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Comment by soderfoo | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone else have difficulty reconciling these Happy Days Are Here Again type articles, with the more somber slice of life type?

For example, I came across this article titled The Tragedy of Being a New Mom in America immediately after reading this article about the economy [0]. The contrast between 'everything is great' and 'everything is terrible' seems stark.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/mothers-mental-health-women-pos...

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The issue is modern newspapers. They need to generate traffic and impressions so they go for what people click and what people click is not thoughtful, researched, and nuanced articles on what’s happening. What people click is bold titles and articles with strong arguable points made somewhat forcefully. That’s why you see jarring articles. What passes nowadays for journalists need an angle for you to read their rag.

The solution is to stop reading daily newspapers and focus on the few remaining publications which can still afford to stay afloat while doing quality work while they last.

These aren't contradictions really. The economy contracting by 2% doesn't we're all doomed any more than an expansion by 2% means everything is perfect for everybody. The latter is generally better (or at least no worse) for everybody, but "better" doesn't mean "good" much less "perfect".

I've been thinking about that lately. It seems like, depending on which source(s) you follow, you could easily convince yourself of either position: "everything is great" OR "everything is terrible". I find myself struggling to disambiguate which is more real. That's one big reason I recently started contemplating taking a cross-country trip across the US, by bus. That it, just head from NC to CA, then turn around and come back. I expect doing something like that would offer a real "ground truth" perspective of a large swathe of America.

The only problem is finding the time to do it. I think it would be a rewarding experience, but my $DAYJOB employer might not be as enthusiastic.

Real life everything still seems terrible. Prices are high, salaries are not adjusted to match, service and quality and availability of everything is worse. More things are broken and take longer to fix.

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