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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

I think it is totally bizarre that so many people seem not to acknowledge the possibility that people can be depressed because their life sucks. It has to be chemical imbalance or nothing.

I think our society doesnt just manufacture depressed people, i think its mostly rotten at its core and being depressed is a pretty reasonable reaction.

Im currently trying to figure out how to buy out of it and its another level of depressing to see that even with my ridiculous salary which i save 60% of after taxes, i cant keep up with inflation enough to buy a standard of living that would have been middle class 50 years ago.

Well its depressing and i reserve my right to feel depressed about it.

But back to the main, it is the most bizarre of premises to me that people could not be sad about their life because they dislike their life, only because of some purely chemical lottery draw.

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Here's an honest question. Is it called depression when your mental state accurately reflects your situation. I suspect for many people, life really is bad, and they feel commensurately bad as well. Is that depression? Or is depression when you feel worse than you "should" given your actual state?

I generally have no hope for my own future, i have no real sense of happiness in any meaningful way, i am trapped in my circumstances, with no way out. I generally feel bad all the time. I don't think i'm depressed however, because i believe my mental state more or less depicts my actual situation.

The diagnostic criteria make exceptions for mourning but not for realistic evaluation of future prospects.

In practice psychological diagnosis is not a science of any kind. It's not like a medical diagnosis.

Future prospects are inherently unknowable. So by that definition you should consider this depression.

I think not quite so unknowable.

Economic and resources close future quite certain availability prognosis is in the range of even the most basic common sense, and yeah, for many, the prospects are shockingly depressing.

This is an opinion post on how Real Estate and other sectors took most of the wealth generated by the technology sector in Canada.

https://palladiummag.com/2019/09/19/how-not-to-build-a-count...

There's a great book on this topic by Michael Hudson called "Killing the Host"

It’s comments like these that slowly start to extinguish that flame i once had in me that wanted to work and chase after a “good life” once i became an adult, is it truly like this?

I look around me in real life however and see what appears to be a reality that contradicts this (people seem mostly happy with where they are, though that could just be my environment or lack of perception), i’m not quite sure how to feel anymore.

Don’t take someone who saves 60% of their income and still feel miserable seriously. In general be empathetic to depressed people but don’t let them trap you with their despair.

Just curious, what is the implication here? That im sad because i dont consume anything?

I live in a very cheap country where i can consume drastically more than the average american (housing and food mostly, not much material stuff) at a much lower price. My lifestyle would seem pretty extravagant to many.

But im trying to return and realizing the numbers are insane.

I personally think of it as 'conditional' depression. Mine was conditional on getting out of poverty wages and into a decent job. I'm still cash poor but I also have a place of my own and stuff. I was in a depressed or depression-adjacent place for years, treatment didn't help, either felt nothing or went manic depending on the med.

I dont expect to ever own a house, I don't expect to find a wife and settle down any time soon. I don't expect a big number in the bank. I leave that up to future me. Present me is doing the best he can to keep moving forward and doing right by himself. Can't worry about what I can't control. Can take control of what I can now, and trust the person I evolve into in the future to handle more, having learned how that works first person.

Awesome attitude. I hope you succeed.

I mean, its different for everyone. If what society wants to give you is naturally pretty close to what you want then it will be a lot easier for you. This is true for many many people and most of them are probably reasonably happy.

If you are the polar opposite just know you are in for a battle and you likely will hqve to take om extreme personal risk to make it work.

But i mean, certainly there are plenty of happy people out there.

Moment to moment, everything in society is at equilibrium and therefore looks "normal". Even wartorn countries experience a strong impulse to normalize themselves and return to day to day living, despite compromise and sacrifice. Likewise people can't become depressed and suddenly cease to have any interest in anything at all. It's more a case of something becoming top-of-mind more often and coloring whether they see "a future". Like throwing the match before it's over, depression makes you relax your grip on striving for things, and on enjoying that struggle.

And, to speak to the quandary of the article, it can be relentless if your engagement with everyday life is constantly mediated by commercial elements, which it is, today. Poverty strikes harder in that instance because you don't seem to be able to "do" anything that matters to other people without engaging your financial brain(which you equate to survival, since you have to constantly calculate rent and groceries). So you're going to just be in survival mode all the time which is likely to give you a mix of anxiety and depression - all routes closed off except the worst and riskiest ones. But then flip the situation into a non-commercial one and suddenly a whole segment of the discouraged-depressed can be creative and engaged, and I think that's really telling. So long as you have the strength, it's worth it to try to move forward in your life, because you can't really help the people around you by holding yourself back and staying still.

In the exact same position.

Live in Canada making $200k. After taxes and pension that's $123k, because I'm self employed.

After living expenses I have 90k left.

To buy a house without a loan (religiously I don't do loans with interest.)

That's 1.2M for a bungalow (that I don't even want for 400k.)

1.2M / 90k is 13 times my annual savings rate.

Not to mention lack of infrastructure, the mathematical impossibility of the economic system and a Healthcare system that cannot withstand the demographic pressure incoming. There's serious risk and uncertainty for debt ridden Canada. I don't care what anyone says. The future looks unreliable for this country.

Living standards have depreciated sustaintally. My income has tripled, but real estate purchasing power is a third of what it was 10 years ago.

I want to move back to the middle east, but people think I'm crazy. I think they're crazy.

TLDR; most in Canada became rich based on debt + assets, not labor, they prefer the status quo. The parasite is killing the host.

Yeah pretty close to the numbers im looking at. To have a 5 acre home stead with a 2500sqft house im calculating i would need about 1.25m in most of the markets im looking at.

> Living standards have depreciated sustaintally.

Sounds wrong. By what metric?

If you judge by real estate prices it is probably true.

I would rather be making 100k 10 years ago then making 300k now in terms of housing prospects.

Interesting that's not what I'm seeing in my area. Here, houses doubled, maybe tripled in "value" over the last 10+ years. But that's from 200k to 600k which doesn't mean my salary has to double or triple, just that it takes longer to pay off. But working in tech, the last thing I do is complain since it's still quite doable. For a median income, true, not so much.

Real estate isn't everything though, definitely not enough to judge living standards. I might be wrong but though.

The problem is, you have spent most of that time saving in old salaries even if in 2022 your salary has caught up to 3x house prices. The house prices are there already, if you were planning on buying, you may still be in the game but you are probably looking at years of extra work.

>I want to move back to the middle east, but people think I'm crazy. I think they're crazy.

It does sound crazy though. There are a handful of cities in North America where a bungalow costs 1.2 million. Rather than move to the Middle East, you could move maybe 20 miles away from city center and get that same house for $200k.

It doesn't matter. If you can't buy a house on leverage, you really can't buy a house.

Take a quick look at house prices in Ontario. The list prices are understated and they're still too high. Add 20 - 30% for the sale price depending on the city. I've seen houses sell for 150% over the list price. Moving 100 miles from the city centers still isn't affordable. Not even factoring in heating, gas and electricity costs.

I could move to Alberta... but it actually doesn't make much financial sense either. Buying a house doesn't make sense when your government needs to raise taxes in the future, because it's incapable of funding its social services and promises to an aging population.

Ignoring the USA, which I don't want to live in. In the middle east I'd have a 0% income, capital gains and a lower corporate tax rate.

Most of my relatives have Range Rovers and five story >4000 sqft houses. Healthcare is actually really good now. The highways are amazing. I fit into the culture there.

Yes. There's poverty. Yes. There are poor people. Yes. I'd be rich there.

But you know what's immoral. Letting asset holders accure all the wealth, have low to no taxes, while taxing the people that work to build your nation. Upwards of 63%. Taxing the middle class to its extinction.

I can't fix the middle east from here. Me moving to a wealthy country doesn't fix that. It'd be better for the country if I moved back.

The hard part is finding an income there.

The thing about it is that things are never all good or all bad. Everything is relative or has a frame of reference to it. If you try and you have good coping skills that are well exercised, you find the things that keep you going.

An example, there is a lot of injustice in life and world hunger and crime or whatever, and if we took it all at once it would be horrible. But we can look around the room, or at stable relationships we have in life, and find joy and things we appreciate. In a global sense things can suck for this and that reason. But there are other frames of reference that are good, joyful, give us hope.

If you are depressed, the lack of appropriate coping keeps you stuck in the frame of reference where everything is bad, and you don't find a way out of it, it becomes self re-enforcing.

There is even a thing called psychotic depression (feel free to Google that) where this depressed state makes you delusional and when you find evidence that things are all right you reject it, and you invent false reality where things are worse than they are.

Speaking from experience, feeling "depressed" about ones status measured on some scale might not be what is meant by "depression" which often goes way deeper and renders a person unable to do certain things. Simply being unhappy with ones life, that's just not it. At least in my experience.

I'm not comparing my status to anyone else. I'm comparing the elements of my actual life to the elements of the life I would like.

Gotcha. I saw you mention "middle class" which definitely sounds like a comparison to me.

I think expectations are a big part of it. I have met homeless who are much happier despite their lack of material wealth. Similar differences apply when you look a cross countries and cultures.

It's less about current situation than belief about the future. The homeless can believe that they will catch a lucky break, even irrationally.

Highly-informed internet people with very realistic understandings of the prospects available in 21st century capitalism find it harder to delude themselves.

If you don't believe in the future, you become unable to act for yourself (depressed).

I strongly disagree with your first sentiment and strongly agree with the 2nd.

It isn't a matter of knowledge or irrationality. Someone with a difficult life can be happy without the expectation of improvement.

It may be possible, but that's not how most people _usually_ cope.

I think the increasingly typical coping mechanism of disassociating from the present and looking to the future is a fundamental part of the problem. More people would be happy if they found ways to engage with the present and find meaning and small pleasures in it, despite its defects. Deferring happiness to the future, until one has bought x, or achieved y, is a recipe for disaster. Deferred happiness is a never ending treadmill. Once you believe your happiness is contingent, there will always be a new excuse. Depression affects the wealthy as well as the poor.

It's not generally possible "to engage with the present and find meaning and small pleasures in it" when the present is time-pressure stress with constant high adrenaline levels.

You can _disengage from the present_ and obtain relaxation that way, but the adrenaline is there for a reason, to focus the mind and obtain high performance for high stakes situations.

But like I said people normally cope with such by imagining a future (realistic or not) that gives meaning to the high stress present. The present isn't "small pleasures" but _is_ part of an internal narrative about the future and therefore meaningful.

> Depression affects the wealthy as well as the poor

Yes, but at roughly half the rate.

>Yes, but at roughly half the rate.

That doesn't hold up when you look across the globe, which is my main point. A poor American is still in the global 1%.

What people lack is a sense of purpose in their lives, and meaningful connection to friends, family, and community. They desire stability and security.

These needs are not met by being one rung higher on a consumerist hamster wheel. Buying A new car, larger house, or next hedonistic escape from reality is not a durable solution.

Money might help on the margin, but something is rotten at a deeper social level. People also need to change how they live their lives, and focus their attention on things that will actually make them happy.

> A poor American is still in the global 1%.

America's population is 4% of the world, and the poverty line is below the 25th percentile, so NONE of America's poor are in the global 1%.

> That doesn't hold up when you look across the globe, which is my main point.

Poverty is relative because poverty is social exclusion. Social exclusion from the very things you talk about:

> a sense of purpose in their lives, and meaningful connection to friends, family, and community [...] stability and security.

Poor Americans are excluded from all of these things, same as poor people anywhere else -- even though poor Americans have a level of consumption that may be higher than elsewhere.

Also the absolute consumption level is really irrelevant. The instability and unreliability of access to housing dominates every other aspect of consumption.

You are not alone in the housing situation. It is a big problem in many places. I think we need real leadership to make any progress there and probably grass roots organization.

Conversely there’s this idea that you can’t be depressed if you have material comforts and your life is good by the standards of the person judging you.

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