Why Are Americans Unhappy? | Hacker News Reader

Why Are Americans Unhappy?

walkingtheworld.substack.com

18 pointscjbarber23 comments

You don't need to make it that complicated. Happiness is just difference between what you expected and what you got. So a shepherd in Bhutan might expect to his goats to deliver 10 baby goats, but got 15. Then he is happy.

Also, calling USA as most successful country is baseless. Nigeria might have more younger population and better demographic pyramid. Other countries might have better climate and may consume less processed food. People may be leaner in Asia and healthier. Someone might call Americans as obese, unhealthy, gender-confused, less competitive in STEM, politically polarized, sales-oriented conmen. What do you mean by success?

There are other reasons which are taboo. A lot of Americans flit around their country at the drop of a hat, if they have children it means they don't set down roots and make connections. The other is architecture. The USA has some great buildings but also miles upon miles of concrete and low level business parks.

> A lot of Americans flit around their country at the drop of a hat

Not really. The percentage of the US population that moves each year has been dropping for at least a couple of decades.

Maybe, but I still regularly encounter Americans who do. They move from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon without batting an eyelid. Many Americans lack much in the way of roots and extended family, although there are obvious exceptions (Utah Mormons have had both for example).

The US is the most successful country in human history, as measured by the current in vogue metric of excellence, which is how much stuff (food, housing, cars, toys, etc) everyone has.

There are two kinds of wealth - private wealth and public wealth.

Private wealth is the things that you own, the money in your bank account, the car you drive, the house you live in, etc. For that kind of wealth, Americans are very well off, especially compared to the rest of the world.

Public wealth is the things that you share with others as a society, and how good those things are. It's things like the state of infrastructure, the ease of getting healthcare, the quality and safety of public spaces, how people feel when they're not in their home. For this sort of wealth America is a low way down the rankings.

Unfortunately for Americans, it's the public wealth that actually makes you happy unless you're in the 1% of the 1% who can afford to avoid public spaces entirely. If you own a luxury car but the roads are terrible that's just a reminder that your wealth can't solve all your problems. If you can afford to go to the fanciest restaurants but you're scared to wait for a cab outside afterwards, you're not going to be very happy with the meal. This is true for most aspects of life. Society needs to feel safe for people to truly feel happy.

> scared to wait for a cab

I contend that American Unhappiness is manufactured and sustained by the constant onslaught of misinformation, broadcast by special interest groups, all of whom have it in their general plan to make you feel an unmet need, a base emotional response, a tickle in your amygdla.

Likely, your life is not that bad.

Likely, the fear you feel, waiting for a cab outside your favorite bistro, is a response to programming you ingested from the culture that tries to nurse you into a permanent state of semi-consciousness.

Fear is sensational, a proven sales tool, a political football, click-bait 'journalism'. There are whole armies of professional and amateur fear-mongers out there, who make it their life's mission to plant the seeds of fear into your imagination, to sell you a product, a candidate, a policy.

>> fulfillment requires more than material wealth,

Agreed, but...

>> which in our quest for more stuff, we have forgotten.

Reject the programming. Whether it is fear or desire that the advertisers/liars attempt to trigger in you, recognize the effort aimed at making you feel wants/needs that do not actually do you or our society any good at all, and reject the unhappiness they are trying to program into you.

It is an individual responsibility. An individual has authority over their own emotional states. Defend yourself from the onslaught of lies and liars.

> Society needs to feel safe for people to truly feel happy.

I don't disagree with this. But whose is responsible for 'feelings'?

Is the United States more prone to misinformation and special interest groups than other countries?

Yes. The forced two-party system inevitably leads to an us-versus-them mentality. Everything gets divided into Good Things done by Us, and Bad Things done by Them. There's no room for nuance, everything has to be pushed to the extremes in order to get a handful of voters to flip.

In a healthy democracy with at least a handful of political parties the small groups of lunatics aren't going to poison the entire spectrum: they are mostly contained into the tiny extremist parties served by heavily biased extremist media. The vast majority of the population, however, is served by more moderate parties and more neutral media - where misinformation and blatant corruption is heavily frowned upon.

Turns out when people have a genuine alternative, they don't just stick with whatever shit they are trying to pull this time just because "the other guy is even worse".

And of course we are also the largest global target.

Not even remotely close.

You also can't ignore the mechanisms behind the private "wealth".

Air conditioning and central heating isn't a luxury when you live in a climate incompatible with human live without it. Having a car isn't a luxury when the infrastructure to bike, walk, or take public transit to your destinations does not exist. Having a three-thousand-square-foot home with a two-car garage isn't luxury when it is literally illegal to build the kind of mixed-use apartment building you actually want to live in. All of that is of course made worse when you're being forced to go into heavy debt to sustain this "luxury" lifestyle.

And as the article points out, it gets even more obvious when you look at day-to-day life. Sure, working that 9-hour-a-day job with a three-hour-a-day commute might mean you can afford another iPhone per year, but wouldn't you rather give up that iPhone for a 7-hour-a-day job with a 30-minute-a-day commute? Who care about wealth when you don't have the time and energy to spend that extra cash on things like meeting with your friends, cooking the meals you love, or enjoying a hike in the forest?

Plenty of seemingly asset-wealthy people are cash-poor, and even the cash-rich are usually time-poor. No wonder they aren't happy: they are too busy working to actually live.

After reading this article, I found myself even more unhappy and frustrated.

This kind of article and the people who write this type of description are a lot of what causes America to be this way.

"Why are you unhappy?" "Cause you're dumb and you should be happy, cause the stock market has lots of money, and we can buy lots of material stuff" Almost every argument in the entire article is BS.

"wealth isn’t confined to only the top percent" "American's are materially wealthy" Almost every argument is money, money, money, money, money...

Wealth is completely confined to the top 1%. The entire government shut down for a month and the part that actually got attention? ... "there's no foodstamps". 40 million people won't have Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

Standard response from IRS filings, 50% of America only needs to file for the rebate, cause they barely (or don't even) make the deduction. (Last column, 51-100, 76,794,954 returns, averaging $19,936.70) The next 25% average less than the often cited "enough to get by without much difficulty" number of $80k-$100k (for singles) and way below the $200k cited number for a family of four. (Notably, 200k seems a bit excessive, maybe $150k) [1][2][3][4]

75% of America is beneath the "get by comfortably in America." Generalized results from MIT for CA, TX, FL, NY have breakdowns by category as examples (for ~127 million of the 340 million Americans) [5][6][7][8]

In the most recent tax filing season data available (2024), there were tax returns of:

                                        Top 1%       Top 5%      Top 10%       Top 25%       Top 50%   Bottom 50%  All Taxpayers
  Number of Returns                  1,535,899    7,679,495   15,358,991    38,397,477    76,794,954   76,794,954    153,589,908
  Average Income Taxes Paid           $653,730     $187,468     $108,251       $50,963       $27,891         $667        $14,279 
  Adjusted Gross Income (Millions)  $3,872,395   $6,182,180   $7,745,525   $10,613,602   $13,191,209   $1,531,038    $14,722,247

If we then break those into the actual groups, and numbers per group, then we find their Average Per Capita Income

                                             1          2-5         6-10        11-25        26-50       51-100
  Number of Returns                  1,535,899    6,143,596    7,679,496   23,038,486   38,397,477   76,794,954
  Income Taxes Paid (Millions)      $1,004,063     $435,594     $222,966     $294,234     $185,068      $51,225 
  Adjusted Gross Income (Millions)  $3,872,395   $2,309,785   $1,563,345   $2,868,077   $2,577,607   $1,531,038 
  Average Tax Rate                       25.9%        18.9%        14.3%        10.3%         7.2%         3.3%
  Average Per Capita Income      $2,521,256.28  $375,966.29  $203,573.91  $124,490.69   $67,129.59   $19,936.70

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/07/salary-a-single-adult-needs-...

[2] https://fortune.com/2025/06/09/sinks-earnings-family-by-stat...

[3] https://www.manchestertimes.com/news/national/how-much-do-yo...

[4] https://livingwage.mit.edu/

[5][6][7][8] (CA) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/06, (TX) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/48, (FL) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/12, (NY) https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/36

TLDR, I agree with you. Found myself less happy after reading their spew article. Lots of other data.

>This wealth isn’t confined to only the top percent, today’s middle class and working class live lives that past nobility would be astounded by.

Only based on "access to various products and crap" criterium. Based on quality of life metrics, safety, job prospects, food quality, urban design, it often is worse than way lower in GDP countries - and let's not even get into non-tangible stuff...

not in top-20 even if Trump himself made the list :)

Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does make misery more comfortable.

I think the top comment is getting at some issues, that this substack post seems to have a neoliberal (?) focus on material prosperity, but I'd try to frame the discussion maybe in a way to try to make it more obvious and then ask some questions about things.

Assume you are the richest person in the world.

What if you had to live in solitary confinement? (So, you wealth doesn't give you good relationships)

What if you were chronically sick? (Your wealth does not give you health)

What if you were not able to spend your money freely due to living under a dictator? (Your wealth does not give you freedom)

You could probably continue this thought experiment and maybe zero in on some specific problems.

What if you could be the wealthiest person but you literally had to work every waking hour? So, having wealth (in this thought experiment example) does not buy you free time.

What if you had access to being able to buy some of the best stuff but it costs more than it did for generations, forcing you to work more for "better" but more costly items? So having more money yourself doesn't say anything about how the market is developing around you.

Naturally, a counter-argument to some of the above is that money may allow you to buy things to solve some of these problems, but it doesn't always work out that way.

(I liked the article mostly in that it felt like it was expressing an obvious idea, that America has more "success" and thus "should" be happier but the author acknowledges there is some legitimate unhappiness that exist, and then it was kind of like a brainteaser to think about if people are rationally or irrationally unhappy in the USA)

Wealth gives more options in most if not all of those scenarios, so I think it’s hard to use it to test against many in vitro situations, possibly.

i am also unhappy with the US. The mega self centered style showen by the US "elite" makes the world a more hostile place than it should be

I remember watching a doco series about moon landing a long time ago; and for the life of me I can't remember what its called. But essentially amongst the awe of the whole thing, it also had the perspective from black americans which i can glibly summarise as "so what? i've got nowhere to live and everything cost to much for me. who gives a crap about what all of that". The same thing applies to a much higher % of Americans now is my guess

Yeah, it is a real mystery why homeless are unhappy, really.

Don’t forget the many, many more almost-homeless people.

Based on article logic, their lives are better then lives of past nobility. Per excellence metric of owning stuff.

It is some weird psychological socialogical thing that makes them stressed and unhappy.

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