (I'm using this as a proxy for variety). Produce is fresher and longer-lasting. Consolidation and urbanization has left many rural towns without a local grocery store, requiring longer trips to get food, but suburbia has great variety. Overall food quality and access is better.
Not ultra-processed; just ultra-marketed.
It’s a brutal business.
Having a house that is large enough to support whatever hobby(/ies) one takes up is an underappreciated aspect of suburban living.
Growing up, (moderately wealthy) in a comparatively decent sized apartment, in a decent area, the biggest reason to not take up something like woodworking, or say working on a car, or for that matter gardening.
So, as soon as I graduated, I moved out of the city, into a suburb. I get 80% of the benefits of the density (there is a denser suburb 1km away), so I get walkable shops, and all the hep places to eat/drink are just 30 minutes away by car :)
Did I mention the ability to stretch my arms without punching someone in the face while travelling? (because public transport when successful (highly utilized) is crowded, and that is just plain painful)
If you really want to understand something you need to integrate all the evidence, of course, and not just the parts that support the easy conclusion.
It's under-discussed, because we, the technocratic class, have no tools to measure it and not much language to talk about it.
Just going off of my personal experience, the same highrise I used to rent is roughly 50% more. 2k to 3k. Two of the entire nightlife districts that were very close are completely gone, torn down and converted to high rise buildings with very boring very expensive ground level retail. The few places that remain are expensive, $12 for a drink is normal, maybe a draft beer is $8. In contrast, I could go out any night and find $2-3 drinks. $5 pitcher of beer, and get a solid meal for under $10. Almost all of the sports leagues at the park next to the highrise are gone. The only festivals that can afford to operate depend on high ticket sales and drawing people from out of town which makes huge annoying crowds.
And I'm not even going back 10 years, this was like 7-8 years ago. If you go back to like 2010 things were even cheaper and more fun.
Exactly. Humans crave novelty and hate doing what everyone else is doing. That idea was presented because it was still a fairly novel experience to live in the city. Getting to live in the city was seen as something special. Now it is what everyone does, so it isn't novel anymore. You no longer "need to live in the city" because, generally, you are now already there. The novelty is gone. The happy youth have moved on to living the next big thing. Once everyone else starts to recognize what they are doing, general happiness will temporarily increase again... until that new normal loses its novelty and the cycle repeats once more.
It is the tale as old as time. This is ultimately the same reason for why people set out to discover and settle in America in the first place!
If it's any consolation - older people at corporate jobs are also unhappy.
Suburbs more crowded than a city? Is this for real?
It's like that here in Canada too. Poor people rent apartments in places with easy access to transit, and if they "make it" then the next step is to buy a house in a bedroom community where if you want to do literally anything you need to pile into the car, but hey at least your kids have a yard to play in.
The next step up is being able to afford either a detached home in a upscale desirable neighbourhood, or a nice condo downtown in Toronto/Vancouver, and then again the next step after that is giant mansions outside the city centres.
80% of Canada's population lives along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor and the bulk of that is in suburbs.
Used to just be a middle class thing.
If you look at sattelite images, a large part of Canada seems covered by native forests / mountains. That's different to EU where almost all land is divided in squares of varying colours, because a much larger part of nature was destroyed for agriculture.
According to the first ranking I found[0], Germany is in the the "very high proficiency" group, and actually ranked ahead of Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. And Denmark isn't on the graph. Smells a bit of cherry-picked data.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index#2...
It's just that the government does not properly measure any of these things and doesn't work for us anymore. We've all been trained to constantly ask WHY things are broken and argue about it but never take any real action to change them. Trained to pretend a protest on a weekend and a post on FB is the height of activism, to forget what really collectively demanding and creating change looks like. The number of atrocities committed by this government weekly is insane, all anyone talks about is keeping up or not keeping up with the news, no concept at all of collective power to make them accountable. Let's just wait 3 years and hope the next government does that - while history clearly shows they will not, and cannot in many cases given the law.
2. Power increasingly shifting to capital over labor, leading to tougher and exploitative work conditions, lower wages, tougher job markets etc. for labor. Also affects us as consumers dealing with oligopolies or monopolies. Somehow we saw a world where a ton of us worked remote, it worked at least 80% as well in exchange for huge worker benefits, but its going away because we don't have any power and no one is looking out for us. Now we have massive inflation and I don't think anyone believes that a big chunk of it isn't just greedy opportunistic price gouging. Every single thing I see about any job in any field, its about how they are losing power, getting more work for less pay, jumping through more bullshit hoops, field is turning from being run by practitioners to being run by psychopaths in PE firms. This is even in medicine, like people who directly help people everyday feel their job lacks purpose because of the amount of paperwork, huge overwork and under-staffing in general coming down to centralization in the health care system, increasing oligopolization and insurance power - same power shifting from labor to capital.
3. Absolute breakdown of government institutions, regulators and justice for powerful people. Epstein files - actual child abusing pedophile billionaires, lawyers, senators all face no consequence besides maybe losing a very cushy job. President pardons all kinds of corrupt buddies. What kind of clown believes in a justice system when this happens weekly? ICE officers kill or abuse victims without consequences. Can't build a single train line in the time China built millions and millions of miles. Congress gridlocked for a decade now. Perception that government is completely ineffective, and not at all accountable to us or working for us. Its linked to point above as well, with capital being more powerful than government, or in bed with them in many cases.
4. Higher exposure to negative news, media algorithms, social media etc. It's all been covered before. Fear and anger sells. Billion dollar companies with 1000s of very smart employees trying their hardest to addict you to their app, which makes your life worse. Seemingly constant state of emergency or crisis, one crisis to the next.
I read the article after writing this, I think the author had very similar points. I think most complaints roughly come down into these buckets and root causes.
The only missing piece is the understanding that this will not fix itself anymore, the will to collectively agree on the bad actors, organize, take back power, enforce consequences.
I’m planning to move back to Asia, where I lived for like a decade. The work culture is harder but it feels much safer, better food, more fun, harsh on crime.
I wouldn’t mind to trade in German and Australian citizenships for Singapore.
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie title: "Part 1: My Life Is a Lie" byline: "How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America"
TLDR; it does actually take well over 100k for a family of four in the US to not be at significant risk of becoming de-housed and the 'poverty line' that everyone points to has not been adjusted to account for the actual erosion of public standard services since the late 1960's and does not take into account the actual costs of many significantly inflated market conditions; including housing, food security, basic transportation, and communication.
Bottom line, the answer to the original questions is: America is not rich, has not been for quite some time, and everyone is sad because the reality is in serious contrast to the image which the wealthy and powerful are very effective at projecting both inside the US and abroad. That image is every bit as disconnected from reality as every other fictional product of the US entertainment industry.
I am an optimist, so I do think things will improve eventually, and we're going through a tough transition.
E.g., does the Mississippi Miracle translate into something notable? https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...
If you earn a mountain but rent is expensive and healthcare is expensive and tipping is expensive and you need to save for private retirement etc etc and end up living paycheque to paycheque then I can see that not being fun despite incredible top line salary.
See, in university we were in close contact to many people, in our age range, with our interests, in both academic and recreational contexts. In work, we are strictly there in professional contexts. That's not to say you can't make friends from work, I do have several people I consider friends that I met like that, but none of them live near, so spending time with them is not going to happen on a regular basis.
The main way I see people involve themselves with others seems to be through what I'd describe as "activity groups", could be the gym you go to, could be a structured class like dancing or tennis clubs, whatever. But these things are usually at most, a few times a week, for about an hour or two at a time. Nothing compared to what being at university with your peers for multiple hours every day was. I think that physical presence near other people is a hugely important driver of establishment of friendships and social groups.
Plus pretty much all of these things require you to invest additional money towards (usually in the form of a monthly bill), just to access. I didn't have to pay anything additional to join a club at university (of which I was involved with probably close to half a dozen, even if I didn't stick with all of them for all 4 years of my time there).
I probably would feel less isolated if I lived closer to my existing friends, but everyone has spread out a lot and there's not much I can do about that. The new friends I've met are usually not that (geographically) close to me either. Everyone is a 30min drive or farther away now it seems.
I've always scoffed at paying for those "activity groups" (what kind of loser would pay for friends?), but recently I've started reconsidering.
At work, you are all set one against each other to get the good projects, to be promoted, or to be spared from the next round of culling.
The workplace is a retrograde hierarchical system that is not far from feudalism.
I think a lot of the demographics that the article points to overlap strongly with technological diffusion, with social media exposure being a strong proxy.
If they are making a concerted effort to drive the narrative in English speaking online communities, it would make sense that English speakers would be most affected.
Basically, there are foreign propaganda bot farms who don't propagandize their own populations, but instead focus on the US population. Generally trying to get Americans to turn on their (the people running the bot farms) enemies. Sometimes those enemies are countries, other times they are immigrant populations. Funtimes huh...
PS Yea, I know Israel does it, so does HAMAS and a bunch of other countries including both Russia and China.
Our energy levels are lower. This makes us more sedentary, which makes muscles atrophy, which attracts injuries at even moderate exertion, when we try to climb out of the pit.
Of course, access to cheap and addictive food is likely the first trigger.
At the same time obesity seems largely involuntary while not being desirable for most people, and yet, before the help of Ozempic style medication, obesity was rampant in the US.
It seems like rich people can get %-wise richer faster than the rest of us.
IE they can double their wealth way faster than I can double mine.
The same demographics that are the most likely to have gone from working in the office to working from home...
Literally most everyone working I know basically thinks everything is always getting more expensive, that most wage gains were/have been less than how much costs have gone up, that housing is so expensive it might be worth moving to West Virginia, and that all it would take to ruin 20 years of work is an unexpected layoff or major life event like a medical issue, lawsuit, car or home issue. And that's non tech people mostly. Who also have increasing resentment for how scumbags and flim flam dealers seem to always be the ones getting ahead.
As seen from a European (often going to US, have friends and relatives there) I am surprised the author does not mention how the US became so much more polarised (on the usual race/guns/abortion/sex/gov topics).
Covid fragilised people social networks (isolation, job market shifts) and they’re left herding around the usual divisive topics.
It’s not just politics. It’s throughout daily life. And it’s unfortunately amplified by core tenet of the USA - freedom : ie do whatever you want for what you believe in or want . That translates into intensity about key topics unlike other societies where core tenets have a constructive tension btw each other (eg France : liberté , égalité, fraternité) which means people are more tolerant of each other.
Finally Americans low educational standards (before university) esp in history-geography make it difficult to make sense of a more crisis-prone and multipolar world.
Europeans on the other hand have a much lower standard with what they can do (less work or ambition in anything) and more used to and taught about that shitshow you have no/little control of (=life) .. so more or less as happy as before ..
This is pretty intuitive. Its nice not to have to worry about money, but what is the difference between having 1M NW and 100M? If you're a mentally normal person, it just more mental burden.
And also. Up to a certain point is still a correlation. Getting a lot of downvotes by people not knowing what a correlation is.
People are happy when they are secure and unhappy when they are insecure. Who can you name is secure in all of their physical, social, mental, spiritual, etc needs right now?
money and happiness are correlated.
that doesnt mean that wealth is the only factor of happiness, nor is it the strongest. but it is correlated.
I wonder though if there is a sweet spot—a goldilocks degree of wealth. Too much wealth becomes a burden itself.
Is there a linear relationship between wealth and happy? Someone 10× as wealthy as another person—10× happier?
I suspect not.
the happiest part of my life was when I had nothing materially (but no debt, just basically at zero, making enough to live paycheck to paycheck)
The big step of "progress" has been the breakthrough in AI, which is amazing in itself, but that in practice is improving the lives of a tiny sliver of the population, and making everyone else's lives worse. It's not improving society in any meaningful way (but it is improving corporate profits and stock market returns -- I guess there's a bright spot for those lucky enough to have significant investments in the market).
Materially, in the past 10 years, things have gotten much much better for a very very small number of people, about the same for a segment of the population, and worse for most everyone else.
Even medically, the one area where we should be continuously getting better because of new discoveries, etc., we have gotten worse (worse health care outcomes, lower more people not getting healthcare due to affordability, poor nutrition because healthy food is more expensive, etc.). Even life expectancy, if you average over the past 10 years, is lower than the 10 years prior to that (due to COVID mostly).
When walking through the CPH airport with one of my Danish colleagues, they would always roll their eyes at the "Welcome to the happiest country on Earth signs" and point out that Denmark was ranked #1 in SSRI use in Europe.
PS There was once a major political party in the US literally called the "Know Nothings" and that name wasn't ironic.
In the exact same sense as there is currently a major political party in the US literally called the "MAGA party".
ie. not literally and not actually, just colloquially.
Our response to it (Iraq war, forever wars, etc.) combined with the realization that the USA are be "the baddies" and we've been lied to since forever, probably might have been the thing that set all the dominos up.
COVID was the straw that broke the camel's back. Had we _not_ had the disastrous response to 9/11, I suspect we could've weathered COVID better (like the rest of the world has.)
* Almost all of the productivity gains over the past three decades have been captured by the 1%(0.1% really). Rank and file workers (yes that includes tech workers) have seen a very minuscule portion of that. Tech got by for a while because the gains were so large and that for a while, the overall pie expanded faster than the growth in developers.
* The elites used the excess surplus to capture the govt(e.g Citizens United)and ensure favourable policy like being able to socialize losses and privatize profits which resulted in even more of the gains going to them.
* In search of ever increasing profits, the elites also funneled those gains into buying up more and more of the economy starting at the top (P.E driven consolidation) and increasingly moving lower and lower on Maslow's hierarchy (housing, food/farmland, medicine).
The lowest sections of our society started getting squeezed way before(notice where the most support for a promise to return to a 'glorious' past is), but it has now reached a point where even the upper middle class is getting squeezed and can't easily afford basic needs like housing and healthcare.
History shows that these situations are inherently unstable and don't last very long. Unfortunately for the elites, in the extreme cases they don't tend to do well in the aftermath once the proles decide they have had enough.
The best hope is that they voluntarily realize that the situation is untenable.
Tipping point?
Wealth is concentrated and can skew the averages, but happiness, even if rated on a scale, is not particularly able to skew the number up... so as wealthy americans got spectacularly rich, pulling up the "rich" side, maybe making them equisitely happy... a more widespread shift in sentiments are pulling down the average.
And a lot of this makes sense... Wealth doesn't add much happiness over a certain threshold. A naive happiness maximizing algo would probably do something like cap someone around that number and redistribute the wealth to those below it.
Plus there's the monkey grape/cucumber experiment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo ... Humans are social status sensitive, meaning we're likely to have bad feelings (and make irrational choices) when we feel our place in the herd is falling or below someone else's. Eg: People living near lottery winners are more likely to go bankrupt than similar people who don’t have a winning neighbor, presumed to be a "keeping up with the joneses" kind of issue.
It's very nice on the surface but it underneath it all, there's always someone trying to extract value from you. At almost every little step.
Simply enjoying life is guarded beyond a glass wall and you need to pay an entrance fee.
I like to think being rich is FU money to do what you want, “fuck being taxed, I have enough wealth to live in NY anyways.” I feel that the culture pressuring you to hoard wealth even at loss of happiness obviously makes for unhappy people.
The gist: the statistics used to define poverty are old and inaccurate.
Also sadness is a natural and ok state of being. Being a gronked out happy zombie is unnatural and should be suspect.
I've suffered from and been successfully treated for depression. I would describe it more as an addiction to feeling low than anything.
I suspect that in the EU there can very well have been a lot of overprescription of SSRI for conditions other than depression, however. Many times, people are just melancholy because of external life factors, and no drug could improve those.
We've been running this race, reaching for a carrot that's always poised just out of reach for 30 years, and I think we're all just getting really tired of it.
When the middle class began to crack in the years following the 2007 economic collapse, the old American instinct to migrate in search of opportunity shifted. If leaving was something Americans did domestically, the horizon shifted further afield."
PS A foreign example, the entire Scottish Independence movement online (post say 2020) was caused by foreign bot farm.
And if I look at the squeeze I feel as a very high income young person, it’s still just cost of housing. The amount of house a salary of x buys was utterly decimated in the last 4 years, especially in the metros that have good job growth.
Solve the housing crisis and you’ll have happy young people and future generations. Maybe not so much boomers.
In the 2016 election it began to appear likely that this figure is closer to 30%. That impression was reinforced -- cast in concrete, really -- in 2024.
So yes, I'm sadder, because I honestly didn't think I was surrounded by so many shitheels.
Or are you just strawmanning for effect?
It does come across as a comment not in line with: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In terms of global trade currency policy, many are drafting a long term policy to trade in Yuan.
Pokemon cards and Bitcoin are better bets than most current bond markets.
People that can do the math, are less happy with the obvious implications. =3
Canada has fallen from 5th in 2015 to 25th in 2025 on that same World Happiness Report, but if you break it down by age demographics, over 60 are still in the top 10, and under 25's are 71st. That is the largest demographic gap of every developed country. During that time, Canada's economy has been propped up by debt, high levels of immigration leading to cheap foreign workers, and the housing market, all of which benefit the older demographics and sacrifice the wellbeing and future of younger generations.
I agree strongly with the author that inflation pays a massive role. Canada has seen even worse inflation than the USA, especially with housing and food prices. The youth unemployment rate is 14%. Canada is different from the states it appears, where the rise in unhappiness is mostly coming from the youth whereas in the States it seems to be a more general phenomenon. It's interesting how split Canada is on age demographics.
Interestingly enough, the author points to Quebec as an outlier. While they point to the language spoken as a differentiator, I think it's more likely that Quebec is simply shielded from some of the economic factors facing the rest of Canada since they hold massively disproportionate political power over the rest of Canada and receive a ton of extra federal funding from other provinces.
One factor is that there are just enough smart monolingual francophones that they cannot really effectively leave, which means that the brain drain effect, while present, is nothing like as extreme as in the rest of Canada.
The future used to look bright, and now it doesn't. It doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, employed, unemployed, engaged in politics, or politically apathetic -- you can still feel it.
Damn, spiritual rot, such a good way to put it. I'm gonna steal that for sure.
The level of toxicity and cynicism and nihilism that has been brought to the foreground every day is really something to see.
its social contract is poisoned by this proposition.
When your streaming service subscriptions keep going up and up and up and up, you tend to notice that you're getting the same product at a crappier value. What's more, most products and services are actually declining at the same time that prices go up as profits extract more by making the goods cheaper and the services less responsive. People are aware they're getting the short end and it's really piling up in ways that are hard to ignore.
The key is virtue. Ethics is the science of the good. You cannot be happy as an immoral person. That's where you should look for sources of misery or unhappiness.
(We could also distinguish between happiness and joy, where, according to this distinction, happiness fluctuates because it is dependent on circumstance, while joy is grounded in permanence.)
Maybe policymakers who come from wealth and are thoroughly insulated from life upheavals, just don't get that and should take that into account - public information/propaganda system should project some sense of stability.
Mysophobes[0] are quite common in the US, so multiple people touching the same cup wouldn't fly here.
That's why many folks won't take mints from a dish at restaurant cashier stations if they're not individually wrapped. Many folks take an extra paper towel in public bathrooms to use on the door handle as they exit.
And on and on.
The US is, mostly, a center-right to far-right country. And as many studies have shown, there's a correlation between higher "disgust sensitivity" and right-leaning folks.
Isaac Asimov drew that distinction pretty starkly in comparing (robot stories and later Foundation follow ons) "Spacers" to "Settlers".
[0] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22436-mysopho...
I suppose that depends on how you define "efficiency." Using disposable cups and self-service dispensers/waffle irons eliminates the need for an employee to stand there making waffles and/or another employee washing reusable dishes.
If you compare the ongoing costs of disposable cups vs. the cost of at least one employee, one might conclude that it's more "efficient" to use disposable cups.
From a societal/global perspective, it may well be more "efficient" to use employees instead of disposable cups, but the corporation that uses the disposable cups can't increase their profits by using employees and reusable cups instead.
Sure, money doesn't buy happiness. But you need some minimum. The Maslow's Pyramid. Food, Shelter.
The Rich, probably just need to get a grip, and stop complaining. "boo hoo, your life is so empty".
The Poor, probably just need security.
But the truth is everyone is less happy. Maybe there's something else going on.
There are plenty of real studies, not just this one, that people's happiness dramatically increases with money, up to a plateau, past that plateau happiness doesn't increase.
Last I checked, I think it was 70-80K Salary was a baseline. Below that, yes, happiness was really impacted by being without money.
And since this one was 'generic', across the population, and there are a lot of people <80K salaries, then yes, it is a big variable.
There is no particular reason my personal preferences matter, but I have had a nagging feeling that all English speaking nations have been bedeviled by the fallout of the journalistic disaster that Murdoch has fostered.
> It’s not that I think the decline of institutional trust and the rise of solitary individualism ought to produce unhappiness for all who experience it. But trust, companionship, and community are shock absorbers in times of personal and national crisis. And the final thing that must be said about the 2020s is that it really has been one damn crisis after another.
And when you only pursue material wealth, well... that is "the root of all evil"
I'm probably the happiest now than I've been in my entire life. It's all about perspective.
His job is to present compelling, interesting narratives about why the world is the way it is and what we should do about it that have one specific attribute.
The attribute is that we must never actually do anything to address the real problem, which is that the lion's share of the wealth and resources are being claimed by a tiny group of people who use monopolies, coercive tactics, buying up politics and technology to hoard and protect their wealth and power.
Needless to say his job is a great job to have because those people will be happy to pay him and promote him. It's how he makes a living.
The reason people are so sad is because they realize there's one set of rules for them and one set of rules for the people in charge with money and power. It's become absolutely obvious that if you ever get any kind of edge or get ahead on a smaller scale level, one of those people from the Epstein class or Wall Street will soon come along and take it away from you.
They'll make you pay a subscription to use your own car. They'll use algorithms to increase your rent. They'll get you hooked on streaming services, buy up all the competitors, and then raise the price. They'll take away your rights to complain about it through an arbitration clause, use non-competes to stop you from hiring people if you're a small business trying to compete. If you do manage to compete with them directly they'll use access to incredibly low-cost subsidized capital to undercut you. If you somehow navigate all of that and manage to succeed they'll buy you and turn around and consolidate your company with what they're doing to go back to their extractive profit model.
The delusion of this article is the idea that people don't really understand what's happening to them, or what the causes are, or that it's this big mystery. People actually are pretty intuitively connected to what's happening, and they'll lurch towards anyone who seems to be, at least sort of, trying to do something about it.
The problem is they don't have any choices who will actually fight for them.
Yes, thank you for saying this. Truly the "Steven Pinker" of these times. "There is actually something wrong with you if you're not loving this".
Although saying this on this platform, unfortunately, won't get much traction.
I guess I can think of worse audiences to try to get this message across to, somehow, one person at a time.
Average median hourly wage is not everything, but it is a sign of where the priorities of the US is, and it's not fir those who work and create wealth. As property prices soar and young couples can't afford to buy, the heirs and rentiers are doing better than ever.
Being as the bedrock of MAGA'S base is white evangelical Protestants, as Michael Harrington pointed out long ago it leads to a continuing cycle of Christianity becoming more reactionary and politically reactionary, as the rest of society secularizes. Whether or not that is a good thing, it is what is happening.
Also, with regards to phones, social media etc. and circling back to young couples, studies show married couples met 30 years ago via friends, family, church, school, bars etc. Nowadays the majority, with the number only growing, are meeting via corporations - swipe left and swipe right apps. People stay honest and play video games and watch Netflix instead of going out
The three things said not to be it are part of a shift to increasing alienation, as working people are immiserated. There was an economist 150 years ago who predicted this happening.
You posted a link that people are working more hours per year, so their yearly inflation-adjusted income is up.
So you're really posting the second negative here, thanks. As I said, tge average hourly median wage is below what it was 50 years ago. From the same federal reports you linked. Plus, we can see from here, that not only are people paid less per hour, they have to work more.
I don't know why you think these two negative things post a rosy picture.
When I was younger, it was unusual for people to think they couldn't have friends with different politics, but now it's almost taken for granted in some circles. The current political environment is absolutely corrosive.
What I think everyone in this country knows intuitively is that relative quality of life is constantly getting worse, there’s no indication that it will improve any time soon, and there are plenty of indications that it will continue to get worse.
How do you measure that in a way economists can understand? I don’t know. But I trust my own intuition, and the lived experience of myself and my peers, more than an excel spreadsheet of aggregate GDP.
"Americans in the 21st century have experienced roughly triple the typical rate of inflation in the 2020s compared to what they’d grown accustomed to. Everything that people buy feels like it is constantly slipping out of the zone of affordability, and that is absolutely maddening to many people, no matter what the economic statistics suggest they should feel."
Sure a single anecdote is unreliable, but common feelings of a generation probably point to the data not capturing reality well
Relative to what?
Then it would be an absolute change, not a relative one.
- relative to peers in other countries
- relative to my parents when they were my age
- relative to how hard I’m working to find housing or a job
- relative to the way braindead economists talk about the economy in their newsletters
We remain dominant in aerospace and computer science but we're losing edge. And for computer science aka programming the techniques are easily learned and replicable so having an edge here doesn't really mean shit. Not to mention a good portion (aka majority) of the top CS engineers are either indian or chinese.
IQ in the US has also been declining in the last 2 decades as well. It's all going down. This article shouldn't be about a contrast between a great country and happiness, it should be about overall decline of an empire and a new one that may or may not take it's place (China).
The answer to this shit is usually healthcare.
2. Our healthcare system remains a Frankenstein of a half-government sanctioned oligopoly, half-capitalist nightmare. Driving up the cost of healthcare.
3. Our governments are at best incompetent, at worst corrupt. SF spends $100k/person per year on homelessness. NY spends $80k. Where is all that money going?? Would be better to give that money directly to the homeless.
It honestly feels like we optimized all the wrong stuff--social media, sports betting, crypto, etc. and then anything that matters--housing, healthcare, food... it's all just pathetic now.
The elites have built a propaganda machine / mind control device called "Social Media". Facebook, famously, sought to determine if they could influence people's emotions. They succeeded in manufacturing negative sentiment. This was then harness by the "elites" to wage class war against the rest of us.
They're gonna REALLY SURPRISED when the rope runs out and they find themselves hanging at the end of it. You can't endlessly create negative sentiment and expect positive results. That's lunacy.
Just look through the comments here for more evidence of that sentiment: for every commenter saying they did everything right but can't afford a home, there's someone else storming in with cherry-picked data showing that ahkshually homeownership for younger cohorts is getting better so obviously it's a problem unique to you and not the larger demographic. For every commenter complaining about wages not keeping pace with inflation, there's another commenter barging in with ahkshually the basket of goods indicator suggests you're wrong and everything has never been more affordable, so it must be a you problem.
America is so sad because we keep saying "we're having problems and need help," and the response is consistently along the lines of "Ahkshually everything on this graph is great and we're not going to look any deeper than that so it must be something you've done to deserve this." Nobody is listening to the meat of the grievance, just immediately punching down on the aggrieved. That makes us sad.
As for the "u rich why so sad" argument? Because you're conflating the wealth of the whole for the wealth (or lack thereof) of the components. Taken as a whole, America is fabulously wealthy; hell, taken individually, Americans earn and are worth more than any other society on the planet, period. Yet when you start boiling down to individual pictures, it becomes clear that the wealth of the country is intensely concentrated in fewer hands, and that those hands have no intention of ceding that wealth to the government nor using it to govern effectively. The problem isn't wealth so much as wealth inequality, and just mentioning that phrase is going to get this downvoted into oblivion because the last thing a country of pretend-billionaires wants to admit is that they won't actually be wealthy themselves someday.
EDIT: One little nugget I've been chewing on lately with regards to this whole thing is that perhaps the financialization of everything is a contributing factor. Before computers spat out "optimized" pricing for every good, service, and transaction out there in the name of maximizing profit via "objective" measures of value, human elements could choose to eschew that in favor of prioritizing other outcomes - like cutting tenants a break on rent when they got laid off so your building had a stable set of known inhabitants that were more predictable and invested in the community, for instance, or paying workers more and investing in their training so they wouldn't be tempted to leave. By optimizing for profit, we removed humanity from a very human system; by worshiping entities like "the invisible hand of the free market" and "efficient distribution of resources via Capital allocation" as if they were gods, we hand-waved away any obligation of those with outsized success to provide support for those who failed to achieve it themselves.
That would explain the vast chasm between the "mood" and the "stats", in a way: the system might be optimized for maximum profit, but it has come at the expense of prioritizing a healthy human society, and the humans are feeling that more and more.
As for all the talk about how humans are ultimately the ones making these decisions - are they, though? Are they really? Because it doesn't look like the C-Suite and Boardrooms and investor classes out there seem willing to sacrifice some profits for improved human conditions; the consistent pattern continues to be along the lines of "the computer said X", and that's the extent of the discussion lest a human risk being accountable for that decision.
Smartphones enable unprecedented levels of reach as well as content personalized to you... as decided by The Algorithm. Media organizations and social media influencers discovered that ragebait gets clicks, which generates revenue. This also explains why news articles overall are very negative, as TFA points out. This is what influences The Algorithm.
This is all that is needed. Consider:
1. The psychological harms of social media are very well understood, as often shown in Meta's own leaked reports. But the discussion has focused on youths because "think of the children" (which is actually justified here) but overshadows the harm to the general population.
2. Elon and Twitter. 'Nuff said.
3. Beyond public channels, there is even more negativity in private message groups like WhatsApp and Telegram which is invisible from the outside. I've seen a lot of large influence campaigns and disinformation flow through those channels that have not made the news. Which also means that fact-checking is not a thing there.
4. The countries where happiness is rising has two main (mostly mutually exclusive) traits:
a) They have low inflation (from TFA: Portugal, Italy, Spain). Maybe this is sufficient to overcome the effects of negative media environment.
b) They are largely authoritarian states (from TFA: China, India, Vietnam) where the media environment is heavily controlled. So the constant media narrative is "Things have never been better!" (Though the cracks are showing in India, because people will tolerate this only as long as things are good, and genuine dissatisfaction is breaking the narrative barrier, since "fake it til you make it" does not work for national economies. I suspect cracks will show in China too if the gravy train comes to an end there.)
5. The lockdown from the pandemic was probably just the impetus that drove more people to their smartphones and got them hooked into this cycle of negativity.
So basically people have been inundated, via public and private channels, with constant waves of negativity and disinformation. Even the "positivity" is stuff like social media influencers portraying unrealistic, luxurious lifestyles ("a day in the life of a PM at a tech company".) This further breeds resentment in people even if their own lives are actually getting better.
In my tinfoil hat mode, I even suspect the global media environment is heavily manipulated to sow dissatisfaction and cause instability (hence the "vibecession") as a form of economic warfare. ("We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within." - Kruschev, maybe)
But Occam's Razor says good old capitalism is a sufficient explanation.
We normalized children working in sweatshops making our things overseas. We made their suffering a cheap punchline and labeled comedians gritty for normalizing it. Extended the apathy to seniors working Walmart to not starve. To the treatment of factory farmed animals. Extended it to Amazon workers literally forced to piss in soda bottles/dying on the warehouse floor as managers tell co-workers they can't perform CPR to try to keep them alive until an ambulance comes, it's more important they just work around the body. We lost all moral compass and are horrific people. That horribleness/acceptance of horribleness is leaking from consumerism and into more and more just being what our society is now. And cheap social commentary humor absorbed the energy that would have been put to changing things and instead just normalized bad behavior. You don't get Donald Trump without Jon Stewart/Joe Rogan both normalizing behavior and building apathy. We went from serious talk about societal problems in our papers/magazine/church groups/social clubs to nodding our heads as we consumed negative/lowest value humor from comedians, the most depressed/live horrible disgusting lives people in our country.
We made eagle scouts the but of jokes (again crappy humor with crappy results) and convince kids they are too cool for programs that foster everyone coming together and doing shared programs/experiences. We removed so much experiential growth/community that was baked into being a youth in the past. Instead of community sports it's fancy paid programs for the cool kids that get accepted or have high talent. You can't do anything with friends that is cheap let alone a revenue driver (buy fix junk cars, do yardword, do sidework for a friends parent who have their own business). So much we value later in life came from doing things that weren't cool or maybe we didn't want to do when we were kids or we needed to be guided into. Now we let children choose but also don't guide them to making growth choices or protect them so they can do uncool things (other than distracting games maybe or 'cool in a geeky way' things).
We slavishly worshiped the tech economy that pushed bits around in machines but don't really do anything other than replaced workers jobs or figure out how to suck money out of systems as a middle man, and made that our ideal 'dream and future'. Efficiency goes up for what was there, but we arent' really creating new just optimizing while tech bros suck the moving dollars out of the system causing entropy.
Current culture inflicts a horrific level of sexual abuse against young women. Maybe it was always that way and I was naive, but the amount of manipulation/lieing/emotional betrayal by men is unacceptable and beyond anything I experienced in the past. Add in so many more women doing sex work either online but also lots more irl. That really burns someone out/detaches. Between the two our previous social construct is gone and in the new one I personally expect women to just give up on men.
I think that there is something very medically wrong that got waived away as an 'obesity epidemic'. I hope Ozempic will lead to figuring it out and not let it be waived away as 'fat people' one the people impacted has lost the weight but still have problems. I've watched my mom and so many others go from happy, healthy, energtic to putting on weight and every day life just being very very hard that it doesn't make sense.
There's a lot going on. Past America would have addressed things as they came up. But we stopped doing that. We've looked away for so long/from so many things we no longer have a direction to look away to.
Seeing a Fentanyl victim on your way to work ruins your mood.
Using Waymo as a woman because Ubers are legit rape traps anchors fear in your mind (https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/disturbing-details...).
Seeing trash everywhere, alongside every freeway in the Bay Area? Subliminal assurance everything is a mess.
BART?
etc etc etc.