U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, new Gallup report finds
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
- Sit in a cafe in the morning and watch people go to work.
- Sit in a cafe in the afternoon and watch people go to lunch.
- Sit in a cafe at night and watch people eat dinner.
Really made me see and reflect on my own ways of going about them.
I would be willing to bet if you took a week off work and just went around relaxing at cafes in your home city, you would discover all sorts of interesting things and people without even having to leave the country.
People are people, and you can find stressed out people everywhere. You can also find relaxed, easy going, loving people everywhere too, if you look hard enough.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78wpz/covid-changed-our-rel...
Your roads are scarily broad while your sidewalks are narrow and sometimes just stop suddenly; everyone seems to have a car even if they shouldn’t; the rules of the road seem to be treated as suggestions (at least for cars — jaywalking is verboten), while also being a source of arbitrary revenue precisely because everyone treats them as suggestions; “family” is a much stronger trope in America than in the U.K. or Germany, yet “I love you daddy” is a real Valentines’ day card I’ve actually seen, in a supermarket with many others like it in different variations of phrase and relative; guns feel like a trivial hobby or possession barely worth mentioning, and suggesting even the slightest of limits to the right to bear arms is one of the quickest ways to be compared to a 20th century dictator and some of the critics insisting “a well armed society is a polite society”; your billboards are covered in adverts for loans to cover bail costs, yet sex is hidden away; you’re as loud about Christianity as a minaret is about Islam, far more so than the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen around Europe; there is a constant bombardment of adverts for insurance and health products I don’t see elsewhere (everything from magic drugs to teeth so straight and white they could be a metaphor); there are regional things like the Californian everything-causes-cancer warnings matched only by one British tabloid newspaper; and yes, race related issues are so much louder and in-your-face that even I couldn’t miss them.
(I know the U.K. seems weird to visiting Americans, because they’ve explicitly told me. But the U.K.’s weirdness is different to yours, just as the cultural pain-points are).
If someone can make a buck on it, it exists.
OTOH, I very much agree that the personal is political. Indeed, in an increasingly divisive and politicized society, simply tending to one's garden can be a powerful political statement.
I live in ATX now in overpriced, poorly-maintained apartments full of "stock-broker"-types, salespeople, managers, and software dev couples, and people who think they're hot sh%t either because of inheritance or university pedigree. $3k/month isn't like Valley prices; this is a 1400 sq ft cost-saver efficiency for me. I'd happily trade for a 3000 sq ft / $6k/month place if the people were more decent over there, if that's within the realm of reasonable expectations.
There's no apparent stress of amongst the people with more money than sense, but there is stress amongst the hundreds of people living under I-35 when they've been told that their existence is illegal when they have nowhere else to go.
They attract people who don’t know the city very well and have a check list of amenities. When your lease is up I would encourage you to look at different neighborhoods, ideally a little away from the “revitalized former industrial/meatpacking district” which is probably bougie breweries and wine lounges now.
It's an "expensive" (for the area), boring, mixed-use development that gentrified an east side area, abutted right next to I-35 and neglected homeless (who's existence are now illegal thanks to hateful bandaid policies).
And, it appears to be populated mostly by Millenial kidults who live to party hard, act like they're still in high school, got their jobs by lying on their resumes, let their dogs pee and poop in the common hallways, and live like their hedonism is more important than anything or anyone else. I dislike most of them because they resemble Seinfeldian, Kafkaesque caricatures and many offer nothing more than shallow, vapid, shitty, ignorant, infantile %sshole, consumerist, ephemerality manufactured by a steady diet of mass media and screen time.
One woman walks around with one hand in the air like Peg Bundy from Married... with Children but seems like a WASP who works-out and dresses to climb up the next richest pole. She won't even acknowledge my presence with a friendly "hello."
My wife and I realized very quickly that because we didnt fit into the corporate hierarchy of ivy league grad, VP at FANG corporation that we were not worth the time.
Explored more of the bay area and found lovely people in other areas. Every now and then we get a peninsula type here but they move pretty quickly as they cant handle the unbridled good mornings and nobody starting a conversation with their resume credentials.
It felt... like everyone from the Midwest in their 20s had moved to a city, to live what they took from their childhood TV to be a "hip" life, which developers therefore supplied in the most cost-effective way.
Not to say that it isn't a hoot, or the food is bad... but it just had a "paint hasn't dried yet" weird new feeling to me.
IDK but there is definitely an atmosphere of us vs them watch your back.
One of the things that always stood out to me was how patient everyone generally was with one another.
I remember riding around on chicken buses to get from town to town, and on more than one occasion, the bus would just pull over and the driver would get out, grab some lunch, talk to a friend. Nobody was in a rush.
My friend that I was traveling with and I would stare at each other and be like "what the hell is going on?" as we looked around at everyone else on the bus and nobody seems to care at all that their day has this arbitrary delay. I can only imagine if a driver did that here in Seattle with 30+ people all trying to get somewhere.
I like living in the US, I think it has some massive upsides, but I also think I'm a bit of a hostage to what I think my life is supposed to look like, versus simplification somewhere else.
This mad rush to be everywhere at a specific time, usually when tens of thousands of other people are also trying to be at a similar spot at the same time, is a major cause of people being traffic. Heck, as the pandemic has shown, we don't even really need to always be in the same physical place to have a meeting; technology can relieve us of that burden.
My family gave up driving years ago, due to cost and stress, and it's been great largely for this reason. I don't worry about dealing with all of the people who have Very Important Places To Be. That's Metro's job, and they do it well.
In places where this is sort of thing is common, I wonder if people aren't bothered by it because they truly in their heart of hearts don't mind, or because they've just resigned themselves to the unpredictability of their transportation.
GP commenters is missing out that this is usually a culture-wide expectation.
If you're 30 minutes late, you mention the bus, and your boss gives you a knowing smile. Because it happens to him too.
Efficient? Less so. More relaxed? God yes.
That's kinda the point. If it's culturally acceptable for this to be normal behavior, then yes, people _would_ accommodate such disruptions.
Also, it's not like the US is doing a good job at getting big things done. 30 years for 50 miles of Seattle-area subway?
I dunno, maybe like improving the quality of life for everyone on this planet?
If you think things like this [0] will happen without "big things" getting done, you're mistaken.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...
> attitude like this is almost impossible to work with.
Again, in reality, it is not impossible and works well enough all over the world.
> It is ultimately a rather selfish lifestyle.
In response to a post about US workers being among the most stressed in the world, you're suggesting that alternative strategies are "selfish"?
I think that yes really it is. I agree with the many people in this thread that say Americans are way over the top with rushing and stressing out over things and putting unreasonable demands on themselves and others.
That said I completely agree that no its not fine for a regular bus driver to just stop and take his lunch and chat with friends just because he feels like it. That's would be what I agree is "this attitude" and selfish.
However, in this particular case we might be talking Greyhound style long distance service and it might just be how this service route is planned out and everyone knows. Then it's fine.
Context matters I would say.
Made up example: your company has a rule to end all meetings 5 minutes before the scheduled end (for real, not just a fake rule to 'make people feel less stressed'). In this company, if you are late to your next meeting you better have a good explanation.
Next company over no such rule exists and higher up regularly end their meetings late. Don't even expect me to make up an excuse when I come 5 minutes late to the next meeting.
You certainly wouldn't book any kind of meeting based on the expected arrival time, a healthy amount of buffer time would need to be calculated in, and that just gives you time to go to a local cafe before your meeting.
This does happen on Seattle-area transit, but definitely not on every route. Routes on the south end, both of Seattle and in south King County, are far more likely to have a couple of drivers who will pass each other and briefly pop open the door or slide open the window for a minute of chat. I've seen drivers taking their layover or lunch at Burien TC or TIBS who gab like old friends with any other drivers they encounter. But at Northgate or Aurora Village? Almost never happens.
Back before the big restructure in advance of Capitol Hill and UW stations opening, I rode the 72 virtually every day. If I got a particular driver, I mentally built in a roughly 6-minute wait somewhere in Ravenna because he'd pass a friend out walking or also driving a bus and they'd chat. Same for the 4 through the Central District with a different driver.
I like that transit has improved so much around here that it's easier and faster to get almost everywhere I'm going. But I also remember the quirks of transit past with that fondness of memory.
I live on the East Coast and had a transit reverse commute for many years. I frequently rode an express bus in the evening on its last return journey from a suburb to the city, and was often the only rider. One day, the driver asked if I'd mind if he made a brief stop for a lotto ticket. I had no problem, so I said "sure". He was able return the favor one night when I was in a hurry but had to stop for groceries. He waited 15 minutes for me to grab some essentials. We got to know each other pretty well over the 18 months I rode the bus and made more than a few other stops as needed along the way.
That said, three things worry me:
1) How complicated the health industry is there. Being from Argentina where health is universal, or living now in Germany where is also universal, that is crazy for me.
2) How easy you are fired and that you basically don't get any protection if you are. Again, here in Germany we have insurance that covers for many months, etc.
3) How bad employees are treated there by (most but not all?) companies.
Personal story. My sister, she had to travel in the middle of the pandemic to my home country as my father was sick. She asked for permission to work remotely for 3 weeks. She had to stay 2 more because my father's health was not the best. When she returned, the company told her that that is not what they expected of her and fired her on the spot. Now, I was in my home country so I know my sister worked all the normal hours and more, she was connected all the time, and giving her 120% (if such a thing exists). And still, they said, good by. Crazy.
So doing nothing / business as usual wasn't a fiscally sustainable choice.
The US hates cutting costs via market intervention too (also see our crazy college costs problem), so until we decide to finally tackle it, they’ll keep on rising.
I wouldn't say either one is good or bad, I've learnt to appreciate the differences.
Having lived in latin America and the US, US feels more concerned about individualism, achievements and efficiency and it shows in friendships. Outings are organized days in advance, people are expected to show up on time, calendar invites are not unheard of.
In latin America, life is more about family and being happy. You can call a friend the same day and enjoy a cold beer after work (some time after work, punctuality not required). I think people would laugh in my face if I tell them I'll send them a calendar invite.
But in smaller cities I've been able to find a great balance of both. Work on ambitious ideas but spend evenings and free time with friends and family.
Wanna grab a drink?
As another data point, I know people who are introverted and need a little mental preparation before seeing people, even good friends, so impromptu meetings can cause social anxiety.
> You can call a friend the same day and enjoy a cold beer after work (some time after work, punctuality not required)
I've definitely been trying to get better at the last part of this. People finish work at different times some days, sure. So it's fine to just head to the bar whenever you're done, and whoever gets there first will grab a table and just chill alone with a drink until the other person shows up, and that's the norm, not the exception. But I feel like most of the time (where I live) you try to figure out when both people will be done with work and then only meet when you can arrive at about the same time, creating unnecessary anxiety around punctuality.
It's like we've decided to let psychopaths dictate how society operates.
Everyone can't live in a single family home with 3 acres, if we have the priorities we say we want (liveable cities, etc).
It’s often beyond even simple competition / selfishness. You routinely see people going out of their way to be mean even when it doesn’t benefit them. But switch towns and the whole situation is flipped.
The article mentions -
By contrast, the daily stress levels for women in Western Europe went down in the last year, which researchers attribute to social safety nets for parents and workers to prevent unemployment.
It's a weird place when you think about it. And yet most days I accept this as normal.
I've been working at a high level for 15 years now and I feel like I'm just barely making it out of the swamp. I have no psychological safety because a single bad decision or an incident of bad luck could completely derail my life.
That is not a symptom, but the problem. People can normalize anything. You could normalize living like a medieval peasant - many people did. Smart people know they can just keep doing something and eventually others will accept it to a degree.
You deserve better.
[How nice that this is getting downvoted. It's a legit question. I have family members who are social workers and know these services exist, and it seems like it's most cities, but don't know for sure, hence the question mark.]
There's a toxic culture in the USA that looks down upon welfare. For those people, welfare doesn't exist, even if they find themselves in that environment. And since they've convinced themselves that they'll never take welfare, they expect others to follow by their own rules.
This culture leads to a particular anti-welfare voting pattern.
This is coming from someone who has never lived in a shelter, so I may be wrong, but it's definitely my fear and a source of motivation when working not-great jobs.
What does happen is that charity groups like catholic churches or st vincent de paul will buy homeless and runaways one-way tickets, but only if they have a verifiable destination.
has examples of several cities that do this, not just charity groups
> And it shows
Presently we have seen 4 consecutive quarters of substantial y/y wage growth in the US.
What counts as substantial?
Per a blog I read:
Q1 2021 wages were 7.7% higher than Q1 2020 wages.
Q4 2020 wages were 7.7% higher than Q4 2019 wages.
Q3 2020 wages were 6.2% higher than Q3 2019 wages.
Q2 2020 wages were 6.5% higher than Q2 2019 wages.
It remains to be seen how bad the general consumer goods price increases will end up being.
Also considering that the least stressed country was Russia, I don’t think that wealth inequality or the lack of a middle class is a major driver either.
This is particularly relevant because European economies have significantly higher unemployment rates. Especially long-term youth unemployment. This makes any difference of European and American workers an apples to orange comparison.
You could have a low-skilled 23 year old American working a dead-end McJob. His counterpart in Italy is unable to get any work, has a pittance of disposable income and is stuck living with his parents. Only one is being counted.
We don’t really know who’s more miserable. It’s quite possible the unemployed European still has it better than the Wal-Mary greeter. But the point is this survey doesn’t tell us, because it’s excluding the unemployed from the respondent pool.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/youth_unemployment... https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/youth_unemployment...
Double-clicking in, looking at France, Germany, Italy, Spain: only Germany has sub-20% unemployment (better than the USA actually).
This seems to contradict your point. Where are you getting 1-4% from? I'm not sure if there's a "definition of unemployment" difference going on here?
Looking at the overall unemployment rates, you'll see the variation is mostly in the 1-4% range.
For completeness the corrected 2019 stats from my data source would be USA 3.9% and EU 7.6% which is in the range you quoted.
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Unemployment_rate/...
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/Unemployment_rate/...
Post-COVID (peri-COVID? 2020) numbers are US 8.3 vs. EU 8.2%, so it has narrowed recently.
I was curious, and after a quick search it seems Gallup has a poll from 2019 that's more generic (across the whole population), and it points in the same direction:
Summary: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/americans-are-some...
Original report press release: https://news.gallup.com/poll/249098/americans-stress-worry-a...
I haven't taken the time to dig in to specific countries or demographic groups, I would be interested to compare, as you did, youth groups in US vs. FR for example.
It's a luxury but one that Americans should be able to afford for all.
The first sick day might be unpaid though. Here it depends on the occupation, as in, which collective agreement your industry uses. I think the idea is that it reduces "unnecessary" sick days, but I think I have my first sick day as paid and I think the last time I had a sick day was around when World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth came out in 2018 (I swear it was a coincidence).
Agreed, but health care first, no?
I'm not sure people are even stressed about vacations. I think people are so stressed that if they lose their jobs, they lose their healthcare and since so many people have so little savings they face homelessness (our school system doesn't do a very good job of teaching economics for the individual - my parents taught me), They're stressed because their hormones are out of whack because for so many our diet and exercise routines are horrible (though, some of that could be blamed on long commutes). It's a symphony of issues that's causing stress derived from work that isn't the work itself, or time away from it =(
If you lose a job in the US, you lose your healthcare (COBRA is way to expensive to be an option). Minimal housing protections in most states means you're one missed payment away from homelessness. Food banks are critically short-staffed and under-stocked across the US. Jobless benefits can take weeks or months to receive and even then they're usually well below what a person needs to survive.
There was such a stigma against moochers and "welfare queens" in the 80s and 90s that politicians would rather cut funding to all benefits than let one person abuse the system. Florida even spent $178 million on drug tests to save from paying out $60k in welfare because addicts don't deserve to eat for some reason.
World peace.
Stressed, isolated, distracted people tend to work for the weekend and live in day-tight compartments.
When something upsets them, they post about it on social media and feel better.
When something really upsets them, they make a petition on change.org and feel better.
When something really, really upsets them, they reach out to a friend, but that friend is too stressed or busy or distracted to care.
When something really, really, really upsets them, they do something violent which plays on the news at 11 to distract some while the rest are too busy or stressed to care.
Get every other country on-board, connect them with a global supply chain, and voilà!
For the shareholders, of course.
When I lived in San Francisco, it seemed like the hedonic treadmill was in full force. People came to the Bay Area stunned that they could start out making more money than their parents ever dreamed of, then a few years later they feel grumpy because they're ONLY making $300k/yr when their buddy is making $450k/yr at FAANG and driving a new Tesla. It's easy for lifestyle inflation to happen in an environment where people all around you seem to have Scrooge McDuck levels of money and all the lifestyle bloat to go along with it.
My advice is to take your tech skills and leave for greener pastures. I see absolutely no reason to pay all those extra California taxes and housing costs.
There are out-of-state alternatives where $300k is doable such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Houston, but if the OP is a lifelong Californian like myself, then moving to another state may be quite a change.
I'm in a similar situation as the OP. I currently rent an apartment in a coastal area near Silicon Valley that I love. I can afford to purchase a place up to about $425K based on my income, savings, and DTI, but $425K isn't enough to purchase anything near commute distance from Silicon Valley, and while I could have afforded Sacramento two years ago, the pandemic-era rise of prices in the Sacramento area have priced me out of the neighborhoods I want to live in. Thus I still rent.
How good is your credit? If it's good and you have a high income to debt ratio, your PMI will likely be pretty minimal. If so, you may end up netting better if you invest what you'd put down and let that money grow instead. Or you can put some of that into points for lower interest rates.
These things are pretty easy to figure out if you know what your home budget. There are a few places you can get rough estimates based on your credit score.
[1]: https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mortgage-rates/?mortgageT... [2]: https://www.hsh.com/calc-pmi.html
While you are doing that, see if you can get a Naca loan.
Many credit cards claim to do this for you, but to me that defeats the point. If you aren't taking the time do your own accounting, it simply becomes another email/HTML table/push notification/whatever to ignore.
It's been incredibly helpful for being aware of my spending. In fact it's so helpful I actually forgot how much I'm saving and was pleasantly surprised when I remembered how much it is. It's also very effective for staying on top of lifestyle creep.
I'm not trying to brag, but a single person making six figures should be doing quite well anywhere in the US. I really suggest sitting down and carefully tracking how you spend money for a month or two to find out where it's going.
One example: discrepancies in the local cost of living. For example, someone could live like royalty on a 6 figures is Arkansas, but might barely scrape by with the same salary in San Francisco. According to nerd wallet, a salary of $106k in San Francisco is roughly equivalent to a salary of $50k in Little Rock, AR.
It's pretty presumptuous to suggest that they need to sitting down and carefully tracking spend without knowing more information. Especially considering the original poster wasn't asking for advice (or judgement) from a random internet stranger.
source: https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...
Unless: you have some crippling college debt ($20k/semester*8 semesters paid over ? years), or have a persistent medical issue ($10k/yr out of pocket), or another terrible corner case that I haven't had the displeasure of encountering.
That’s why.
Edited for spelling and grammar.
Education - especially science - is pretty lackluster almost everywhere in the world.
If you really think the average person in Rangoon has as comfortable of a life to spend time educating themselves as Americans or Europeans or people from any other advanced economy - you're kidding yourself.
Sure - they might have more desire on average, since they have a lot more to gain. But that's only going to get you so far.
Also - you have to think that China and India are already almost half of the world's population. The developed world is another ~18%. Most of the effects of globalization have already been felt - especially for knowledge workers.
You're wrong, just because it is not visible to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.You only have to visit a random science postgrad program and see students from all over the world represented - even at prestigious US universities, having immigrated after doing their undergraduate studies elsewhere. Their science education is good enough for Ivy league admissions departments, and those who get admitted are the very tip of a large iceberg.
> Most of the effects of globalization have already been felt - especially for knowledge workers.
This is a bold claim, which I think is wrong: a lot of developing countries don't have sufficient infrastructure (yet) to unlock their full potential. The talent is already present, but lacking connectivity and experience. The population share of the developing countries will balloon over the next few decades as developed world population flattens or shrinks.
Why would you expect students to not be represented proportionally?
If anything, you should expect a disproportionate share because admissions weight races and ethnicities - especially, if as you claim - science education is better (it's not) in Rwanda or Rangoon than The US or the EU.
> The talent is already present, but lacking connectivity and experience.
You are pretty much reiterating my argument. The developed world is, by definition, behind. This puts people who live there at a disadvantage - in general - to people who live in the developed world.
- Turkey (eg. software, defense, drones, medical device manufacturing)
- Pakistan (eg. aerospace, maritime, defense)
- India (eg. medical, chemical, pharma, defense)
- Russia (eg. defense, materials)
- Brazil (eg. software, aerospace, textiles)
- Malaysia (eg. high tech, primary metals, value-add mfg)
- Indonesia (eg. primary metals mfg & vertical integration)
- China (eg. everything)
If you were current you would know what you're saying is mostly wrong, and true at the far less impactful margins.
One would expect a country the size of Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, and Mexico to produce something. It is not surprising that they do.
Are you current with the fact that FAANG+M alone are bigger by orders of magnitude than the tech scene in any of those countries AND, importantly, that they are growing much faster?
So many jobs here are dehumanizing. We are treated like cogs by a highly stressed management, and if you don't "pull your weight" and overwork yourself then you are cast from the group. Try to push back, and you get a talking to by silver-tongued executives who just don't understand why we don't Work Harder. In a previous job, I was scheduled shifts from 7am-9pm just a week after being in the hospital.
It treats companies as individuals and thinks they're all different, which is bolstered by the BS terminology about "corporate culture" that the companies themselves push.
But to anyone who sees the big picture, it's obvious that this is capitalism. Under capitalism, you are a cog in a machine. Always have been, always will be.
This isn't some particular company treating its employees like trash. It's the entire system of commodifying all aspects of life in order for the line in the chart to keep going up indefinitely.
But individualism has people so utterly blind to this that they treat companies as people, which is dystopian to the max.
No, it's more likely to be a vague, emotional impulse for "more", without the bureaucratic apparatus to enforce it in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with human life.
Capitalism demands constant growth in ways and for reasons that are different from any other hierarchy.
Even in a capitalist-owned firm, enlightened self-interest can lead to decent management practice.
You are comparing a rich tech job to a different rich tech job.
The United States has untouchable classes as well, they're just called "homeless" or "undocumented" and we are taught to believe that "it's their own fault" rather than the result of a shitty traditional caste system.
The last couple decades have expanded this class and made it more visible. I don't think this was a conspiracy, but the existence of this class is certainly advantageous to corporations that want to keep people down.
Work identity is also a thing. Where you kinda become what you do for a living. Which is bad.
Money is bad for your mental health unless you know when to pull the plug and don't have bills to pay but no income.
The balance is not hard. Which leads me back to identity. Why the fuck would want to get something you cannot pay for?
lol
I've seen once a video called something like "a day of googler"
and I was shocked that "average day" was hanging out with your coworkers after the work
don't get me wrong, it's not like we dont do it here (poland), but it's from time to time, even when we have insanely good relations with eachother
it's 16:00 on the clock and that's it - cya people tomorrow.
I hope the video was not reflecting reality well?
and the rest,
This puts a lot on managers. I don't think leaders in organization are incentivized to make their reports happy. Managers don't get promotions because their team is happy. They get promotions doing things that make quality of life worse, empire building, adding responsibilities, team closing tickets, disruptive changes that only sound good. I don't think managers see happiness as part of their job.
I think its a lot to ask people and companies to do this out of the goodness of their heart or expect them to be forward thinking enough to see that happier employees mean better performance. And that second might not even be true, we could be stressed because were trying to be most efficient possible at all times.
Fighting, fucking, sleeping... it's all we know how to do anymore. We used to make things, build things, share accomplishments as a society and a nation with each other. Now everything is about the personal accumulation of power/money. Not sure how a society like this is meant to last.
Given the events of the last few years and the fact that a cretin like Trump was ever elected President, I'm pretty sure we are 100% fucked.
The American dream implies stress. If you work hard, you will be successful.
Unless you were born to neglecting parents or went to a shitty school or learned the wrong major (arts major anyone?) or chose a low paying job (schoolteachers in the house?) or had something bad happen to your health or a million other possibilities. Or maybe your parents are super cool, the school was nice but your cognitive abilities are just not right for the high paying jobs (most high paying jobs require high cognitive abilities like finance, software, medicine) and you are working as a car mechanic (don't get me wrong, it's an awesome career but not likely to be viewed as "successful" the same way you mean it). Actually the equation "work hard = success" is quite ridiculous. Do you think Uber drivers don't work hard? Shop clerks? Construction workers? Nurses ? Teachers ? Where is this idea even coming from?
Boomers wrought this cancerous thinking onto us. Can't wait for them to all be dead.
Also reading all this thread make me thinking: this is rich country problem.
I could put here examples from eg. Africa where kids do not go to school becouse no cents for bus or they need to take care for younger siblings. Or no sweater. But this will not really help. Looks like it's advanced civilisation problem. Pretty much like in sci-fi movies: overcrowd, no money, health problems... But no worry, just like in 60's abundance of drugs will help ! \s
Would be nice to have something to help USAmerica (and others, becouse same problems are in other places too) but most likely any real help needs time and good society consciousnes.
One thing, I belive, could immediately help is peace in heart and mind which cames from God.
It takes a solid 5 years to get over what my friends call “that American Fight or Fight instinct”, and I don’t miss the amount of fear,distrust and readiness to fight that is always in the back of your mind being from the USA.
Also, remotely siphoning $$$ off of bay area tech companies while living in the third world helps with stress a lot.
https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-...