If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad? | Hacker News Reader

If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?

derekthompson.org

564 pointsmomentmaker1,087 comments

My mom said, "whatever we built isn't working anymore," and I think that captures most of the sentiment. It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home?

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?

Money should only have the purpose of realizing ones goals, it has no purpose in itself.

The whole society has lost its goal when the only target is to maximize money.

Popularize the notion of chrematistics.

It was inevitable as soon as enough people believed that spending money is necessary to live. Money is the next stage of life. As individuals, people's only truly limited resource is their attention, their time, and so the same is true of Humanity as a singular whole. Money is a way to coerce another person's attention toward an endeavor that benefits the spender, like paying the chain of farmers/pickers/processors/distributors to grow and ship my food to me instead of having to do it all myself. And so people say Time = 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.

Terminological nitpick: equality is a relation, not an operation. What you refer to as a "commutative operation" is more accurately described as a "symmetric relation".

Appreciate it; not a math person :)

This is a silly inversion of causality. The thing that causes increased economic activity is people working for it. Not just the wealthy with their vast resources, the many people that work alongside them because they think it will be beneficial.

> Not just the wealthy

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.

Meh, it's not strictly commutative, and money is ultimately an abstraction for real resources, not just an abstraction.

Really, if you didn't have a job you'd be working much harder for less. The vibes say that's bullshit, but whatever.

It's not about believing. It's about a lack of alternatives.

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.

I see it money as a wall. Without it, me and my family are defenceless. My goal is keeping us safe.

When I do volunteer career mentoring for an early career group, money concerns are always a topic.

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.

> 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.

I'd also add that healthcare is serious shit-show as it currently stands and the best strategy is to just stay as healthy as you possibly can to avoid having to go to the doctor, if you can even find one who will see you.

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.

I would much rather talk to my family at random times over the working day than listen to the guy at the next desk who is always on the phone blabber on (and it always happens when there is a pressing deadline, and your boss is checking every 15 minutes: any progress on this?).

YMMV, but the fully remote workers I know (I manage a few and am married to one) seem very happy about it, largely because they get to spend a lot more time with their families than they otherwise would. They're anxious mostly because they're afraid they'll have to forcibly RTO.

I and my wife have been fully remote for over a decade, absolutely love it and I can't understand the whole going to office thing or people pushing for it.

Some of us just need a different space to work, I can't wfh - my living space is too small to have a dedicated area and I can't discipline myself without said dedicated area.

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.

It's for the people having affairs at work and who hate their families.

Anecdotally, my manager is a rabid RTO advocate, he's a gen X man and messages our team sometimes at 1am, is working on the weekends, schedules early morning and late meetings that extend well past 5pm. He has kids that he never mentions. We don't work on anything mission critical whatsoever.

If your company culture fully supports it it's great. Unfortunately because of all the half-assed RTO the employees still remote often feel both resentment from employees that had to RTO and anxiety about being first in line to get cut.

I agree, for many it's wonderful. If you've got family at home I can see that being a real attraction. When my kids were little I'd have liked that as well. I also had wonderful office-mates that are now life-long friends, but I mostly worked non-corporate nearly mom-and-pops so we were a close knit group. I realize I am an outlier. I just wonder if not being in an office is 3% (or whatever %) of the unhappiness problem.

> largely because they get to spend a lot more time with their families than they otherwise would.

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.

Yeah, but those people were previously burdened by helping their coworkers be less crazy. Now they remain blissfully isolated as their coworkers spiral into unchecked weirdness.

Small sample size, but of the people in my office that really prefer in-office to WFH, the two archetypes I have noticed are those people are either single and have no family, or they wish they were single and had no family.

my sample size is similar but "gender"-based - single women and married men prefer in-office

>social contact is a definite plus for well-being

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.

This is me. I'm not anti-social by any means, and I like people, but constant chatter around me drives me nuts. So I put my headphones on and now I'm unapproachable. It's tough.

This. And on top of that, headphones at office suck, at least for me.

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)

Get a pair of Sony WH-1000MXs. The noise cancelling is nearly perfect.

Maybe I'll have to try something new at some point. Fair. It's been a while.

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.

So sounds like it's just gonna be a different kind of noise that will still come through. So instead of still hearing voices, but much clearer I might hear more of the AC humm. Sounds like a wash unfortunately. And one the company won't pay for ;)

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.

No, just try a pair from Amazon and return if you need to. I can mow the lawn with these on and it's nearly silent. There's a feature to recalibrate for air temp and ambient noise (use this every time you put them on). They are really good.

> The next idea is music to drown out what's left but that just distracts me too.

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)

Wearing over the ear headphones all day can contribute to cranial pressure, tiring out your jaw muscles and strain your temporomandibular joint.

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.

Yep, ADHD and God know's what else here. Oddly enough, I am too gregarious, and it often gets me in a lot of trouble. So, by being WFH, I am not surrounded by distractions, and I am much more productive.

> 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.

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!)

Staying as healthy as you can is the best strategy with perfect healthcare too.

The fully remote teams that I have been a part of all started a tradition of leaving a persistent ${VIDEOCONFERENCE} running that we can just hang out in. It isn't perfect, but is enough to retain the sense of community and support from an office.

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.

Meh. YMMV as always.

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.

> is to just stay as healthy as you possibly can

I think it's a good idea regardless of healthcare availability

> Before you had 8-9 hours a day of serious social activity

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.

> 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 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've only worked at this one place in Ireland, so there was definitely a tendency to say "the Irish" when I actually only knew "this one workplace in Ireland". Thanks for the clarification :) From now I'll preface it with "it's not the norm, but I worked at this one place in Ireland where...".

> I've only worked at this one place in Ireland, so there was definitely a tendency to say "the Irish" when I actually only knew "this one workplace in Ireland".

To be fair, this does happen a lot if there are visitors to the office. I can certainly believe everyone going out in that case. Alternatively, if the team is pretty young and single this would definitely happen. When I worked at FB there was a big drinking culture (not just in Ireland), so again I'd believe it of there.

> Great, have they increased by as much as inflation?

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

Wow wages barely rising after 60 years of wage suppression, the wealth is truly trickling down now! Just ignore that the top 1% stole $50 trillion from the bottom 90%:

https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...

There’s also the question of, “what’s inflation?”

A lot of major necessities like healthcare and housing have outpaced CPI.

Yes, and a lot of major necessities haven't. CPI is an average -- of course some things will be higher.

Necessary stuff (houses, healthcare, education) have outpaced CPI, and generally it is becoming more expensive.

Unnecessary stuff (electronics, appliances, other tech) did not, and generally it is becoming cheaper (Planned obsolescence is another topic though...)

Do you consider food and clothing to be "unnecessary stuff"?

Unfortunately this is using BLS data that captures largely urban areas and fails to account for a large and quickly growing segment of the workforce that also tend to be lower earners - self-employment (eg uber drivers, doordash, gig working, contractors). This is definitely an over-estimate of real wages, a best case scenario of sorts.

With the backdrop of it coming from the organization that is supposedly supposed to be managing inflation... :P

The "inflation basket" keeps getting rejiggled to hide things.

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.

> Yes, it's nice that computers and phones are super cheap and powerful.

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

Yeah it does help them eat. Give me a computer and I’ll earn all the food I need.

> What are we even building?

Caste of trillionaiers who could destroy nations and cultures simply because they feel so.

The focus is now largely on stock markets. It’s not by mistake that we got DOW over 50k so don’t question anything as an excuse.

This is mostly true, but things were almost universally worse in the mid-to-late 1970s. There was a similar feeling of anomie, stagflation, and a sense that the country was on the wrong track. But people still reported themselves as happier than now.

Happiness is to a large extent related to how many close friends you have and how much time you spend with your friends.

This is something I have observed too. I think one of the ways things have gotten worse is generally people are less social, we're interacting with each other via screens, not in person.

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.

You should be building your family and friends instead of wondering when the government is going to find some project for the country to work on

> whatever we built.

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.

It is Taoist/Buddhist translator Red Pine (Bill Porter) who once said something along the line of; if the Taoists and traditional Buddhists where in charge, we wouldnt have built the world like we have today. It would be angled towards happiness and satisfaction rather than growth of the machine.

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.

In this case, we might not have an advanced civilization with modern medicine and technology. Herbs for healing, candles for lighting, letters for communication. (Perhaps I wouldn't be alive without modern medicine. I suppose it's not easy to be dead and happy.)

Don't get me wrong, I love Taoism and Buddhism. But, from what I understand, they are not very pro-civilization and pro-progress.

Bingo, that is the point I was trying to make.

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.

Not just that, they would be occupied and subdued (like Tibet for example)

Buddhism was never intended to be the way you organized societies. It was a monastic tradition where you practiced outside of society with the support of people who had to live in the real world and do the dirty work of progress and civilization.

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 I want to agree with you, my critical mind finds flaws in this. The idea of a taoist in charge is an oxymoron: "would this tortoise rather be dead and have its bones honored, or would it rather be alive and dragging its tail through the mud".

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?

Looking at long term Buddhist societies I don't really see a difference from the disappointment of long term Christian societies when it comes to expecting the over all outcome to reflect and be overridden by the priorities in the base belief of the original thinker. I think people confuse those who go through the motions to move within a system with the original thinker who is probably incompatible with the system and would be unable to be a leader in it.

I am not an expert, but I think 'accepting reality' is not the correct term. It is 'seeing clearly the way things are'. That does not imply passivism, but it will enable more 'skilful action', not clouded by greed, hatred etc..

There is now practically a cliche saying in Zen. When hungry eat, when tired sleep. But in that exact same sense there should be, when something needs to be acted on, do it.

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.

And yet people risk their lives to get to the USA. They vote with their feet. It isn't perfect but declaring "it isn't working", my response "compared to what".

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.

> "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation?

Yes.

> Can I afford a home?

No.

There's an important lesson somewhere here.

> It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home?

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.

> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic.

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.

From what I understand, yes. My 24 year old coworker makes $65k/year and has a $2200/mo mortgage. It's an old starter home in the Midwest, nothing fancy. It stresses him out to the point of not going to a happy hour once in a while unless there's a buy one get one deal or something or I offer to buy (which I do happily). No vacations, no eating out, no fun. It's super sad to see. He talks about being in his prime but being unable to enjoy it at all.

fast-forward 15-20 years. He has most probably paid out his mortgage (salary growth/inflation, etc. so most people i know paid their mortgages in about 15 years, and some by that time got second or even 3rd property - the observations are over the last 30 years here, included are only salaried employees and excluded are the ones who made "exits" which is completely different game level). Even if he is still paying his mortgage, his non-homeowner coworkers would be by that time paying $4K+ in rent while he is still paying 2200 (out of at least 100K+ salary by that time). He can have cats/dogs while it is a big issue for renters. Add the land/home appreciation - about double. And if he gets tired of such comfortable life, he can always HELOC and venture into say a startup, all while still may be not even 40 (and with great health as no drinking&eating out :).

Until he gets laid off and now is in a complete panic because he MUST make that mortgage payment.

I have watched this scenario dissolve marriages over and over among my friends.

You cannot assume your job is stable for 15 years nowadays.

thats a cool assumption.

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.

If we are talking hypotheticals, then why not just assume he wins a lottery? That’s Easier than assuming they can venture into startup land?

> Add the land/home appreciation - about double.

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.

For what it's worth, when I was 24 I was only really focused on my career and didn't really have much of a social life. It wasn't until my late 20s and 30s that I started being able to comfortably afford drinks with coworkers after work, travel, etc.

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.

Yeah, I agree, but it makes me think of my 20s when I was paying $275 for rent with one roommate, working part time and easily making it work. I worked nights chucking boxes in a warehouse and was able to take a vacation to Jamaica. This guy is a sysadmin, helping to keep a billion dollar company online and can't afford to go to Florida for a few days. It's a raw deal and I hate it for this generation.

> it makes me think of my 20s when I was paying $275 for rent with one roommate

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.

What I'm trying to say is that I did things the "wrong way". Worked part time, invested nothing, played in a band, ate drugs, got laid. And it was really fucking easy. I was happy as hell. This was a long time ago, but I was able to blow my 20s away and still land just fine when I started my "career" in my 30s. These days, you can do everything right and still not be happy. We all make our choices of course, but I feel like if you don't hit the grind immediately these days, you're fucked.

I would say your particular case is the exception, not the rule. If I look at my graduating class, there's a pretty clear trend where people who screwed around and did drugs in their 20s are still generally screwing around and doing drugs - and quite often pretty unhappy (and sadly a few close friends have passed away from overdose). And people who hustled after graduation are much more likely to be married, own a home, have kids, etc. To be clear - I'm NOT saying that having a home, a family, or money are either necessary or sufficient to be happy, but in general I view it as a pretty decent heuristic. This tends to hold true both for people who pursued white collar careers, or who learned a trade.

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.

It's the exception NOW. I'm so glad I got into IT 20 years ago with a handshake. That's the difference.

> One relatively recent example was the rise of coding "boot camps"

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.

> But even having a mortgage at all at 24 is pretty impressive...

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 don't think that working hard or investing for the future are insanity.

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.

The question is really what "working hard" and "investing for the future" entail. I think it's clear that many young Americans don't have the opportunity to "work hard" and "invest for the future", and even among those who do, a growing number struggle and lack confidence that their efforts will produce the intended results.

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.

Indeed these are scary times. I think people are right to be on edge, and I'm sympathetic for anyone who is out of work (I may soon count myself among them). But so were the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and Covid-19. "Outsourcing" was the big scare word when I started my career. With AI, things may truly be different this time. But it's early days, and we won't really know for sure how things shake out until we're looking back on the other side.

I think you can make the argument that AI is a more fundamental change to the structure of the economy than any of the previous "black swans", which were more about financial conditions (in the case of the .com crash and 2008 financial crisis) and a recession caused by a global pandemic. In other words it's more like the industrial revolution than a temporary economic event.

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.

> 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.

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.

What do you mean "mortgage never rises" in the US?

It can if you have an adjustable rate mortgage. But that's not all. Lots of people leverage their equity for cash (HELOCs, etc.) to remodel, take a vacation, buy more junk, etc. So your house can easily become a financial boondoggle.

And your mortgage isn't the only cost. There's maintenance and repairs, property-related taxes (which can go up), healthcare, food, gas, automobiles, the price of basic necessities, a meal out, etc.

Tons of people are living in homes that have increased substantially in value, making them "rich", but they're still under financial pressure if not outright struggling because the prices of everything else they want and need in life have increased faster than their wages.

And then what happens when the company you work for reports record profits and...lays you off into a market where tens of thousands of people who do what you do have also been laid off?

The problem with the modern American economy is that the path to "success" for the average worker gets narrower and narrower. You can "win" in one or two areas and still lose in the end. Very easily. Happens to tons of people.

> What do you mean "mortgage never rises" in the US?

> It can if you have an adjustable rate mortgage.

Yes, that is true. Also, ARMs are rare and always a bad idea. The norm is a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. Which means the mortgage can never go up. But you can refinance it down, if opportunity arises.

> There's maintenance and repairs, property-related taxes (which can go up), healthcare, food, gas, automobiles, the price of basic necessities, a meal out, etc.

Sure, if we change the goalposts then we're talking about something else.

Dining out may get more expensive (I fail to see how that is relevant to the mortgage), but the fixed rate mortgage never goes up.

Can you link a source for gen z with higher homeowner rates than millennial, st the same age?

Because redfin shows that just is very clearly not true

https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...

That chart is comparing point in present time, not point in generation-relative time. IE zoomers at ~25 mills at ~40. If you were to approximately age sync the red and yellow lines on that chart, by moving their start dates to the same point, the red line is higher.

There's several charts, the second is: Gen Zers, Millennials Less Likely to Own Homes Than Their Parents at the Same Age which does a direct "at same age" comparison and showed that Gen Z started off slightly stronger than millennials but fell behind.

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.

> If you were to approximately age sync the red and yellow lines on that chart, by moving their start dates to the same point, the red line is higher.

Like this: https://imgur.com/a/d7stXVN

Thanks for sharing! Seems to show that both are doing poorly relative to earlier generations, and it doesn’t seem Gen Z is greatly (or much at all) outpacing millennials.

And as usual, no one cares about Gen X :)

At least you aren’t hated like us boomers. Apparently everything wrong in the world is down to us.

As a millennial, I apologize for the blame and hate the boomer generation gets. But I think it's important to understand why the hate exists.

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).

I am right on the cusp of my home cost being 3x my salary, I bought it when it was 4x, but the interest rate was 2.75%.

If I refinanced now, I probably couldn't afford my own home.

You would be the subject of much envy for those on the west coast of Canada!

"for them to say that the millennial generation is lazy, entitled, etc" - they said it about Gen X too, but there's too few of us, so they focused on the Millenials instead.

I too dislike the Millenial whoop, but I like smashed avocado toast, so it's a wash for me.

Which is crazy cause GenX is management as everything falls apart. GenX is 50-65 year olds running everything and everything sucks now.

GenX is the big tech leaders, the insurance CEO that got got, the EpiPen CEO jacking up prices, senior teachers and admins as student grades slide into the toilet, the uncreative repetitive Hollywood decision makers. Hollywood actors slapping each other live on camera and hacking their faces up to pretend they are still 25. They manage the construction companies that refuse to build more homes.

As an older Millennial it's not a shock they ended up such poor leaders. Working with GenX has always sucked.

I think you need to be a little careful of taking the whole generational group thing too far. It's a very lazy way to think, and it can cause real hatred on overly simplified, group identified lines.

Like: if you were a few years older, now you're the focus of your own hatred? Doesn't make much sense, does it?

Yeah, a house is always affordable to someone, and it's not like all the single-family homes are owned by huge landlords renting out. Some areas have become more sought-after, so young adults there are finding that they can't afford to buy a house where they grew up.

> Yeah, a house is always affordable to someone

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.

My in-laws bought a house in the East Bay area in 2000 for about $400k. Worth about $1.5m (according to zillow and similar homes in the neighborhood that have recently sold). Fully paid off now, and they're retired.

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.

The first $500k is federal tax-free. The rest is taxed at long-term capital gains rates.

IIRC, California taxes that $1.1M as ordinary income.

$1.1m is a lot of money to pay taxes on for middle class retirees!

My point is that they wouldn't be able to rebuy their house, since they'd pay taxes on the "profit," and then need to get another mortgage at 6%.

When I was shopping for a house one of the sellers had a special exclusion where they'd roll the proceeds into a special account that they'd use to buy another house so they won't pay taxes on the profit. I think it's quite strange that RE investors get that exclusion but if it's your primary residence you don't. I feel like it should be the other way around.

> inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term

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.

It doesn't track cost of living? The way it's calculated is all about cost of living!

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.

Nope. CPI is an excellent differential indicator -- "how much did a typical person's cost of living rise this year" -- but it's a terrible integral indicator if you compound it because it's blind to the difference between forced and voluntary substitution. If essentials inflate faster than wages, money_in=money_out drives a reduction in nonessentials -- forced substitution -- and the CPI basket adjustments launder the forced substitution into voluntary substitution.

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.

Yes, it also takes into account rising quality. For an example, in 2010 I rented a rat hole apartment for $x from a fisherman who had inherited the building. He never did maintenance (he was out to sea most of the year) and he never raised rent.

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.

It’s also been toyed with and twisted since about 1983. The actual standard of living for Americans has generally been falling since then.

Which changes to CPI since 1983 do you most object to?

How are you measuring the "actual standard of living?”

CPI is an aggregate measure which munges a bunch of things together under a single statistic.

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.

Housing is actually ~44% in 2024, but the subcategory of 'Shelter' is ~35% for CPI-U. 'Shelter' is further broken down into rent and owner's equivalent of rent. 'Owners' equivalent rent of residences' is ~26% for CPI-U and ~21% for CPI-W, 'Rent of primary residence' is around 7% and 10% respectively.

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

>Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age.

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.

one thing to also consider is that maybe the younger kids who are capable of buying houses may be getting their down payment from the bank of mom and dad. not good for people thinking things are fair

nice debunk, thats just a wall of words that besides likely being wrong, has no evidence and goes against what i hear people saying all the time.

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.

I can’t grasp the math. How are young people buying homes? Is the average income now over $100k?

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.

The interest is fixed in a typical mortgage, so just as long as you reliably pay the mortgage payments, you will own the home eventually when the term is complete.

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.

Sure, I know that, but even a small down payment on crazy home prices is insane let alone the monthly payment.

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.

> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age.

The median Zoomer is in their mid-20s. You're comparing rounding errors.

Home "ownership" is misleading. You don't own a home until you've paid it off.

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.

To be pedantic what most people consider ownership is a revocable land lease from the state government which you forfeit if you fail to pay protection money to the gov.

True ownership is non-existent.

You could always seastead!

But yes, you do not truly own anything unless you are a sovereign power.

There are plenty of entities that don't pay property taxes. Charities, religious facilities, some disabled people, spouses of fallen service members.

> spouses of fallen service

What if they get remarried?

A widow receiving a military pension will not uncommonly "live in sin" before losing the monthly check.

Which is a pointer to the "real", general issue: materialism.

Ain't no joy in $tuff.

Joy is of the Lord.

Sovereign citizen? On my Hacker News?

...It's more likely than you think !!

I never claimed that. It is clear whose jurisdiction we are in.

>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.

> You don't own a home until you've paid it off.

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.

We both know the pay off in this instance is referring to mortgages

Cut the bullshit please. I bought house in 1998 for $200K, guess what's the price is now. And salaries did not all that much since then. Definitely not 5 times.

This reminds me that people only care about what you tell them to care about. Grocery store prices was the first thing out of any "undecided muh both sides" voters mouth in 2024.

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.

> 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.

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-...

People viscerally feel the disdain from the monopolies giving you the "What are you gonna do? Switch to a competitor? BWHAHAHAHA! Good luck, plebe." And it makes them angry.

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.

At almost 50, I feel like there has been a cultural shift since I was a kid.

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.

I think this was what was the meaning behind the "avocado toast" phenomena. My typical example is that back in the day, you could be the coolest in town +/- 5 grades by jumping off the Big Rock into the river- and that person's 2-3 best friends all shared in the glory. Now, you have to compete with the craziest people in all the world for the same level of admiration.

Every geezer says this but people these days would kill for a reliable chance at a middle class life. We're talking Homer Simpson not Home Alone.

ha, twins.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883927

I'd argue most people do not, in fact, year for glamor and wealth. The majority of us just want to be able to live

I want to be clear that I'm not judging anyone, just observing the zeitgeist.

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.

> If that’s the ideal you compare your own life to, you will be unhappy.

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.

60-70 years ago would have been the 1950s-1960s, the American post-WW2 economic boom. The rest of the world was rebuilding their cities and mourning their dead.

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.

I think it was boomers who demanded McMansions with 3 car garages and new cars every 4 years and drove lifestyle inflation to a point it's no longer sustainable/affordable for the next generation. Millenials are struggling to afford the bare minimum. Housing used to be 3-5x your salary. Now it's 10-15x in some areas. Meanwhile our taxes are sent to Israel to subsidize genocide and we can't even pave roads in the most expensive zip codes (La Jolla). There's something fundamentally broken with our society at the moment.

I think for me the big difference is in airline travel, it's become ubiquitous for vacationing. At the same time everything in N. America has become a cookie cutter suburb or exurb and drab. Houses have also become bigger, as well as cars. It's a big shift in culture that happened.

> "whatever we built isn't working anymore,"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Have wages made up for 800% inflation since 1980?

Multiple generations have now been born into an economy intentionally engineered to deflate their buying power.

I agree there’s a lot in the comments here that are right. Yes people are chasing ideals that probably aren’t worth it to chase. Yea money for the sake of money is a bad idea. But the reality also is a lot of what had been built has been actively dismantled. Much of what made the lifestyle of the boomers possible has been being actively taken apart piece by piece since the 80s. We’re now seeing what happens when a society stops trying to improve and instead just rent seeks off of itself for 40 years.

I agree with your mom’s sentiment. It’s exactly that. I also feel that generally hope is gone - nobody actually sits there imagining the US becoming what it felt like in the 90s and that’s probably the root of the problem. We all kinda internalize this is the decline.

The US is not particularly rich. The GPD is way out there, but that doesn't mean anything. It is highly concentrated in a tiny fraction of 1% of the population.

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?

The article is smarter than the title makes it sound. He's not seriously proposing that being rich makes you happy. And he notes that there's a big drop around 2020 specifically, which long-term trends don't explain.

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.

I agree the article is smarter than the title makes it seem. And honestly, much better than comments on HN. The articles keeps diving deeper and asking questions. The comments here take hold of a single theory, without even thinking about the counters that article mentions. This is probably the best example of read the article, and not the comments.

The HN comments are sadly mostly just people pushing their favorite thing, whether COVID denialism, "everything is going bad because people are atheists" or whatever, without engaging with the article at all.

> COVID denialism

> "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.

Here's one example of the second, in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877926

Substack tends to select for this kind of author. Not daily posts about their life and their latest hot take, but a few deep articles every few weeks, that make you think "hey, that's interesting". Although there is not necessarily an easy way to know where the author is talking from, whether they're entirely relevant, etc...

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.

Thank you kindly.

I suspect that for many people, the pounding outside is what mainly affects their happiness - if everything reported in the news is sunshine and happiness, they tend happier.

And if it's all doom and gloom and "go outside and you kill grandma" - are we surprised they get sad?

In my experience most people don't care about what the news tells them anywhere near as much as what's going on in their personal lives.

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.

>Just to state the obvious: 2020 was the year of COVID, which played hell with peoples' social lives.

No, it was government mandates that played hell with peoples' social lives.

Plenty of people cut back on socializing, separate from whatever local lockdown policies might have been in place.

> No, it was government mandates that played hell with peoples' social lives.

What did the government mandate about your social life?

Closing restaurants, bars, and movie theaters had a negative effect on social lives as a direct result of government mandates.

Much worse than that in Germany - they literally had rules for gathering with your family with complex charts to determine with you you are allowed to meet (with single adults living on their own getting the worst of it). Utter insanity, all of it.

These are the secondary and tertiary bad effects of lockdowns which were ignored at the time.

I have a complicated lisfranc injury that's taken years now to sort due to covid. My partner is still dealing with autoimmune issues. We will be dealing with the aftermath for decades.

Have you found any studies showing long-term differences between the half of states that had "lockdowns" versus the half that did not?

A lot of things were, and continue to be ignored about lockdown. It killed a lot of addicts — alcoholics and drug addicts alike, probably online gamblers too.

There were major jumps in suicide during the lockdown and in the next two or three years after.

I wonder if COVID revealed to Americans how toxic their individualistic culture is. For a long time it kind of seemed like individualism was working well for you but COVID was the first crisis since WW2 where the country was asked to pull in the same direction together and it really just fell apart.

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.

Lockdown, not "Covid". And that Covid lockdown was a little taste of the extreme form of top down collectivism. (Covid was around both before and after the lockdowns.)

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.

> top down collectivism

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/

But Europeans and Canadians and Australians are not nearly as much "traumatized" by idea that OMG lockdown happened due to covid.

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

Interesting how the stay-at-home orders were much more serious and enforced outside of the USA, yet it was the USA that complained and moaned about them the most. Nobody was forcing us to stay inside our homes, and a lot of people ignored the order and went out anyway. Yet, so many Americans were absolutely outraged and indignant and complaining about Their Freedom, at the minor inconvenience of having their favorite restaurant closed.

The US may have had the most visible polarization about it. We had a President threatening to "open up the states" while state governors issued more and more restrictive orders. Depending on what news media you watched, there were ERs filled with bodies or there were people on the beach enjoying their spring break.

The contradictory messages from every levels of government for years did a lot to break the underlying faith in the system.

"it was the USA that complained and moaned about them them"

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.

Europeans, Canadians, and Australians are used to living in nanny states that dictate their lives.

It happened due to government not to Covid. A virus is not a conscious being, it cannot order lockdowns and would continue regardless of whether there was one or not.

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.)

People will complain that the government did too little or too much, but the key is that people will always complain.

They have the right to, and sometimes they will be justified in their complaints.

Some people will also obey whoever is in charge. History bears that out.

> where the country was asked to pull in the same direction together

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.

> people realized they just do what they're told by authority and they're not the free-thinking individuals they thought they were

Nah, no one who seriously thought this has come around to the truth.

There were riots in the streets, it was just over another black guy being killed by a racist cop though.

yeah and remember when those gatherings/protests got a thumbs up from the CDC but having friends over for dinner was off the table? God, what a ridiculous time that was.

Almost like outside and inside are different, eh?

The hypocrisy was most notable in experts who said those protesting against the lockdowns (outside), who were considered right wing, were risking spreading the disease, but then said the opposite when the protests supported a left-wing narrative.

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 do a lot of risk/reward balancing in life. Maybe we can discuss specific cases, if you like, but "I want to whine about public health restrictions" and "someone got murdered by the state" perhaps have different risk/reward profiles.

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 my father to have a proper funeral with his family.”

“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.

> I want my father to have a proper funeral with his family.”

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?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/04/16/michigan...

It’s nice that you have all the answers when it comes to risk/reward tradeoffs. Trust the Science!

As suspected, no such ban. You were able to work in your garden at will. And as the article notes, almost immediately reversed.

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.)

How in the world are you able to “just so” all this stuff? What are the principles or theories behind how these decisions were made?

Boy at the time they seemed panicky and capricious. Wrong?

> How in the world are you able to “just so” all this stuff?

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.

This is, incidentally, why experts are important.

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.

> 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.

They did that, widely. The alcohol withdrawal thing was all over; that's how I know about it. (Googling it finds articles all over, in both national and local news outlets. ChatGPT will also happily explain it.) They can't force people to listen, though, let alone comprehend.

> I guess the question is whether Covid was so terrible a threat as to demand that kind of subjugation to authority.

One must be careful not to inject too much hindsight into that assessment.

"someone got murdered by the state"

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.

> 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

Yup yup yup! The lack of investment in air purifiers/ literally moving classes outside in warm areas continues to show me that most of America is painfully stupid about air quality.

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.

So why were public outdoor areas like skate parks filled with sand to “promote social distancing”?[1] Or parking lots at beaches and state parks closed “to curb the spread of coronavirus”?[2]

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/coronavirus-san-clem...

[2]: https://calmatters.org/health/coronavirus/2020/03/coronaviru...

> So why were public outdoor areas like skate parks filled with sand to “promote social distancing”?

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.

LA County Parks is implementing following changes effective November 30, 2020:

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.

So LA was being a bit dumb.

See also: Schools wiping surfaces instead of opening windows.

NYC playgrounds closed until July 2020 (a time concurrent with ongoing protests): https://data.cityofnewyork.us/dataset/Parks-Closure-Status-D...

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.

So how did Sweden do vis-a-vis the USA?

Riots in the streets because you have to wear a piece of cloth on your mouth and stand slightly farther away from people?

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.

part of the issue with Covid is that it was highly state dependent so everyone is talking past each other and accusing people of gaslighting and memory holing stuff.

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.

> If you lived in a primarily liberal culture, the authoritarianism, virtue signaling and hypocrisy were completely insane.

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.

IDK why i bother but ill bite.

> 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.

if youll notice, the difference in death rates only diverges in 2021. in 2020, both states were the same color. this is because the only thing that actually solved covid was vaccines, and republicans were dumb as shit to think the vaccines didnt work.

> 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.

this is a complete non-sequiter to the thing i was calling disingenuous. it is disingenuous to say that the people who had issues with the US policy response to covid was simply that they were whiny babies who wouldnt wear a mask. My brother literally had 2 of the most important years of his childhood completely ruined.

besides the fact that this comparison is so dumb on so many levels, (like comparing any death toll to number of 9/11's a day), yes it is tragic that so many people died of covid. But again, the primary failure there was people not getting the vaccine.

But individualism turned out to be ok in that case. By the time vaccines were out, it had already mutated enough that it didn't make much of a difference whether or not people vaccinated, and most people ended up getting some variant of it. The bickering stopped, and US ended lockdowns around the same time as other countries.

If we were less lucky and it turned out to be super deadly and only solvable with more cooperation, that would fall apart here.

> By the time vaccines were out, it had already mutated enough that it didn't make much of a difference whether or not people vaccinated, and most people ended up getting some variant of it.

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.

I mean this is just silly. If anything, America was more communal than most countries during covid, as churches, clubs, gyms, continued to meet, even if in secret. Except for the extremists, no one really cared to be honest.

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 means voluntary cooperation. Collectivism is state-imposed forced cooperation. Decentralized vs. centralized. It's a common misconception that individualism means no cooperation; actually it means that each individual can choose who they want to cooperate with.

Does it matter what the cause is for the purpose of the social benefits of community?

This isn't how most people would define individualism and collectivism, I think.

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.

>consider my brother who lives on the Central Coast of California in a heavily hispanic enclave. We visited a few times.

On a local level covid restrictions seem to have had as much to do with economics as they did politics.

Actually the less collectivist approaches e.g. Sweden caused much less trouble.

If it was COVID, though, wouldn't we expect to see the same thing in other countries?

You do. I don't live in the USA and things are worse since lockdown.

Don't believe the propaganda that Nordic people are happiest. I reckon it's probably one of the Pacific islands.

>You do. I don't live in the USA and things are worse since lockdown.

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 ;)

Those happiness studies are more about cultural norms of communication and how questions about emotions translate into various local languages. They have little to do with happiness itself and say more about how cultures shape languages.

We do see it in other countries. But even if we didn’t see it, it could still be that the situation in the states was at such a precarious position that COVID tipped it there (more) than in other places, making it more visible. Also other places such as Europe in general have bigger safety nets so the fallout of the damage is less.

Covid wasn't some magical line in the sand when things got bad. It's really the tipping point for a trend that began in the 1970s of increasing inequality. Two big things happened in the pandemic that have nothing to do with other issues of social isolation:

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.

Can we stop pretending that it was Covid, and not the felon pedophile and his cronies in charge of the country? You can see on the plot that the shit started in 2016.

Sure, because the world was just great before 2016. The orange idiot is just the culmination of decades of decline, not a random blip in American history.

I agree but like most tragedies, it wasn't the event, it was the reaction. Trump did very little in his 1st term (especially in comparison to now), yet extremist/politically addicted people lost their minds constantly. It was their radicalization and increased extremism that caused most of the harm. And as most of their real life social circle pulled back from their extremism they got deeper into their social media bubble. And they still haven't come back and I don't expect them to for some time.

Trump might've been "subdued" in his 1st term, but social media was already at its breaking point even before he sat in the White House the first time. Remember the cesspool that was /r/TheDonald for example, the 4chan psyop factory, the pepe the frog memes, Steve Bannon, etc.

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 mean, in a roundabout way you are right in your second sentence, it just wasn't decades of decline, on the opposite, it was a decade of positive growth. The world was pretty good prior to 2016. By all accounts, economy was doing good, tech was happening, cool things were being done.

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.

What plot? All the plots in the article either (1) show the change for the worse happening in 2020 or later or (2) are explicitly comparing "before 2020" with "after 2020".

(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.)

Trump is a terrible president and person. Unfortunately, Trump derangement syndrome is also a real thing. We are a country full of fools of one persuasion or another.

100% right. What we (rather 80+ year old corrupt politicians) did to young people during covid was downright criminal. Almost two of their most important years destroyed.

Well, to be fair, it allowed some of the old people to survive more than two years, so...

Young people should react by voting in people who will defend them. Instead, they joined the elderly un voting for Trump. Go figure.

Boomers only slightly favored Trump in 2024.

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.

A group "slightly" favoring Harris, thanks to the electoral college, is a group that favors Trump :P

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 ?

But also due to the electoral college a small change in turnout in swing states can have a large effect. None of the swing states had higher than average Boomer concentration. Pennsylvania is right about average, and the rest were all lower.

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.

> Gen Z went for Biden by 24 points, but the shifted right for 2024 so only went for Harris by 10.

Kinda confirms my point, no ? Sure, not a "majority" of Gen Z went for Trump. But such a shift has to mean _something_ was done wrong.

That being said, I once again got my timing wrong - most of the restrictions of covid happened before Biden was elected, so it would not really make sense for them to blame it on Biden.

I suppose inflation was enough for them...

Young people were more pro lockdowns then old people.

And also, America did nit had two years of lockdowns.

absolutely true. Masks + lockdown hobbies (baking etc) were virtue signaling and everywhere online.

Many Americans were traumatized by being asked to wear a mask because they’re big angry babies. Many other Americans were traumatized by the discovery that they’re surrounded by big angry babies.

I began watching for Covid cases early. I asked everyone I met: "Have you had Covid?" and "Do you know anyone who has had covid?"

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?

There have been over 100 million cases and over one million deaths in the US. Congratulations to you and your acquaintances for being extreme outliers.

Wearing a mask was always such a non-issue. Even if the effect was only marginal, there's essentially no cost to wearing a mask.

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.

There is a cost to letting others tell you to wear a mask.

I am sorry, but this is a statistically ignorant take. Your selection bias and infinitesimal sample size do not accurately account for a country with a population of almost 350 million 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 didn't make a statistical claim - I provided my observation.

hirvi74 says>"why do you hold such contempt for your fellow humans who might not be healthy..." <

Typical "insert denigrating comment about opponent's internal thoughts to tarnish them." Nice try, hirvi74, but no banana!

Such tactics are why people are disgusted with liberals these days. Even down to our latest generation, whom liberals have lost, thank goodness.

> internal thoughts

How can thoughts be internal if you post them on a public forum?

> but no banana!

But I love bananas ='(

> liberals have lost, thank goodness.

You might be surprised with how much I agree with you. I do not cling to labels, and I have grown deeply dissatisfied with both liberals and conservatives. I have nothing but disdain for both factions.

Nonetheless you attempted to put words in my mouth, a very common social media leftist/liberal tactic. You will be labelled as you behave.

And yet your observation, contradicted by actual statistics, is apparently justification for 'IMO the "powers that be" panicked and drove the population into mass hysteria.' It's mysterious.

Yeah... "asked"...

I can say that post-Covid inflation took us from feeling like we were on the edge of escaping the middle class, to feeling like we aren't even close and realistically won't ever be again. Even as our incomes went up quite a bit at the same time.

And we're a lot better off than median. I can't imagine how crushing it's been lower "down the ladder".

Everyone expecting to escape the “middle class“ reminds me of Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that's, like, the point of life or something, or something one ought to expect. It kinda snuck up on us, actually, until one day we were like "whoa, are we... on the verge of 'making it'?"

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.

Don't get mortgages/private schools/expensive cars or hobbies that you can't manage comfortably with 2/3 of your income (or if in faang-level than 1/3 to 1/2 max).

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.

Well you need to live someplace and homes near the best jobs are the most expensive, all new cars and many used ones are expensive, and state universities can also be expensive these days.

Mortgages are necessary unless you want to continue to rent. Single story two bedroom houses are selling for $250,000, while the people paying for them make $60,000 a year. People can't buy those outright. Meanwhile to rent the same thing is $1,400 a month and you don't get to sell part or whole of the rental property to recoup some of the cost you spent over the years. One year of renting comes out to $16,000 which is almost the equivalent of the average 8% down payment on that $250,00 mortage.

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 be statistically accurate, it is possible for all the children except one to be above average.

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.

Dollars are dumb and you should price your place in society based on the demand/impact of the job you do.

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.

COVID almost certainly had something to do with it, but the US isn't the only country that faced lockdowns, nor is it the only country that experienced inflation. Why is it that most other countries' happiness scores have returned to near-baseline since then, while the US is still so much lower?

The USA really didn't have lockdowns, where people were actually forbidden to leave their homes. Apart from a handful of metro areas, what was actualy implemented were feeble 'stay at home suggestions' with tons of exceptions. It was entirely voluntary, and people broadly ignored them (again, outside a few areas). Around me, everyone was still out and about, eating at restaurants, buying their khakis, and basically ignoring that there was a deadly airborne disease being spread around. The only thing that seemed to be adequately enforced were school closures.

Lockdown was such a massive mistake. Masks are good, vaccines are good, shutting down everyone's lives in hopes of protecting already extremely unhealthy people, to which effectiveness was never established, was devastating to the world. Cities were hollowed out - ask ANYONE who lives in NYC, LA, even smaller cities like Seattle, and they'll tell you how nightlife was decimated by pandemic.

Outside of those cities, though, there really wasn't a "lockdown." Nobody was forced to stay in their homes. People treated it as optional and were out and about despite the utterly unenforced "stay at home". Around me, it had a minor impact on traffic, but no noticeable impact on stores, restaurants, and socialization.

National and state parks were closed. Flights cancelled. There was not much to do outside.

There were a lot more people outside during lockdown. There were running and cycling booms.

Literally every form of outdoor recreational equipment from cornhole to million dollar power boats had a huge sales boom during covid.

Actually it's extremely well documented in science studies that money absolutely makes you happy up to a certain point. Basically if you don't have a home and food due to not enough funds, then yes money absolutely equals happiness.

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.

> in science studies that money absolutely makes you happy up to a certain point

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.

> Perceived hapiness

Is there any other kind?

You can buy any bicycle[0] you want when you are rich but if you didn't had a bicycle in your childhood then you didn't had a bicycle in your childhood.

[0] or LEGO, Transformers action figure, whatever

That's not because you were poor then and not now but because you had few responsibilities then and many now. When you were young your needs were small and solely affected you, now your needs encompass those of family (I'm guessing that you have children). Even without family you have responsibilities to society and employer that you either did not have when young or that were simply less urgent.

It goes a little further than “money for basic necessities”.

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.

> Inequality has grown to the point where the majority of younger people now have no hope of ever owning a home

Please stop repeating this myth. Look further up the thread for gen Z homeowner statistics.

No, happiness increases linearly with log(money), well beyond basic necessities https://happiness-science.org/price-of-happiness/

2020 / Covid did A LOT of things, not just scramble our social lives.

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.

Those checks had the smallest impact out of all the things the government did.

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.

> The article is smarter than the title makes it sound. He's not seriously proposing that being rich makes you happy.

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.

As an occasional visitor to the US from England I was surprised by how expensive it's become. The US always used to seem cheaper than England I think largely because the government got out of the way so houses were cheap because you could build them, cars were cheap because you could import them, food was cheap because you could just grow stuff in huge fields whereas in England much of that was restricted.

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.

The UK's the same. The lockdown was a major driver of this.

Can say from experience volunteering, I was mighty surprised when literally children were being rendered hungry and homeless in London during Covid.

The UK (at least London) is cheaper than Seattle, and far cheaper than NYC.

That's going to depend heavily on where you live in Seattle or NYC. London has some of the most expensive real estate in the world and I can say from experience that you get much more of an apartment for your money in NYC or Seattle than in London (lived in all three).

Prices have gone skyhigh since lockdown. In fact, it's funny seeing the British media going on about "Cost of Living crisis" all the time, but failing to acknowledge one of the most obvious causes of it.

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.

The US has an enormous land area and the cost of living varies dramatically across it. Intense pockets develop where the high paying jobs are, and everyone wants to cram in there to compete for those jobs, and then they're competing for the housing there, so the prices skyrocket, so the jobs have to pay higher still. Wealthy as the average person may be, the poverty slope is very steep in such places. The SF / Bay Area is the paradigmatic example of this. But when COVID hit, the main attractor of the Bay Area vanished overnight: you didn't have to live there to work those jobs. There was a mass exodus to cheaper places. Texas was at the top of the list of destinations. Austin, though decidedly not the rest of Texas, has a similar culture to SF and so was a natural and comfortable landing spot. So the pressure relief valve on SF is a source of pressure on Austin. But Austin was already suffering growing pains before COVID.

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.

I'm not sure this is really true anymore and it ignores the reality on the ground of "cheap areas". Often times cheap areas are underserved in a way that once you require or depend on a service that is baked into other higher cost of living areas your life becomes much more expensive than if you'd simply lived in a high cost of living area. There are many examples of this but hospitals in rural areas are one of my favorite examples. There used to be many of these but many people didn't realize they were all (or mostly) subsidized capital ventures. Many of them are closing now that the subsidy has ended. So, is that county land cheap? Yes, but when you have an incident where time matters your likelihood of being cooked goes up precipitously.

Ditto water infrastructure - failures and lack of ability to maintain/upgrade.

Food deserts too, i was surprised to learn.

You still don't expect people to go hungry in a first world developed country. Nor did people go hungry or homeless at this scale before in recent American, British or even broadly Western history. Yet here we are, and the UK is no exception either.

At least you can be guaranteed for certain you won't be going hungry in Istanbul, Warsaw or Amman.

I disagree with the claim that a greater proportion of people go hungry, and more are homeless, today than at any point in recent western history. These have broadly been on a downwards trend over the last century.

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.

Recent Western history, 70s to early 00s. I doubt many people were going hungry in the US and UK back then, as much as they are now.

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.

> 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.

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.

Then why did houses used to be affordable even in those dense regions with high paying jobs? People act as though housing has always been prohibitively expensive in city centers but it hasn't. My dad bought a house in Boulder, CO of all places easily in the 90s. And of course he made a killing off of it because the housing market went completely insane over the next two decades. I now make more money than he ever did and can't even dream of buying the same house.

Because the regulations, set by those with vested interest in real estate, make it difficult to build more housing. Otherwise anyone with any sense would undercut the existing housing stock and turn a 100k investment in concrete and timber into a million dollar home in Boulder, CO.

Not exactly rocket science - if there's money to be made and people aren't making it then something is stopping them.

It's a generational narrative here as well: while it gets applied to X, Y, or Z generations in turn and depending on the context - I think it started with X's - but the gist of it is that young generations couldn't afford the house they themselves grow up in. Even if their parents were basic blue collar families and the new generation are well educated. There's too much truth in that as people look back in the preceding decades.

This wasn't some kind of mansion. It was a 1300 square foot house. I guess I'm aiming too high then while making 4x his salary? And people have been whining about this same problem for decades so nothing to be done about it?

well shoot, his grandpappy just had to roll up and Stake his claim on the land and it was his.

Depends if you think you’re going to ride a rising tide of appreciation when you buy a house, or if you have to accept its already long passed.

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…

America is new. Even in the 90s boulder was largely empty, competition for land was low, so land was cheap. As people spread to newer cities and gained wealth they bid up the price on land.

Still plenty of cheap land in CO, but they made drilling a well a nightmare in many cases. So people wanting to use cheap land either have to haul water or do some kind of low-key wildcat drilling.

> Even in the 90s boulder was largely empty

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.

Even today Boulder is "largely empty". It's an overgrown village and not a city, and planning rules ensure it will stay that way.

>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

Supply and demand. Among many other changes, the demographics of the typical Boulder resident changed significantly - originally nature lovers and hippies for whom earning money was not a primary motivation - post-2000 shifted to educated, highly-compensated desk workers who can bid up prices. And lots more people in total seeking to live in a small area, which also lifts prices significantly.

> Then why did houses used to be affordable even in those dense regions with high paying jobs?

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.

> More demand for a fixed set of land drives prices up.

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

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for units/apartments, especially in the face of homelessness. But no one dreams of owning an apartment as opposed to a free-standing house.

The dream/desire is the thing.

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Weird-Al-Yankovic-2/Buy-Me...

  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 on

> But no one dreams of owning an apartment as opposed to a free-standing house.

I think you might be a little out of touch. Plenty of people dream of owning any kind of real property.

Mate, I am well aware of the struggle, I am living it too.

But we're talking dreams here. Imagination. Do people really feel the need to be frugal with their imagination of what they desire?

Do people really think "Gosh, what I could do with a billion dollars.... no wait, I need to conserve my brain energy, my imagination is getting too expensive, better make that tree fiddy." ?

Why would you want to live in a free-standing house instead of a nice apartment given the choice? There are pros and cons sure, but unless you can hire someone to do all the house things I don't see it being a clear win.

I think you're focusing on the wrong thing and missing the point. Housing supplies have not significantly increased with population growth (demand) in decades--thus the price equilibrium has moved up. I don't care if you build up or out and neither does the law of supply and demand. The left gets all hung up on 'the right kind of housing' and doesn't realize they're part of the problem--making it harder to build housing (of any kind) is pushing housing costs up.

Just to take it one step further, there are usually geographical reasons why cities are located where they are.

So 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.

Zoning laws is why. No one wants new development because it could devalue their own house.

Yup, you are correct to not generalize, because Austin is one of the cheapest "cities" in America.

Not for a while, prices have gone way up here.

In general it’s bad to generalize, but the article says that housing prices across the US increased 50% over the past 5 years.

A big part of it is that literally almost every major US city has a self-inflicted housing shortage (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...), which then has cascading effects on every other part of cost of living.

sadly Austin is one of the best US cities at allowing new housing development

That's very true, but it's still subject to demand overflow from other cities where a lot of people can't even hope to afford anything.

Just speculation:

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 being expensive because of laws and zoning that constrain it's supply is often touted, but there is good academic research that that isn't the case. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zfsw4iotsn3nqs8vhu8kb/LMW-FAQ...

That's not the academic consensus. It's a non-peer-reviewed working paper that contradicts the academic consensus.

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!

Houses got expensive because of usury (loans made for unproductive purposes). It destroys civilizations over time. That is why it was encoded into ancient religious traditions.

Housing, education, and cars, all typically financed via loans, all exorbitantly expensive.

US interest rates have been historically some of the lowest anywhere. And there's nations with very high interest rates that don't have the same housing cost problems...

You're both saying the same thing...

When I hear "usury" I usually think of high interest rates, like payday loans and credit cards, not a 2.5% 30-year term.

Yeah it was redefined to that at some point. See Belloc’s essay on usury if you’re interested.

The definition of usury hasn't changed in 200 years.

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)

The person I responded to said:

"That is why [a ban on usury] was encoded into ancient religious traditions"

So they obviously meant the old definition, which encompasses all moneylending.

That's the modern definition. The comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880310 was about bans on usury since ancient times, when that term referred to the general practice of moneylending.

"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.

Payday loans are not illegal. By your definition, and Wikipedia's modern definitions, a payday or car-title loan is not exorbitant, and it is not usury. The payday loan shops around here are licensed, legitimate businesses working with regulated financial instruments.

> Low interest rates (i.e. freer moneylending aka more usury) increases house prices.

You just contradicted yourself. What is usury again? Low interest rates, freer moneylending, is "more usury"? You write in the present tense that freer moneylending and low interest rates are more usury than usury? Are the rates exorbitantly low? Is there an exorbitant number of customers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_lending

> Low interest rates, freer moneylending, is "more usury"?

In the ancient sense of the term, which this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880310 used, all moneylending is usury.

More loans are approved and/or borrowers are approved for bigger loans in low interest rate environments. This leads to high house prices. Hence, the "more usury" comment that I wrote. In that one sentence I had the same ancient definition of usury in mind.

I hope you don't believe low interest rates = expensive houses is something I made up.

If you think I'm contradicting myself sure go on. I find it easy to hold two definitions of a word in my head and use the correct one in the right context. But I understand that not everyone can and some may find it confusing.

The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.

I'm not even sure where "houses got expensive" come from. Houses certainly did not increase in price (per unit of area) in last ~80 years, inflation adjusted - they tightly fluctuate around the same point. Housing affordability is in fact 4th best in the US among all countries in the world, and it got better in the last decades (although with fluctuations, and periods when it was getting cheaper were not pleasant as it meant millions of people going under).

Interesting.

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?

It's very true for LA, SF, NYC, DC, and other similar cities. It's far less true everywhere else. Here in Atlanta you can find homes <250k and condos <150k

Because this is vibes vs data. People are made to believe that houses are expensive and people are being squeezed, because it makes money to throw people into rage. Housing price per square feet is flat over decades...

> I'm not even sure where "houses got expensive" come from

Not been shopping for a house recently?

Avg house price in my city doubled in the past 5 years.

If anything it's the opposite. Extremely low interest rates drove housing prices higher by making it easier to afford a higher price.

It’s not about the interest rate. It’s the availability of loans for unproductive purposes on a societal level. It raises the price even if you choose not to partake in said loans.

When the money being lended is digital and not backed by anything it’s even worse.

You said "usury", which is a word that describes loaning money at an exorbitant interest rate. So it's no surprise GP thought you were talking about interest rates.

(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.)

Okay then! What shall be our working definition of "exorbitant"?

Above the legal maximum. If you're asking how lawyers or lawmakers define that, read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate_ceiling

So in the USA in 2026, any interest rates or fees that are not illegal, are not exorbitant? And any loan or credit that is not illegal is not usury? That is obviously not the working definition for other commenters here.

If illegal loans have financed our cars, education, and homes, then where are all the criminal prosecutions? Where are the lawsuits to recover the exorbitant rates? Was it consumers taking these illegal loans? Or was it the established banks, negotiating illegal and exorbitant rates with criminals? Is that why banks fail, or are "too big to fail", because we are reluctant to expose their criminal activity?

We heard of people "walking away" from their home loans during the 2008 recession; it's difficult to walk with broken kneecaps! We heard that their loans were "underwater", but we didn't realize they were "sleeping with the fishes"!

> That is obviously not the working definition for other commenters here.

If you've read the other comments I don't understand why you're still confused.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47882360 pointed the finger at the general practice of moneylending, known for most of history as "usury", for high housing prices. This is broadly true - lower interest rates equal high prices.

Others thought they meant modern usury, which is lending money at higher than the legal maximum interest rate.

They said "usury" in the context of ancient societies. I understood their meaning perfectly well. More money lent out = higher asset prices.

I know that it is now commonly defined that way, so I explicitly called out that I was referring back to an the older definition:

> usury (loans made for unproductive purposes)

Sorry, a Tesla is neither luxurious nor a yacht.

Austin prices absolutely exploded from about 2010 to 2022. A huge part of that was housing, and then just before the pandemic Austin became sort of a weird "meme stock" ("Elon Musk is moving there!", "Joe Rogan is moving there") where its popular vision far outstripped its actual reality. I remember travelling around 2018 or so and telling people I was from Austin, and nearly every time I got a "Oh cool, I've heard that's such an awesome city" in response, which was far different a response I'd get in like 2005 or so. I mean, I like Austin, but we also had 2 months straight of 105+ degree weather a few years ago...

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.

>so the reason basic sandwiches are so expensive there is that entry level pay is now about $25/hr.

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.

Meh, property tax rates are so high in Texas because there is no state income tax. And I disagree that prices aren't much lower in other towns. Whenever I drive to Houston I always comment when I stop for food (which usually ends up being at some "fast casual" type place) that prices are much more reasonable than in Austin, like ~20-25% less.

In constant dollars cars are actually pretty much the same as they were 40+ years ago when you compare similar types and trim levels. A new Honda Civic for example costs about the same when you take into account inflation as the Civic I bought in 1989.

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.

You've got the cause and effect backwards here. The average purchase price of a car in constant dollars is about double now because those are the only cars to purchase and the only group that can afford those cars are those who are affluent. In general the people who purchase new vehicles ironically are not the ones who own them. They consistently purchase new vehicles at a regular cadence.

The existence of some base model Honda Civic or similar doesn't imply you or anyone can actually buy one.

>because those are the only cars to purchase and the only group that can afford those cars are those who are affluent

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.

You're going to be waiting for a while as the dealership finance people make you run the gantlet.

>The existence of some base model Honda Civic or similar doesn't imply you or anyone can actually buy one.

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 wasn't talking about just base trims of the cheapest models.

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.

The 1994 Pontiac Sunbird was $12,000, that's $26,000 in today's money. A 1990 Dodge Omni cost $7,000, that's $18,000 in today's money.

A 1999 Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla, assuming serviced regularly (and competently) could easily be on the road today.

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.

> I genuinely do not believe a 2025 car will usable on the road in 2035

If it is you'll probably be forced to pay a monthly subscription

You can buy current cars that do not require any subscription services. For example on my 2025 Hyundai here is what would stop working without a Bluelink subscription.

• Anything you do through the Bluelink app.

• Automatic calling for help after a collision, enhanced roadside assistance (sends GPS coordinates to help center so you don't have to know where you are to get help), and features to track and immobilize stolen vehicles.

• The navigation system loses access to live traffic data and live routing (routing the frequently checks with a server to update routes based on live and historical traffic patterns). Local search also degrades or maybe goes away.

• OTA updates for the navigation system. If you want to update its maps and databases you can download the update from their site to a thumb drive, and then install it via that.

What keeps working:

• All the driver assist and driving safety features like adaptive cruise control, lane finding/keeping, cross traffic warnings, and similar.

• CarPlay and Android Auto.

• The radio in the infotainment system. You can connect your phone via Bluetooth or USB (without using CarPlay or Android Auto) to stream music and handle phone calls.

The reason Toyota prices are still so high is because they're one of the only vehicles that are still so reliable (Mazda and Honda are actually great too). I think a 2025 Lexus GX 550 will almost certainly be on the road in 2035. Anything electric I am less certain of because they depreciate way faster and the build quality sucks.

The latest Lexus models including the one you cited are getting in huge trouble for quality problems right now. Anything without a 2JZ is suspect from Lexus right now.

Same experience as a Canadian visiting NY and SF in recent years. Yes I know I went to the most expensive cities in the country but still it was hard to eat a basic meal that wasn't US$30, and in tourist contexts (like the hotel restaurant) it was even more still.

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+.

Services are expensive because they compete for labor with other things.

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.

Grocery stores don't make any money though. That's why its practically a huge monopoly, and even still they hardly make money. Food in general is an awful business to be in.

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".

Sure, but we subsidize farmers and then they sell their products to middlemen and we are like "yeah whatever you want".

Attach the subsidy to the eventual retail price and they would at least be a little lower.

Where in Canada are you from?

When I visited Vancouver from the Bay Area things only felt cheaper accounting for the exchange rate.

Waterloo Region. So, not Vancouver/Toronto level, but definitely on the list:

https://creditcardgenius.ca/blog/most-expensive-cities-canad...

Everything is priced the same. And it’s Detroit, Minneapolis, Austin, LA, and 100 people towns everywhere.

The US prices are the same as the Canadian prices, despite their dollar being worth 30% more.

Wild

I don't think you've seen starving people if this is your opinion.

I have never seen someone in america starving.

Oh boy, you're not paying attention or you're in a bubble. Not usually distended belly-famine starving, sure, but malnutrition is rife in many rural and impoverished counties in the country.

Okay so they aren't in a bubble and paying attention because malnutrition isn't starving.

And Trump is probably malnourished but it has nothing to do with means.

Educate me. Isn't that what food stamps / SNAP is exactly intended to prevent? On top of the many soup kitchens and church/charity food drives.

I would have agreed until I went abroad.

I distinctly remember seeing the mother and child in a dark stairwell mother thin as a rail sitting on dirt and trash the woman barely lucid baby wailing.

Or the old man begging on the corner with one arm clearly starving in nothing but a fabric cloth pants the bones sticking out like nothing I've seen before.

Malnutrition by western standards is bs you're either dying or you're not. Most of the world does not live on a balanced diet.

I wasn't really saying starving. Just hungry enough to come ask for food and eat it. I think the lady in question was likely drug addicted but even so usually even the addicts are fed.

Ok that's understandable and I agree then.

We have a real problem of just letting people be homelss forever. If someone's a drug addict here they effectively can stay one forever. Any money they get can go to the drug and all other ammenities are used.

>On my trip to Austin a couple of years ago it'd got really expensive.

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.

They're opening Action stores in the US because their CEO has noticed that it's a huge potential market.

Cheap Chinese shit is like mana from heaven for the poor and couple that with Dutch frugality and America is saved.

Texas has gone nuts. I visited Dallas, Houston, Galveston from Oregon last year, looking to try out the cheap food that I hear about online because they dOn’T hAvE cOmMuNiSt tAxEs aNd rEgUlAtIoNs, and oh boy did I my hopes get crushed. Everything seemed as expensive, or more, than in my area with regulations, more reasonable worker protections and minimum wage…

Partially this is because of the strength of the dollar. I lived briefly in England in 2013ish and everything was expensive. I went back last year and it seemed cheaper, but only because the dollar has increased in value. Thus, if you've been visiting from England, you're probably seeing a huge increase in price due to the pound weakening.

I’m Canadian, but frequently travel in the US. Over the past year I am also shocked at US prices. It used to be that everything in the US was about 25% cheaper (makes sense as their dollar is worth more). Lately I’ve noticed that everything is priced the same. And I mean exactly the same.

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..

US USD$199: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-M18-18V-Lithium-Ion-Br...

Canada CAD$298: https://www.homedepot.ca/product/milwaukee-tool-m18-18-volt-...

First drill I opened.

You can always find outliers.

Just glad I don’t have to pay American prices, that’s all.

But have fun continuing to tell yourselves that you’re doing so great.

I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace.

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.

At some point you have to take some responsibility for your life.

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.

Both can be true—

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.

Great, you figured it out, this society-wide collapse in happiness was caused by people simply deciding to be sad, simultaneously. No external factors were involved. Everyone just decided they didn't want to be happy anymore.

> Everyone just decided they didn't want to be happy anymore.

My id wants to be happy, but my collective unconscious wants to doomscroll.

Yes, you are absolutely right in the sense that I did not actively consider human connection to be a priority in my early years. I'm working on that now. And I as well know a lot of people who's lives got better after COVID. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if I wasn't that type of person, it was still easy to make friends across places, but the general trend nowadays is that there a lot more barriers to break into social circles, and a lot of social circles are not as easily accessible. And maybe it's also because I live in Seattle.

>And maybe it's also because I live in Seattle.

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.

I sense your lack of hope and see it in a lot of younger people these days.

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.

Huh. I'm a successful person in my mid 40s, just a year or two behind you. Objectively things are going great.

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.

It's really early to see if the current layoff wave is just a lean time like the dotcom burst or 2008, or if it's really they end of tech as a low unemployment, high paying profession.

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 remember New Year's Eve in 2000. It felt like people really believed in a better future and they looked forward to experience the new millenium.

In retrospective this looks like a depressing joke to me.

> "The one thing that my generation (Gen X) seemed to have was always some optimism for the future."

The vibe among Gen X was that the west was going to get invaded / nuked by the Soviets or economically crushed by the Japanese.

Until the dot com boom, we all thought we were going to be lucky to manage a store at the mall.

> I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace.

do you have kids? Family? That is the ancient receipt for a great and happy life.

Yeah, it was, but now we have AI and there is no future for our kids, so it's even worse.

> Yeah, it was, but now we have AI and there is no future for our kids, so it's even worse.

what? We went through so many bad periods in our history..is it sarcasm?

No sarcasm, your reply is insulting. But stupidity, blindness and greed-driven techno-optimism displayed on this site got to a vomit-inducing level recently.

agreed.

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)

Don't swing to the extremes, world is a bit bigger than news portals and US ones are beyond toxic regardless of the party favored. Nature is still beautiful, traveling is as enlightening as ever, meeting new cultures, foods, learning real history of the world as you visit places is priceless. Raising kids is hard but extremely rewarding. And so on.

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.

It's not about news but the reality around me, and I'm not in US but in a country that has an active war on the other side of the eastern border. And it's a war with increasing participation of drones and robots.

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.

That is extremely bleak. The story of the human race is a series of good and bad cycles. Right now we are in a bad cycle. It will end. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 20 years, maybe in 80. But it will. And we need your children & others to carry the torch of our species into the future. Humanity still has many thousands of years of life in us yet.

    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.

Yeah. I had kids, but the fact that I can't see a future for them, but have to live as if I do, is crushing.

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.

You can still get time alone to recharge - maybe not as much as you like, but at least some. The price is, you also have to take the kid solo sometimes, to give your spouse a chance to get alone and recharge. They need it too, even if they aren't as much of an introvert as you are. They may not needs as much, but they probably need some.

> If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though.

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.

I think it's a bit presumptuous to think I was just relaxing. I was doing stuff like fighting in a foreign civil war and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea. I wasn't really 'relaxing' so much as doing things that are impossible to do without being alone from family. I'm probably an odd ball but those are the sorts of things that 'recharge' me.

It's not you, it's just the know-it-all guys with proven recipes for happy life are presumptuous.

Off the cuff I do think it's pretty good advice if someone is unfulfilled or really spending a bunch of time just relaxing. Almost everyone I know with nothing much going on that had kids are happier for it. If you are wasting your life fucking about, kids will force you to do something with your life, and raising kids is an honorable use of time.

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.

1) okay, I'm fascinated by the 'fighting in a foreign civil war' thing, can you expound on that?

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.

I am on point, about 1.3% of the year, being a father, husband.

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.

lol, what? How can you assume that people in the internet will connect this:

"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.

I’m strongly introverted and having kids was an amazing positive experience for me.

> If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though.

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.

Thank you for speaking honestly about children. I struggle with fatherhood as well and it's one my life goals to have these honest conversations. I genuinely believe the majority of people really like it, but there is a sizable minority that never speaks out.

I had a job, was relatively happy. Then I had kids, less happy due to severe lack of time. Now, have no job and still have my kids. Happiest I’ve ever been.

https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/The-Smiths/Heaven-Knows-I-...

  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?

> On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people.

I agree. I think we should just stop.

I don't think the majority of people have given it a passing thought to be fair. For folks that grew up with the advent of being the "designated family googler" (and rested the success of their careers on such), it is an incredible time for information.

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.

The only way out is through. This transition sucks but (1) is necessary (and INEVITABLE) to become an advanced civilization, and (2) the cat is out of the bag, it is not going back in, and burying one's head in the sand is no solution at all.

The cat can be put back into the bag. Go see the plot for “the creator” or “dune” to see what doing that looks like.

I've seen the latter but I'm not sure I get the relevancy.

It's barely mentioned in the film iirc. The book is obviously far better. He's referring to the Butlerian Jihad.

I think if modern LLMs were invented in the mid 2010s it would have been promoted in more positive ways, but because everyone is afraid for their economic security saying scary things gets more of a response. I think it's kind of gross that it's a race to scare ordinary people and especially Dario Amodei should feel kind of ashamed of himself.

Children would change that, instantly.

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.

What a testimony to the tricks your brain chemistry plays on you.

> 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'm not even on step 0 for that. Dating is f*ked for ordinary young men in 2026

I feel like this is an easily answerable question, but I can see this because I grew up an atheist (and travel in those typically atheist/educated/professional circles) and have become much more aware/educated in/embracing of religion later in life myself.

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.

Yeah, I agree. I think we're deep into a spiritual crisis, a crisis of meaning. A lot of people are blind to the trend because those aren't easy things to measure.

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.

> 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 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.

> Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people

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.

Using a long phrase like "Purpose, connection, and what it means to be a human" seems preferable to enabling supernatural belief to slink in through the gap in the now-ambiguous word "spirituality". I say leave it to Madame Blavatsky. Oh wait that's spiritualism. Same difference.

Ooh, how about zeitgeist? I like that word. Then you'd still have spirits, but rational German ones.

I intentionally use the word because fellow atheists and positivists are too uncomfortable with it, and I believe the world needs more of it.

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.

Hey, I'm cool with Chesterton and CS Lewis and "the numinous". (There's another word option for you, BTW.) I just think "spirituality" is already crammed full of very fruity religious meaning. If when somebody says "spirituality" they might be talking about meaning and purpose or crystal healing and Jesus, that's bad for me trying to pin down their argument, and worse for their memetic victims who can be suckered into thinking the two are related, which deliberate confusion is already a big vector for the spread of religion.

What’s your proposed alternative for flourishing, content, joyful human lives?

There's humanism, but it didn't take off. I don't know if this analysis even gets to the root of ... the alleged problem. I mean, OK, lets say (other) people are miserably lonely and need to join some kind of club: they won't do that anyway, even if it's a church-like club that promises to tell them what life's all about. Possibly people already form communities as much as they honestly want to.

But people used to join those kinds of clubs at much higher frequency. Sp it’s not impossible for that behavior to change.

It’s just that historically there haven’t been many successful examples of atheist communities with the kind of shared deep purpose, meaning and connection you describe.

That would be weird

Yes it’s much better to be an atheist miserable wage slave with a miserable life.

I don't know, I'm a die hard nihilist and atheist and I'm married, have kids, friends, and think life is beautiful and generally ok. I don't see why people need to believe in imaginary stuff and I don't really see how it makes people happy.

See my other reply

Funny, I'm the exact opposite!

It’s just an empirically observable reality.

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.

It's also demonstrated that meditation and volunteering improves well being regardless of beliefs... and atheists like myself have no excuse not to be doing those things right now.

You don't sound much like a nihilist to me.

Existentialism and/or Optimistic Nihilism. I'm a pessimist, myself.

I'm not optimistic. I think an accurate assessment of the world is, in a sense, pretty pessimistic. But I don't see any reason to get worked up about it. It would be very stupid to let my mind tell me that I cannot experience pleasure in the world just because the long term situation looks bleak. I can't control any of that stuff anyway, so why bother feeling bad about it?

Oh so you actually are a nihilist in the sense that Nietzsche meant. That's too bad.

on your point about meaning... this is america: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_M... (book by Chris Hedges)

Some people react negatively when I say this, because there very much are real problems in the world right now, but...

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.

> Everything has been stripped of its meaning.

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.

Are you skiing for the signs or for the mountains, the views, and the experience?

The whole experience.

And it was boring monoculture

Sounds like you have two happy well-adjusted friends?

Secularism in the US began rising steadily in 1990 and has actually been declining since 2020. That trend doesn't line up well with any of the data we're talking about.

Unless the data is a lagging indicator

"America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization"

And yet we elected Jesus.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

A reaction to that very same secularization. Religious nutjobs feel threatened and this is their answer.

I think this is def part of it. Trump was not doing well in 2016 at all until the final debate when he cornered Clinton into a (legitimate) strong defense of her pro-choice position.

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.

Tying anti-abortion positions so tightly to Christianity (especially, popularizing it among protestant sects) and elevating that to a concern above most or all others (American conservative catholicism) was a deliberate move by propagandists in the last century, not something that somehow arose naturally.

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.

A majority of American Christians support legal abortion, aside from white evangelical Protestants where support for legal abortion is 24%. Overall, 60% of Americans support it. So this doesn't really add up. I'm pretty sure Trump's sudden change in fortunes was due to James Comey suddenly announcing that Buttery Males were back on the table at the last moment. And let's not overstate how much support he actually had in the end. He won with the worst margin in history.

I think you probably follow politics too closely if you think that's why Trump won in 2016. HC was such a terrible campaigner that she simply stopped campaigning 3 weeks before the election because it wasn't helping. That and her major policy position was pro-globalism which hasn't been the position of the winning POTUS candidate since the 1980s. That's why she lost, not something that happened in a debate that maybe 0.3% of the population watched.

I don't think that had anything to do with it. A majority of Americans support some level of access to abortion, and only a small minority believes it should be banned.

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?

The fact that so many Americans listened to and followed those religious nutjobs and they were able to sweep the government with such little effort suggests no such "secularization" ever took place.

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.

The US was 90% Christian and 5% None just 35 years ago. Today it's 63% Christian and 29% None. That seems pretty rapid to me. It has not reached anything close to a majority yet, so the religious still hold great sway. And the perceived threat from their decreasing belief share pushes extremism.

tbh, that seems less like "rapid secularization" and more like "a slight drop from absolute to merely near-absolute power" to me.

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.

Meanwhile in France "None" is at 51%. We did it! We outnumbered them!

Spain is 64% Christian of which 98% are Catholic. Yet they are the happiest according to the submitted article. None of this dcreasing believe share extremism.

> And yet we elected Jesus.

You mean that doctor?

What?

What has atheism anything to do with this?

Absolutely nothing. Religious people just tend to think they have it all figured out because they've been well trained in following tradition and avoiding questioning the status quo.

Which would make someone less sad by default, no? I certainly sort of wish I thought I had it all figured out - I'd be way happier!

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.

> Which would make someone less sad by default, no?

Ignorance is bliss. Is ignorance therefore good?

Because the article's question is 'how did America get so sad' and the answer is 'because it lost Christianity' because Christianity makes people less sad.

I'm not even sure it's Christianity that makes people less sad (I would argue that it isn't). It's the civic community that churches often create that breed purpose & happiness. Churches aren't the only types of communities that do this, but they're by far the most common.

Modern christianity in America is a primary contributor to my sadness.

Can you explain that?

In my experience many of them are breathtakingly judgmental hypocrites.

https://kepetersen.substack.com/p/the-gospel-of-hypocrisy-ho...

I am aware of this view, I am curious how it's the primary driver of sadness for the guy I replied to.

Hmm, in my experience it's been quite the opposite. I suppose it depends a lot on who you choose to spend your time with!

In 2026, after Trump started the war in Iran, when he is doing all he can to cover Einstein’s accomplices, after providing legal cover for the ICE agents who killed two Americans, when he called the pope weak and said he is not a fan, Evangelicals still approve of his actions 69% [0].

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...

To respond to another comment you just made, it is not "the" driver, as in the only thing that makes me sad. It is one of the big ones. Modern politics and the loss of American mythology broadly make up the remainder. These are all arguably intertwined, of course.

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.

Not the person you're replying to, but Christianity in America makes me sad, too.

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.

Religion is a symptom of irrational belief and groundless hope.

Which is seemingly the superior strategy for happiness and survival.

Yeah tell that to all the people who avoided the bare minimum of advice during COVID for their own beliefs and subsequently died.

Perception is reality! Its great as long as it doesn't hurt others.

People who are lucky in life never question their faith, because why would they? That's why Christians are happier. I grew up Christian, but I was not lucky in life. Christianity did fuck all to help me. Actually, I find more peace in my lack of faith now. But everyone is different.

For those who haven’t read it yet, article engages with this explanation and doesn’t come to the same conclusion

America is swinging even more towards theocracy -- the Military Prayer Meetings say killing people is a mission from god, the White House Faith Office 1) exists, and 2) says that saying no to the rapist running government is "saying no to god"

Ok. And in parallel the average American is disconnected from religion and increasingly miserable as per the article.

No, the article showed that non belief peaked a few years ago: There are more butts in the pews than in 2020.

But sentiment hasn’t recovered.

That's not what the article says at all. Perhaps you should re-read it, especially the section that directly contradicts what you are saying about religion and happiness.

If anything, Americans are more religious than they were pre-pandemic (reversing a 30-year trend), and yet they're less happy.

I think the value add of religion per the top comment is that it typically has a built in community and sense of connection. Churches bring people together in multiple ways.

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.

>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!

Hallowed are the Ori!

> say my average atheist friend who is a director in a FAANG

Not a lot of "average" going on here.

What I should have said is the two guys are fairly representative and more importantly line up to the story: if we are so Rich how are we so sad. So I used to relatively rich friends as the example:)

That's totally fair. I think to the extent that wealth degrades community you're going to have a clear trend.

The counterpoint of the example I used is that among my religious friends wealth has not degraded family/community.

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.

No time for sadness? HA! War and suffering continues unabated, "surprise"!

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.

I doubt it's quite that simple, but this does seem likely to be a big factor. I say this as an atheist myself. Religion does seem to give people a purpose and a community that's difficult to find elsewhere, and that translates to happiness. Sometimes I wish I could do it, but I can't.

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.

I think this is a common reaction that I used to agree with but no longer. I think religion tends to capture something essential about reality that atheism excluded by definition.

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?

Large sections of China, Japan, etc are atheists. Why do you think it hasn't worked?

Well for one obvious example is both of those societies are only recently atheist (<100 years) and that they both have an absolute dismal birth rate that makes it hard to imagine how they will look like a hundred years from now.

Every society has had gods at some point in the past. Why didn't every society improve then? And China's growth has been very recent(after the 80s). And birth rates have absolutely collapsed across the world. It's not some unique Chinese/Japanese situation. Before their silly 1 child policy change China had insane population growth. As non religious people. Almost like these aren't really connected at all.

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. I don't subscribe to your religion.

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.

> 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. I don't subscribe to your religion.

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."

> 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.

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.

Buddhism is an atheist philosophy. It has been around longer than Christianity. It has hundreds of millions of adherents.

Do you disregard it because you don't think they are successful, or numerous enough?

Technically with Buddhism I'd say god itself it's the Tao, which perfectly maps to the concept of Logos in the Western world.

"Buddhism is an atheist philosophy"

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.

I mean we have academia, which is essentially secular study. Moreover Atheist don't need to go to church together to indoctrinate their beliefs, that happens every day when no miracles happen and the world continues to be kill or be killed anywhere animal intelligence has not overcome that reality in some small pocket. Atheist also tend to understand that their is no forgiveness and they have to sit with their actions for the rest of their limited days, so it's not a great idea to go out and do terrible things for treasure.

"I mean we have academia, which is essentially secular study."

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.

> secularism and inability to publish reproducible papers is positively correlated.

It's annoying that I need to say this, but: correlation is not causation.

Are you blaming the replication crisis on atheism?

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.

I think you've got this backwards. People are inherently religious. We evolved to see intent behind everything. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is psychologically powerful.

"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.

Because atheism isn't a club like an organized religion is. You don't need to join a specific community or church or organization in order to be an atheist. You just stop believing in religion, and there you are.

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.

> When I came to the US in mid-90s (as an atheist) over half the population attended religious services regularly.

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.

Religion has nice side effects (community), but vast downsides (non-scientific worldview, brainwashing). I think you can get the community feeling also by simply meeting with people you know, in hackerspaces for instance.

"non-scientific worldview"

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.

They were scientific in spite of being religious. Not because of it.

> 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.

>> They were scientific in spite of being religious. Not because of it.

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 justify that claim?

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!

Brilliant response. Thank you!!

> Can you?

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

An interesting postulate.

God is waiting but not the God of any organized religion - I personally believe if their is a God, we do not know him and never will

No the claim that religion is a major reason for science.

> 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.

Turing, Higgs, Curie. All atheists. Religion has no bearing on whether or not someone achieves greatness in their life. In the past, people often were "religious" simply just to get the public to listen to them. They almost threw out Newton's life work just because he didn't believe in the "trinity" of the christian god (note: he was very deeply religious/spiritual and believed his work was proof of intelligent design.) Bottom line, we're moving away from religion in our world because it provides increasingly less social value and causes more and more issues. The way I see it, religion is a terrible curse on our world that only brings war and distrust. If you can't keep it in your chapel then you're an evangelist and your morals are fundamentally no different than the colonizers of old.

The decline of religion is happening in lockstep with declines in happiness and mental health and increases in loneliness.

Also you somehow skipped over the track record of the atheist regimes of the 20th century.

Nuance has left the chat. As long as we're here:

The resurgence of religion is happening in lockstep with the rise of Nationalism in the US. The rich and powerful are using it like a tool to manufacture compliance, which is literally the reason religion was invented. A multi cultural society cannot be a religious society. A society that values everyone equally cannot be a religious society. This has been proven again and again.

> If you can't keep it in your chapel then you're an evangelist and your morals are fundamentally no different than the colonizers of old.

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".

Evangelism just achieves their violence societally and incentivizes via positive reinforcement vs negative. It's more like telling a starving person "Come to the dark side, we have cake" when the reason they're starving is because you only do equitable business with your in-group.

I do science and mathematics, and I am 'religious' - I believe in God, which I define simply as the universal consciousness - in other words, I believe the universe has a soul.

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 ^^

I'll go further. Oppenheimer and Whitehead (neither Christian) have stated, in their respective histories of science, that the Judeo-Christian world view was absolutely necessary for the start of real science, that it could not have originated in a society with a different worldview.

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.

That's an interesting take. Many years ago, I was chatting with a coworker who had emigrated from China; we got into topics like these, and something he said stuck with me all these years. He basically lamented that Chinese civilization is so deeply driven by Confucius thought, and expressed envy at the Western world's Christian underpinnings saying that it was better at driving people to search for "the truth."

Christianity is built upon “believe and do not doubt”. Sorry, I think your Chinese friend was a bit starry-eyed about Christianity…

Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is almost literally a millennium old at this point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_quaerens_intellectum (and much older if you take it back to Saint John's response to the resurrection John 20:8-9)

What you wrote is quite obscure.

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."

Yes, on the surface the religion is the textbook antithesis of free thought. And yet I think my friend was getting at something deeper I can't quite pin down easily. Maybe it was just a lucky combination of aristocrat philosophers justifying their pursuits? Then there was the Enlightenment thing...

On the surface the religion is the antithesis of free thought? Where does persecution of scientists during the Medieval Age belong to? Is it below the surface? Above the surface?

Enlightenment runs contrary to Christian Dogma - Enlightenment advocates for the separation of Church and State.

Sorry pal, but Christianity is firmly against free thought....

Jesus says, "I am the way and the truth and the life". And to Thomas He says _first_ (two verses earlier), "Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing".

And to add another famous example: Galileo Galilei 500 years ago was persecuted by the Christian Church because he (Galileo) defended helio-centrism. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

Sorry pal, but Christian Church is firmly in the "believe and do not doubt" camp.

https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/resources/galileo/histori...

You are one of today's lucky 10K!

That's the short version. The LONG version is https://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/galileo-affair-1-pr...

A huge surprise to the ancient Greeks, who outlined the concept of reason centuries before Christianity appeared, and invented a fair amount of math and the foundations of empiricism while they were at it.

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.

They did. But they never developed it into science in the modern sense.

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.

The ancient Greeks had the opportunity to invent the steam engine, but didn't. They had the beginnings of steam power, but slaves were cheaper.

common misconception:

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

I was talking about the Greeks, not the Romans, entirely different civilisation(s) the Romans conquered. Look up "aeolipile" or "Hero's Engine". The ancient Greek steam powered device. Not sure why I'm voted down for stating historical fact. The Greeks had the beginning of steam power but never took it to the levels of the industrial revolution. If we look at ancient China too, they had a number of brilliant inventions but did not always follow through on them either.

from the article I linked: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

> 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.

"the aeolipile – had no practical use"

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.

Reddit would be that way. > 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. I'm surprised anyone is still repeating such a laughable myth. Almost everything from classical antiquity would've been lost if not for Christians copying texts. > Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence. Do you know what scholasticism means?

All of those things predate Christianity.

Well maybe not scholasticism.

> that the Judeo-Christian world view was absolutely necessary for the start of real science

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.

Of course you can cherry pick famous scientists from the past to support your point, especially when it's an historical fact that theism was the default for centuries.

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.

> 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.

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?

> In the United States, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death.

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.

Probably the most obvious lesson you learn from studying religion(s) is that the word itself is functionally useless. It’s so broad a term that includes basically all intellectual history up to the present, political history, across all countries, civilizations, etc.

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.

Just wanted to say I agree. The thing that caused a savage to throw a virgin into a volcano and the thing that caused newton to seek deep into the construction of the universe shouldn't be explained by the same word.

Religion is fundamentally against scientific ideas because it presents a bunch of frankly unlikely ideas and then says we cannot test them. Christ rising from the dead cannot be tested and it lives outside of science. Also a lot of religious people in past have poined to Bible as reasons for why sceientific ideas like heliocentrism were correct and it ended up being completley wrong! You are cherry picking the few examples were Religion actually helped science when most of the time it was fought every revelation. Also 90% of people were religious back in the day that doesn't mean 90% of all inventions have religion to thank for it. The fact is that many religions are not testable and though they bring tremendous happiness to its users are not true.

>non-scientific worldview, brainwashing

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.

>This can be good, you know

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.

> right and rational

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...

Science exposes reality. If people aren't fit to deal with reality, and need imaginary entities that they need to worship for it to make sense, then these people need to work on themselves first and foremost, instead of screaming that the painted door on the wall that science removed traps them in a room. Their worldview was error prone to begin with.

>for it to make sense

Mmmm..I didn't make that argument. I was talking about keeping the behavior of the people good and aligned with the goals of the society.

Who cares if it was a lie, if it provides happiness and peace? The problem happened because the "leaders" started using it for selfish reasons. You got that problem in Science also, probably in a much worsened form.

> non-scientific worldview

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.

> this is trivial to prove

Please don't forget to state the axioms before building the proof.

You can look up "prime mover aristotle" and "cogito descartes" if you're interested.

Counterpoint: I know plenty of very religious families with multiple kids who are deeply unhappy.

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 also know many religious families who have disowned their kids for being gay - it is not a one way street of great benefits. Let alone the mental gymnastics required to claim to know the creator of the universe

The idea of kids being a get-out-of-jail-free card to happiness and existential turmoil has never made sense to me. Kids are wonderful, but not because they’re not a magical gateway to happiness.

They're more motivated to pretend everything is okay, at least.

I think it's a symptom of American mentality that atheism and deep meaning are considered opposites.

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.

Not to be snide, but did you read the article? The article explicitly removes decline in religion as an explanation for this particular bout of unhappiness.

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"?

90% of the top-level comments here are people proffering explanations disputed in the article.

> The article explicitly removes decline in religion as an explanation for this particular bout of unhappiness.

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.

> The growing secularization up to 2020 follows the long-term trend towards unhappiness and peak secularization and peak unhappiness line up too.

Are we looking at the same graphs? That's not what I saw.

> America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization.

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?

> lives much closer to family (intentional choice)

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)

As someone that can’t afford to live close to family this hits me in the feelings. Would love it if the government would do something about it.

It's also something that has nothing to do with religion. I am always surprised to see how religion people sometimes think you can't care about other people or your family if you don't believe in a bearded guy in the sky.

The difference is, like Jesus taught, religious people will care for others expecting nothing in return (reward is from God), but secular people will, even if it's as small as the narcissistic satisfaction of "look at me I'm such a good person." As soon as the cost-benefit of caring for family goes deeply negative, there's no reason to keep doing so.

OK, you did it again! Exactly what I'm talking about. You think that without religions we're just selfish calculating bastards.

We're not, I promise.

How do you make decisions without calculations? we're all calculators, aren't we?

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?

Common decency.

That's exactly His argument - you're telling yourself "it's the decent thing to do" but it's actually "doing this makes me feel like a decent person."

But is there really a difference? You can can argue that any apparently selfless act is driven by a desire for self-satisfaction, but from an external view the outcome is the same in either case.

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.

Right, the desire of religious believers to help others is also self-interest. But the difference is that the expected reward comes from God, not from others. That makes it more resolute, because for the secular person if the cost of the care greatly outweighs the benefit of "common decency", then there is no reason to continue. Whereas, for a religious believer, the benefit of carrying out God's will is immeasurable.

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.

> That makes it more resolute, because for the secular person if the cost of the care greatly outweighs the benefit of "common decency", then there is no reason to continue.

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.

You're missing the point. I "latched onto" common decency because that is what the user before you brought up as a valid reason. It was only typed for demonstrative purposes.

So the other reasons you've given are similar - it's in your best interest, and in your community's, and in the world's. Notice that that is exactly what was argued in my comment before: "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?"

> But the difference is that the expected reward comes from God

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.

The effective difference is that the reward is immeasurably desirable. Whereas the reward of "common decency", for example, is low in comparison, and so the cost of taking care of someone can easily outweigh it - in which case there is no rational reason to continue taking care.

You said:

> The difference is, like Jesus taught, religious people will care for others expecting nothing in return (reward is from God)

But you admit that's not true. They expect something in return from God. I don't understand why this distinction even matters if the only thing that makes the reward worth it is just how 'immeasurably desirable' it is.

If atheists could get some similar reward (maybe their consciousness uploaded to a "heaven" simulation by a kindness-promoting nonprofit that feels effectively endless) depending on how kind they were to others during their lives, would they then be rational to be kind? Or would it still be chasing some sort of "reward" for their kindness?

Why does the reward originating from God matter?

Yeah, I think we're in agreement, just "speaking" past each other a bit. That the reward originates from God doesn't matter for the purpose of the argument, only that it is immeasurably desirable. If we lived in a science fiction fantasy where such a non-profit organization as you described existed then it would effectively be the same.

I want to clarify about "chasing a reward": people don't do serious things "just because". People expect a return. Jesus taught that those who do good expecting a tangible earthly return "have already received their reward". In this context, that's whether that is because you expect the person you're taking care of to repay you in the future, or you just enjoy his company, or it makes you feel like a good person, or it maintains your social status, or whatever it is. Jesus taught that those who do good not expecting a tangible worldly return will receive a reward in Heaven. In the Gospels He makes this same argument repeatedly using different words. Another one that comes to mind: "sinners are also kind to those who are kind to them, but if you will be kind to those who hate you then your reward in Heaven will be great." So I deliberately added that note in parenthesis to make the distinction that religious people (should) expect nothing in return from others, they should expect a reward from God only.

>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?

Yes.

> 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?

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.

So your desire to believe in a God must also be a calculation you made selfishly. You do expect "something" in return for your religious devotion, and it seems to be based around your desire to not go to Hell, not some greater moral duty to your fellow man or a desire to do Good for the sake of it.

Otherwise, why does Religion need a punishment like Hell at all?

Wow, that's a load of garbage. Clearly you have some bigotry against people who don't follow your religion. Hard to take any of your opinions on this topic seriously.

What a generalization!! plenty of religious people are sad, not all of them are particularly frugal, and not all atheists think of buying toys.

Also the US is a very religious country compared to western or northern Europe where people aren't particularly sad.

Hey he noticed it in his 6 friends he has, maybe it holds true as N grows to 8 billion? /s

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

Weird, ok, my anecdote flows in almost the exact opposite direction.

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.

> America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization.

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.

> 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 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.

That's crazy, because as a 25 year old in the US with religious family, I can promise you that churchgoing folks are the least generous people out there. I don't know what organized religion is like in other countries, but in the US churches are abused as tax havens, religious private schools are sucking up funding meant for disadvantaged children (in public schools), and the president is claiming the mandate of god as he spends tax money blowing up foreign children.

I live in a very different reality I guess.

// 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.

Even though I am personally agnostic, I do structure my life around the traditionally meaningful things you're talking about, and I do see the cultural mood a kind of spiritual crisis.

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!

yes but to truly enjoy the religious lifestyle you have to believe in very hard to believe things - without that true belief I feel like an imposter. I feel it is very well known that religious people have the ability to be extremely extremely happy, healthy, and well-adjusted in their community, but it comes at a cost I feel. I do not know God and I do not know where I came from or where I will go. I would choose this than to pretend I know and join a group in pursuit of the lifestyle benefits it brings. And yes I spend all my time alone playing with toys I bought and not being fulfilled as my religious friends. 100% of my religious friends feel extremely fulfilled but it does not make it right choice for everyone. I don't want to believe I want to know and if I cannot know then so be it I will remain in the dark forever.

Oh jeez, here we go again with this. Secularization isn't the problem. Isolation is the problem. Avoiding community and treating others as strangers to be feared is the problem.

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.

Our CEOs are happily, gleefully, boasting about how we're replaceable. That sort of stuff causes pitchforks to rise up in other countries.

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.

We don't deserve that, at least I don't feel like I do. I don't identify with "hard-working sheep" and everyone else, I identify with setting an example around transparency, honesty and dignity. There's a famous post about dignity written by someone who said something along the lines of "We have allowed being in the worker class in American become inherently undignified" and I think its more along that line: the very high up leaders and bourgeoise class have modeled unaccountable, abusive leadership and so the leaders we interact with model that as well to us, and then when many other people dont speak up and I do, I and maybe even you find ourself on the current side of the minority wishing others were as vocal about things.

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?

I have much of your perspective already and trust me, I propagandize it in person.

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.

Lol I have 18 right now and that's after years of having none

I want all social media to be banned. Until that happens - nothing else matters...

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)...

Is Hacker News not social media?

it is a forum perhaps, I don’t consider it social media although would not argue too hard with someone who does

It totally is.

What is lacking for it to be social media (IMO). - no direct messaging (lacking social aspect) - no media (text only) - no phone app - no ads - no influencers - no company feeding you algorithmic shit to make you buy shit - not evil :)

Its not, its a forum. The distinction is if there is an algorithm picking what you see (social media) verses everyone seeing the same thing (a forum).

The term "social media" predates the use of algorithms picking what you see, so that cannot be the definition.

Um, no...there was always an algorithm. It just used to use your "friend list" and used to have a lot less to pick from. But it was always there. I get the feeling you were 5 when this was happening.

If you're going to call that an algorithm, then the posts that HN displays is an algorithm too.

Love that. Lol the losers on social media need to do something more productive (and I guess I count, since hacker news is like sometimes social media, look at some of the posts out here! haha).

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.

The problem is that there is no incentive, because if you take the average set of behavior of a human, nowhere in that set is the willingness to go against the grain to to what is morally right versus what is currently "socially acceptable".

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.

> and we deserve all the motivational Corpspeak we have to suffer through on LinkedIn posts.

> We get what we deserve.

Why? You don't actually justify this reasoning in your post.

I believe their justification is on the first sentence

> That sort of stuff causes pitchforks to rise up in other countries.

(Not that I agree)

Your countrymen applauded putting chains on foreign workers that were told by their company to build a factory in your country. Your union representative were giddy. You absolutely deserve corpo-speak, that's the least you deserve.

I'm sure you can find some exceptions, but I don't remember anyone who celebrated that or thought it was remotely good policy. Assuming you're talking about the Hyundai plant in Georgia.

I did, but let me hammer home the point: when you try to restore balance in a corporate settings, your peers, not management, are the ones self-promoting how much they work.

I've worked in many environments where I came up against workaholic co-workers who pulled everyone down with them into weekend work and extra effort.

So yes, deserved.

This is not senior management versus us, it's us versus us, that's the American way.

My one vacation to Paris I was very concerned about the protests/near riots, things being set on fire, and garbage piled high because of strikes I saw on television.

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.

> 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.

You forgot the part where the French government (who doesn't control their currency) is going bankrupt. Some simple reforms would fix this problem but when they are considered, the crazies start burning down Paris. Its actually amazingly sad to watch.

Correct. It is sad when the government is unable to execute a solid financial recovery plan out of fear of a violent minority.

Rioting is undemocratic…

Yeah, I guess we ARE hard-working sheep and get what we deserve…

Yes, it is? When the majority wants something different than you, forcing the government to your will by violence, is not a very democratic process.

You have a deep misunderstanding of American civil unrest.

> Our CEOs are happily, gleefully, boasting about how we're replaceable.

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.

One thing that I think is probably a large impact has been an increase in general strife. Online arguments and division often among political and ideological lines combined with trends away from any sort of national identity or cohesion.

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.

Relentless striving without any kind of real meaning isn't healthy. Even people who aren't deeply Christian in the religious sense are still inherited of much of the values. I.E. people must prove their value via an extraordinary work ethic.

I think that’s only one aspect, the other is the economics make it so you have to be extraordinary to live ordinary.

If that’s how you feel then you might have an unreasonable standard. People you might consider to be living in abject poverty might not be so downtrodden as you suspect. Even though there are extreme downsides and externalities to being relatively poor, being lonely is not one of them.

I don't think I do when the average low-income worker makes $<40k/yr but the income required to live in a 1-bedroom apartment is $58k/yr.

> People you might consider to be living in abject poverty might not be so downtrodden as you suspect

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

I wouldn't call that 'Christian'. The 'extraordinary work ethic' exists in Japan, too. Not very Christian over there.

More Protestant than Christian.

I would argue that individualism is the root, more than the work ethic. I’m someone with a 50th percentile work ethic but a 99th percentile focus on community. I only have so much energy, but I make sure I reserve a good portion of it (say, at least 30%) on acts that have no “direct” benefit to me at all. Hosting a party and not worrying if the invitee’s contributions are equitable. Paying a nephews rent for a month so he can travel. Mowing the yard for a neighbor in need. Buying presents for people I see 2x a year. Calling up a distant friend just to remind them how much I like them.

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.

well said. Thanks for this comment. I am trying to be more like this.

Or, not a popular opinion, as a country we had a kind of solidarity when things were universally tough. For me (I'm old enough) that was the 1970's with inflation, the Iran hostage situation… During that Bicentennial I remember the country pulling together more.

> people must prove their value via an extraordinary work ethic

Ironically, this is the literal opposite of Christianity. Christianity in a nutshell is "Jesus saves people because we are incapable of saving ourselves."

You're understanding falls far short.

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.

something being within gods control but not within Jesus is a little heretical, to my understanding of the Trinity. You might want to talk through that with your priest sometime?

Jesus himself said he does not know when God will end the world. That is what I was referring to.

No, that is the malformed belief chain of doomsday cultists.

Given where the world is headed, I'm starting to see the wisdom in that more and more.

In addition, people have intrinsic worth/value/identity because they are made in the image of God.

So, yeah. "Must earn their worth" may sound "Christian", but it's not Christianity.

Mules are cheaper as well if you don't have coal readily available.

Thanks for the suggestion! I've always wanted to own a mule and now you've provided me with a justification!

>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!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creflo_Dollar

Striving without meaning being unhealthy is always true. As per the article, for some reason, Americans became unhappy across all groupings, post 2020.

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.

Christian orthodoxy begins with the assertion you cannot ever work hard enough to be made right with God but that your value is imputed by Christ’s death and never once earned.

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.

As Benjamin noted, “Christianity’s history is essentially that of its parasite […] capitalism.”

We're rich for reasons that do not remotely correlate with happiness for most Americans. Happiness on a larger scale did exist for about 2 decades during which we had strong labor laws and high taxes for corporations and the wealthy. I also have to specify the ultra wealthy mostly didn't exist in that time frame except for a small handful of people with generational wealth.

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.

When I see a sudden drop in 2020, my first reaction is "COVID." For a lot of people that was a pivotal moment with persistent consequences.

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 ;-)

I'm actually sure COVID is a big part of it. It causes neurological changes that affect behavior. Look at road safety data since 2020, it strongly supports that something is wrong.

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.

>Covid causes a loss of grey matter affecting impulse control and emotional regulation.

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)

COVID is highly correlated with many other things that would increase dangerous behavior. For example, COVID saw an increase in alcohol use, which in turn would result in increases in road rage and traffic fatalities. I think so much was going on at the time that it's hard to decide what is a first degree effect versus a downstream effect, or even unrelated to COVID and more related to, say, political turmoil of the time that was already ongoing.

High risk behavior such as drinking, drug use are all down. they spiked then dropped like a rock especially in Gen Z

We were talking about covid era trends specifically. Covid peaked around 2020-2022 and it's difficult to determine what other trends during that time period are directly caused by covid, or correlated, or even unrelated. Long term generational trends don't tell us as much about what was or wasn't caused by Covid itself.

The specific decline in happiness in English speaking countries is very interesting. My first guess is that non-English speakers have to use their own news sources and don't fall prey to the same doom and gloom, everything is terrible, "news" sources on cable and the internet.

Seems like there might be a good lesson in there.

If you run a propagandizing bot farm, which languages do you focus upon? Think about that for a bit and you will know why this is happening.

Impressive article. He gathered a lot of data interesting in its own right, tested a lot of theories, focused on facts over assertions; and it did it in a way that was a pleasure to read.

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.

I really don’t think Americans broadly are concerned with the Ukraine war on a day to day basis.

One thing I realized over time America is very expensive to live in. Everything is so expensive that only the rich are rich and everyone from middle class and down are on the poor spectrum. It’s done purposefully under the cover of freedom, choice and taxes. It’s impossible to change now at least I am very pessimistic about it. It doesn’t help that the population density is very low and so many of the services just don’t have the ROI they do in other countries.

This is why GDP isn't a good measurement of the wealth of citizens. Americans get paid more but also pay more for things. Even if we assume the two perfectly cancel each other out, the net result is the same, but GDP is higher.

GDP is not and never has been a measure of wealth. It's a measure of a country's output. Higher GDP could just mean you're working longer and harder.

Which is why we also publish a median (50th percentile) per capita (per person) number too. And its a measure of income, not wealth.

Yes! And I recommend a post about "The Wealth Ladder" by Nick Maggiulli. A concept I love because I relate is the idea of how we are conscious about how much we spend on things, or we are not. Do you count the cost of a daily lunch vs. dining out at an "expensive" restaurant where you bought three glasses of wine? Does it even matter that you eat out, do you count the cost?

Great food for thought about one's attitude towards wealth: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/climbing-the-wealth-ladder/

I once aspired to American citizenship, and was dazzled by its wealth, opportunity, can-do attitude and freedom. Now I can't imagine wanting to go there - everything I see or hear, from both American and other sources, right or left, suggests a deeply unhappy country at war with itself.

I agree that you should stay where you are (in general) - but America is not what you hear about on the news or online - unless you make it so.

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.

If you just don't partake in the omniscient, pervasive, manufactured negativity in the news cycle and online, America is objectively fucking awesome. I love living here.

Where else have you lived?

"If you ignore reality, reality is awesome!"

The internet isn't reality

This is like when I was in college and you'd think from the Facebook groups that everyone is depressed and failing classes. Then got a cushy tech job where the internal forums made it seem like it's slave labor.

Anyone with the opportunity to visit the US that hasn't done so absolutely should. Admittedly now maybe not the greatest time in history for that, but the place is almost nothing like how the media like to portray it, especially once you leave almost any major city.

Yes the land is beautiful but the media portrays it pretty accurately. I visted LA before covid ~2018 and it was dystopian. It was dirty, the infrastructure was very poor and the wealth divide was unlike anything id seen before. I had a great time still because I had money to spend.

A lot of these articles and social media discussions miss by not contemplating the fact that by increasing productivity and incomes we have also increased the cost of leisure.

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.

This is a hard subject. I have lost a lot because of covid 2019 money-wise, familly-wise and health-wise right in the middle of my twenties. It literally destroyed me making me impared. Life was never worse as in 2021 for me. These days I feel that my life will turn out to be shorter than i thought before.

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.

The earlier NYT article on the topic was interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/economy-attitudes...

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...

Happiness = Reality minus Expectation (and sadness is the negative values).

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.

Right. We just need to kill off three key unrealistic expectations: democracy, medical care, and avocados. Once we relax and give up on those three things, we'll be happy again.

I wonder how avocados became the poster child for unreasonably expensive food. They're not actually that costly.

I'm in Washington, and they're usually at least $1 each in season, and even close to $2 out of season at Costco. Factor in some amount not being good, 20% at least, and I probably spend at least $1,000 per year just on avocados for a family of 4.

I imagine they are just as, if not more expensive, in places further from Mexico.

Because all the boomers and a lot of genX grew up with them being something that was ludicrously expensive due to rapid transit costs that now no longer exist now that we know how (other than sheer speed) to keep them from spoiling between tree and grocery store and around the same time that we got good at that we lifted a ban on mexican imports.

It used to be oranges that were the luxury fruit.

My grandfather told me that for Christmas one year as a child, he got a fresh orange.

Only one year? And was that his only gift?

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.

>Only one year? And was that his only gift?

Really depends on the year and the region. Cheap oranges can only follow where the reefer truck and boxcar go.

Hard to say. They're much cheaper per pound than ground beef here in the Northeast.

Shouldn’t protein be expected to be more expensive?

I dunno. If people eat hamburger on a bun, we approve. If they eat avocado on toast, we disapprove. That's a luxury item. Ok.

It’s just a meme, no serious person disapproves of avocados due to price. However, both avocados and meat are higher priced foods that would be foregone in the event of a cash crunch.

I hear you. No serious person disapproves of avocados due to price. However at $1.00 to $2.50 a pound they are a higher-priced food. Another higher-priced food is meat at $6-$20 a pound.

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.

What the hell is wrong about avocados really? They are a cheap staple food.

The avocado meme started in Australia, where avocados are expensive due to their water requirements, and where there’s been a housing crisis for at least twenty years.

It wasn’t the cost of avocados as a raw ingredient.

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...

The United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK all have housing and affordability problems, out of the five I can understand the UK but the other four countries I absolutely do not…

What do they all have in common English similar economies and relatively similar governments.

In Australia the root cause is likely policy that rewards rather than penalises multiple home ownership as investment, leading to flow on effects that raise prices and doesn't boost building.

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.

I would add in social media. It's a huge cancer on happiness.

Yup, it's digital fentanyl.

I'd like to see a spending breakdown. I wonder just how much of that 50% of spending is stuff that the bottom 90% would actually be competing for -- eg: an expensive bathroom remodel, a luxury car, etc, vs something basic such as tennis shoes or groceries from the local market.

Does it matter? Most people need a car in the US. But if cars are marketed and designed for the 10%, this squeezes out everyone else.

Very good observation.

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.

We're in the lower half of that top 10% by household income.

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".

Very good examples of things that do make a difference and are worth working for.

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 ;)

> I'd like to see a spending breakdown.

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.

But if that stuff is stuff the bottom 90% wouldn't be competing for, it's even worse in a way, because it means that portion of the market is entirely focused on stuff that's entirely out of reach for that 90%. If there are people out there who could be making tennis shoes but are instead making luxury cars, that's a problem.

“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The top 10% of American families own close to 70% of america's wealth. So if "America" is rich. Those are the folks who are rich. 90% of Americans are not rich.

America's wealth is not a pie that gets divvied up. For example, Musk created the wealth he has. It wasn't distributed to him from others.

> 90% of Americans are not rich.

Compared to 250 years ago, about 99% of Americans are rich.

Wow, with his own two hands?? Incredible! How did he do it???

It is an amazing story. There are several biographies of Musk which go into a lot of detail how he did it.

None of his wealth was transferred to him.

> 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.

> For example, Musk created the wealth he has. It wasn't distributed to him from others.

The jokes write themselves

Show us one! I'm ready for a laugh.

This collection of people, well actually, more like the 1% set the tax rules. Compare the tax rules from 1970s, to today, and you will definitely see that wealth is a zero sum game.

> you will definitely see that wealth is a zero sum game.

I'm not seeing it. Maybe you could flesh it out a bit?

You can go fuck yourself with your bullshit here.

I like how the graphs suggest that prior to 2020 a certain "holy trinity" for happiness existed of being married, graduating college, and voting Republican. This passes the sniff test even though I am only 2 for 3, I was not having a great time at 1 and was downright glum at 0.

I suspect much of it was simply... believing in the American dream. And it's not just about the house in the suburbs, it's believing you're building something worthwhile, beautiful, and enduring.

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.

I could see that making sense. For what it's worth, I still believe in the American dream even though I moved overseas five years ago, more than ever in fact. Many Europeans call me the most American guy they've ever met, which I read as a tremendous compliment.

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.

"Voting Republican" being of course highly correlated, and thus a good proxy, to "being White".

Minorities elected Trump in the last election. The counties that most swung from historical expected averages towards Trump were all majority minority and were all heavy Dem strongholds. So keep up with this type of rhetoric, it just makes more Republicans.

Very interesting article, and I can't help but compare with Canada.

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.

Boomers have ridden the wave of post-WWII success and now they're cashing in. Young people can't afford housing, sure, but even wealthier young people are affected by the spiritual rot beneath it.

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.

I recently realised that I can no longer imagine my future. I used to dream about the possibilities, things I would do and be, and I simply cannot do that anymore. It's just living day to day now. I truly have no expectations for the future. It's bleak and depressing and I'm slowly losing my will to live. But hey, the boomers' housing investments are going up! So thats great.

Damn, spiritual rot, such a good way to put it. I'm gonna steal that for sure.

I've been living in Quebec a long time, and the language thing is far more profound than most outside appreciate. It really does function as a de facto barrier for anything they want to use it for, and fairly effectively. In that sense living here can be a bit like being in a time warp.

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.

There's a mentality I see in Americans as well as in the big European cities where everything has to be goal-oriented or you have to have accomplished something, even when taking vacations.

There's a stigma against just doing something for nothing, or even doing nothing and being lazy.

That's a cultural thing. Perhaps it's part of the Protestant work ethic. My favorite are Americans who call themselves "foodies", which means taking instructions from Tiktok influencers, visiting tourist traps, waiting in line to eat and overpaying on "Michelin" restaurants.

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.

> My favorite are Americans who call themselves "foodies", which means taking instructions from Tiktok influencers, visiting tourist traps, waiting in line to eat and overpaying on "Michelin" restaurants.

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.

The first batch of Michelin restaurants (back in the 1920s I think) and chefs were all French grandmothers in (I want to say) Lyon. Just though that was interesting.

because America's not rich; like 100 people here just have more money than most countries

That's just objectively untrue.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

- Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

- 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.

You are responding to data about the median American.

No I'm not. I'm responding to data about median income adjusted for PPP, and not adjusted for social services such as healthcare. Big difference.

income data about the median american.

income data alone does not tell a very complete story.

Income is by far the dominant term, you're being ridiculous.

> living paycheck to paycheck.

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?

It's somewhat of a mindset question and somewhat of a wealth question.

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.

You're missing the third question which is of definitions. There's an other person Mr $65k who after all their necessary expenses has $1k left over each paycheck that they spend on dinners out, concert tickets, vacations, etc so that at the end of the month they are left with no additional savings. Are they living paycheck to paycheck?

Maybe?

I mean, should we live in a world where the only way to create savings is by denying yourself any fun? You've picked a number, $1k, because it sounds good to support your argument, but maybe after paying for the essentials, a family has $200 left per month. Should we expect that family to never go to the movie theater, never go out to a restaurant, never splurge on a nice piece of clothing or jewelry, never do anything fun at all? Do we think it's ok for people to have to live like that?

So sure, maybe if they spend that $200 on fun stuff, it's not "living paycheck to paycheck". But maybe that's just a bad metric, or just too poorly-defined to be a reasonable way to measure anything.

Correct. We are meant to be wage slaves. That is why there is such a malaise these days. Everyone has sort of realized that we are meant to wage slave until we are dead, and our "productive" years are spent providing retirement income to the older generations.

Idk if people thought differently about this in the past, or just didn't care, or just weren't able to see the myriad ways that people get to live (social media) when they are not wage slaves. But something is wrong.

I think about this guy occasionally:

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.

Most people in America don't live paycheck to paycheck or rack up massive debt because they're poor. They do it because they're financially illiterate, over-consume, or both. A few watch-through's of Caleb Hammer's financial audit show will disabuse you of this belief.

Fun fact, that's also untrue or at least dubious.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/16/facebook-p...

"Data from 2020 through 2022 found that between 50% and 63% of Americans report living paycheck to paycheck."

(Well, that's a relief.)

One bullet point down: "But there is no clear definition for the phrase "paycheck to paycheck," so people should be skeptical of statistics based on the concept, one economist said."

> Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

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.

71% of adults say that their monthly debt payments prevent them from saving.

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.

No one forced those people to take on a $1000 monthly car loan payment.

America is very very rich, the average person is much wealthier than the average European. 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable. It's a media sensationalist headline grabber which virtually every economist ignores.

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.

One quick correction, it's not a self reported stat, it's a stat from a viral tiktok that comes from maybe a 2013 survey on a personal finance site.

> 2013 survey on a personal finance site

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 it has selection bias in addition to the bias from self reporting. Got it. Your stats professor is crying somewhere.

> 76% of Americans do not live paycheck to paycheck. That is a self reported stat and not reliable.

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

Per the Federal Reserve, the average 35 to 44 year old has over $141,000 in retirement savings. That’s just incompatible with the idea that everyone is living paycheck to paycheck in the full sense of the phrase. Every dollar is not being spent: plenty is being saved for retirement, spent on unnecessary things, etc.

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.

Then why are Euros happier overall?

> Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

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.

Median doesn't say anything about the extremes and income isn't wealth.

While it's a key indicator, even PPP adjusted income metrics are insufficient to compare happiness. e.g even if PPP may adjust for some aspects of outsized US health care costs, the risk and unreliability of access and affordability of US healthcare is not reflected in median income values.

Yeah I totally agree that income and happiness are not interchangeable, I'm just really tired of people lying about objective facts.

I have no quibble with the objective facts, but we are talking about happiness, and answers are being returned about wealth, and the discussion was talking about how wealth does not equate to happiness in some measures - particularly in terms of factors of life stability, like reasonable access to healthcare...

That's super cool, in this particular comment thread that's not what we're talking about.

Every single court case is two sides bringing forward only "objective facts" by definition. It's not that one side brings lies and the other facts. They both bring objective facts.

So why does it always end with the judgement falling on one side? Because facts do not a complete case make.

If we outlawed that, every single politician and journalist would be in prison for the rest of their natural lives along with most of the people who follow politics too much. Perhaps that's a good idea, perhaps not.

I see Norway on that list (no surprise).

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.

If only the US was a petrostate, that would solve all our problems.

I can't tell if you're sarcastic or not! You're aware that the US is the biggest oil producer in the world?

Not per capita. Norway produces roughly 6x more oil than the US per capita. Also, TIL that Guyana is the world's top oil producer per capita.

See: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-prod-per-capita?count...

You're forgetting the us is #1 in producing natural gas, at 1,069,000m3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...

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.

"Petrostate" meaning that the proceeds of the petroleum we sell is turned around and used for the betterment of the entire state. I think it's clear what OP was saying and you're being purposefully obtuse about this.

It means nothing for the US to be the biggest oil producer in the world when the proceeds and riches of "producing" that oil are hoarded by a small number of oil barons.

Norway has a population of less than 6m with a huge oil reserve. That's not a good proxy for the US in any way.

Slightly exaggerated

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.

The wealth of the top 100 individuals is not the claim, the claim is that the rest of the nation is actually poor if you don't include them, which is total nonsense.

This is not terribly informative until expenses and safety nets are taken into account. Someone living in the Netherlands may have that 20% lower median income but being able to rely on public healthcare and get around without a personal vehicle does wonders for one's sense of peace and agency. That likely counts a lot more towards personal wellbeing than the addtional dollars in your account especially when health concerns can turn into financial concerns quite quickly.

The comment I am responding to is "because America's not rich; like 100 people here just have more money than most countries" not whatever you think I am responding to.

That isn't a coherent argument; the latter does not support the former. The median American has a lot of money and disposable income compared to almost any other country.

A lot of money, but disposable? HCOL takes up the slack in so many cases.

Look at the US median and consider again how many times that figure your own salary is.

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.

Rich is relative, it's always somewhere around "makes twice what I do" and poor is "makes half what I do" - and I'm, of course, solidly middle class.

This seems to be true if I'm flipping burgers at McDs or if I'm on a first-name basis with Warren Buffett.

America is in a weird situation where people have a lot of money in terms of the number and it converts well to other currencies. But it feels worthless within American borders.

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.

That's not weird at all it's the difference in most cases between products and services produced by local labor vs products and services produced by more abundant, cheaper labor elsewhere. I don't complain about $20 meals because I think inequality is bad enough.

The only thing in your list that could be cheaper without underpaying local workers are pharmaceuticals.

Labor is cheaper elsewhere, yes. But people getting paid lower salaries in other countries are still getting health care, affording rent, affording restaurant meals, etc. America has a strong problem where local salaries are high and prices far outpace them, despite the country being dependent upon things produced by salaries that are a fraction of typical salaries (underpaid farm labor, restaurant staff being paid under the table below minimum wage, meat plants employing children, technology all produced in "cheap" Asian countries where locals can afford rent and get health care, clothes produced in countries that pay pennies per hour, etc).

The health insurance is the part that just is hard to relate to much of the world which is where the fear/sadness comes from. It is the undertone in any wealth discussion. So many people in the US see their family and friends get medically bankrupted for one reason or another and insurance being tied to employment makes everything awful.

The fact that you simply can't save enough to get medical care is foundationally depressing.

Health insurance should have little effect on children's happiness (both because the USA provides baseline child healthcare to all, effectively, and because kids don't and shouldn't even know what "health insurance" is).

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).

> because the USA provides baseline child healthcare to all,

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”?

Children must be super happy if their parents have unaddressed health problems. /s

If we are talking about kids, then you really need to see what happens in public schools these days. Being told either you or your country is evil incarnate several times a day for 13 years has an effect. My child has horror stories from his time in a public school in CA. However, it very much depends on where you are and which school we are talking about.

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".

I’m tired of people saying this. I was in Taipei recently and had to do a reality check, because obviously, the exchange rate means the food seems cheap, but I checked again against local incomes, and yes, it turns out: Taipei has abundant cheap food relative to local incomes, beyond the wildest dreams of most American cities.

Americans need to stop telling ourselves this lie. We get so little for our money compared to other countries, and we should be furious.

so you think restaurants are the most important indicator of wealth? Americans are rich in land and cars. Whether thats important to you is a different question.

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.

The average American doesn’t have this. The average resident of Taipei would not trade their quality of life for the actually equivalent quality of life in the United States. Source: multiple Taiwanese immigrants I know personally, planning to return home for this reason.

You have to look at net migration flows and whether things are constrained.

Or let's not jump straight to the racist vibes and maybe think about how American agriculture is highly monopolized, uncompetitive, and operate deeply like a cartel.

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.

Yes, lots of money and no taste.

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.

there's over 20 million millionaires in the USA, that's like, what, 1 in 20?

A net worth millionaire nowadays is just a person who bought a single family home at least 10 years ago. A million bucks is not what it used to be.

I'm sorry a million dollars is still a huge amount of money for normal people, whether it comes from their home or otherwise.

Don't they usually take out the primary residence when doing the calculation? It still doesn't mean someone is completely liquid as I'm guessing many people have their money in tax deferred accounts they can't access until old age.

Don't they usually take out the primary residence when doing the calculation?

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?

You can get those dollars back and rent your home. Or buy a cheaper one.

I would wager a lot of "wealth" is in the value of the homes they live in. That is it is illiquid wealth they cannot use. When you factor in medical debt, their liquid wealth is a lot less rosy.

> That is it is illiquid wealth they cannot use.

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.

"Millionnaire" is meaningless.

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.

Its 1 in 70

The US is broadly wealthier. Folks like to bash the US, but it is wealthier.

this isn't accurate.

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

Now compare what you can get for that money in both countries, and you will inevitably discover that the German is wealthier in every way that matters.

Wait, you're telling me that I shouldn't have to work a $200k job in order to get 4 weeks of PTO?

Counterpoint, when I lived in Spain, I had to remember never to talk about money with the locals in any way. They were poorer than anyone I have ever met in the US. They literally had to go without water at times because they couldn't afford to buy a bottle for $2. And there is no such thing as free water there. And this was in Barcelona, their richest city. For reference, everything there is about half the cost of the US but their average income was 1/4 of the US.

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.

ssshhhh ... in reality it's of course the case that the poorer a country is, the more unequal it is. In Pakistan the gulf between rich and poor is easily 100x what it is in the US.

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.

There's a point somewhere where the money becomes a scorecard - once you can afford the best room at the Kinshasa luxury hotel, you can't really "go higher" on that axis, you need something else.

Of course you can go higher. Haven't you read how Kim Jong Un does it? Well, communism of course, and [1]

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

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQbCOYnp_fA

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVrZQmR1Syg

Exactly - you have to move to other axis, which end up all dropping down to "how many people can I control" in some way or another.

> If you are looking for a sympathetic ear to explain this phenomenon, certainly do not seek counsel from your local economist

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.

Note that one of the assumptions isn't necessarily true.

> 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.

It's getting to the point where I search "K-shaped" and "Cohort" in these kinds of articles before I even read them. I'm not even saying these are why, exactly, but failure to wrestle with the intellectual effort of rejecting that as a hypothesis is a frustrating omission.

The article shows that the decrease in happiness is across the board, so even the wealthy cohort (the upper arm of the K-shaped chart) is unhappy.

Yeah but the point is that Derek Thompson commonly rejects political materialism in favor of supporting the capitalist class and attacking unions (see his comments at Centristfest 2025).

Hard to not see him as an enemy of change and in-favor of elites over workers.

Did I miss the breakdown by class/wealth? I saw a bunch of other cross tabs. Not that one.

Marketing?

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.

Many America's are not rich, so it's understandable that they are sad.

"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-...

Speaking for myself, an awful lot of what makes me happy are things I am forced into doing. Work makes me happy, but if I didn't have to work I'm sure I wouldn't. If I had complete freedom my life might become quite lonely and sad.

> Americans are rich and getting richer, by most conventional measures. More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class, and workers at the bottom of the income distribution have seen their wages grow faster than those at the top in the last few years.

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.

This discussion skips any consideration of the underlying premise that "self-reported happiness" is always significant

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"

Sure, but this whole thing is about trends over time, so the societal customs shouldn't change drastically in a specific country in such a short time.

how would you measure "happiness" if you were tasked to do so for a study?

Well, for one...if Ireland and Finland come out on top, you are doing it wrong. That should have been your first clue that the "study" is clearly doing something wrong. Also, if you don't know how easy it is to game a study...well then you have never conducted a study.

The "happiness" in the World Happiness Report is an imperfect translation for a Bhutanese concept. Most discussions about it go astray when people assume that the report is supposed to measure the translated concept.

Roughly speaking, GDP is often used to measure the performance of the economy and as an imperfect proxy for the wellbeing of the people. Bhutan developed the "Gross National Happiness" index and convinced the UN that it should also measure something similar. The Human Development Index already measured the objective aspects of wellbeing, and the World Happiness Report ended up measuring the subjective aspects.

In other words, happiness in this context is not supposed to be about how people feel but about if life is good in general. And you are supposed to compare it to HDI and GDP per capita to see if a country is perfoming better or worse than it's expected to.

you didn't answer my question, and you didn't provide a methodology for measuring something like this in a study, so one has to ask, how do YOU know that ireland and finland shouldn't come out on top anyways?

Perhaps there is more to being happy than just being rich (as in "If America is so rich ...")

It's the rise of dependence on the internet and the social interactions there along with the decline of respectable news gathering organizations that have crossed the line into fronts for advertising. A decline in truth.

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.

The friction in everyday interactions feels higher than it used to be. I'm noticing a common thread: a lack of emphasis on training. I see the gap shows up everywhere. The result is increased friction for everything in life and it's happening regardless of the industry.

I've seen baggers in grocery stores, place cans and bottles of water on top of bread. When I visit the doctor I have to constantly advocate that I want to see the document they are making me sign in writing as they typically won't share the document with me at all unless I sign. And just over all lack of empathy and understanding of what services are being provided, all due to the lack of training.

This forces everyday interactions to have an additional layer of distrust and having to pay attention to things that would have normally been taken care of in the past.

I feel like wealthy americans live like poor Europeans - they live far outside the city in crowded suburbs, no amenities walking distance so they have to drive everywhere, having to commute an hour to their job, eating bad manufactured food... I'm American but moved to Europe years ago. It may be even better being poor here because at least you might live in a village and you'll have healthcare and your government won't be trying to kill you with polluted air and dangerous food standards.

As an American, I don’t think of the suburbs when I think of rich people. I think of what’s left of our middle class just trying to do their best. Many of them probably have negative net worth when debt is considered. But they need public schools, they need big (relatively) affordable housing, they need strip centers with the same 5 restaurants every exit of the highway. When I think of wealth, I think of mostly inner city old money areas or neighborhoods that have had gentrification (not underway). They live near their work/business, near poverty even, but they don’t commute far because they value their time and they will pay for private schools and create their own sports leagues and stuff for their kids and private security to keep out the riff raff. These areas were probably a far out suburb 50-100 years ago but a city grew around them but their wealth was enough to isolate themselves. That’s where the wealthy people live.

It varies by location and by what we mean by rich. In New York, for example, you're totally right. But for most of America the model is country club + suburb, 6,000 sqft house with a pool, big public school district that is very well funded, SUVs, &c. for the "rich".

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.

The suburban wealthy are a little more McMansion/nouveau riche.

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.

As a SDM, something about being able to retire immediately changes you. That violently brings into focus a new most important aspect of wealth.

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.

What is SDM?

Single digit millionaire

in new york you're not remotely right.

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.

I'm not sure you're contradicting the parent. There are "elite" suburbs/coastal towns surrounding a lot of "elite" cities. There's something of a preference (and life stage) whether someone has a nice condo in a city or a nice suburban/exurban home (or admittedly both in some cases). The balance doubtless varies depending on the locale; there are some cities that aren't generally considered very desirable while some of thee suburbs/exurbs/nearby smaller cities are.

Net worth means little when you have to spend 2+ hours commuting via public transit 5 out of 7 days per week, so that you basically only live for weekends. Obviously, it's a choice to give up your 30s/40s for a secure 50s/60s or whatever, but the definition of "wealth" is not so clear to me in that scenario.

Have you been to NY? It’s both. There are wealthy folks in the city but also some of suburbs are also some of the wealthiest places on the planet. Folks forget that you drive 30 minutes from the city center and you’re basically driving through neighborhoods of $1M+ homes that go on for miles and miles. It flies below the radar, which is precisely why so many wealthy folks hang out there.

1M is not a lot of money for a home in the NYC suburbs, at least where the schools are OK. I'm referring to the nice NJ towns, Westchester, etc.

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.

Yes, many times. Usually at least twice/year since it's such a short flight from my home town. I can be in Midtown in about 3 hours from my front porch which is cool.

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.

Eh, the wealthiest in America mostly live in spacious suburbs. They aren't very city-like, but they're not the same suburbs as GP mentioned either. In every wealthy metro, there will be a couple areas that the wealthiest coalesce around.

Think Hillsborough/Atherton/Palo Alto, Carmel IN, Newton/Brookline MA, Beverly Hills, Greenwich County CT, River Oaks in Houston, Boulder CO, Scottsdale AZ, etc

I’m from Houston originally and tried to describe River Oaks exactly. It’s an old money suburb that is now “in the loop” before 40 miles of sprawl in every direction.

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.

Ah, when I reread it, your description is fairly aligned. I think it was the description of "inner-city" that threw me off. I don't think people think "inner-city" when thinking of these wealthy suburban enclaves. I thought you were implying a more dense and urban environment, when these suburban enclaves are barely walkable at all.

> the wealthiest in America mostly live in spacious suburbs.

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.

Sure, they have their city pied-a-terre and rural chateau, but they spend most of their time in their suburban Beverly Hills-esque mansion

It’s even more extreme in the Bay Area. While San Francisco is a job center, there are also major suburban job centers such as Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale. The problem is living close to work is painfully expensive for all but the most well-off employees. A Google executive could comfortably afford a nice house in Los Altos or Palo Alto and have an easy commute. A Google engineer could commute from Fremont or Pleasanton, which would be grueling in a car, but is comfortable on a Google shuttle bus with leather seats and WiFi. But if you’re a teacher working for a school in Mountain View, my condolences. If you want to afford to buy, you’re looking at a grueling commute from either a middle-class exurb like Tracy or from a high-crime, impoverished area like East Oakland. Even renting an apartment closer to work would be daunting in terms of cost.

Plenty of wealthy Americans live in big cities

It's similar in Canada as well, I think that is simply the outcome of massive countries. Not everyone can afford to live in the big cities, whereas in Europe it's much harder to even find a place to live that isn't either a big city or right next to one.

The stats say different. Canada has a higher urbanisation rate than Europe, defined as the percentage of the population that lives in cities.

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.

Young people with good jobs who live in dense urban areas seem uniquely unhappy, though.

So then the obvious follow up question is whether it's the young, the job or the urban area (or all three) that's making them unhappy?

It's the combination, young people are supposed to be doing fun stuff, and the idea was you needed to live in the city to do it. And you went for a less desirable living situation because it was cheap but near the fun stuff which was also cheap. Now the amount of fun stuff in cities is drastically reduced, it costs way more to live and the fun stuff is unreasonably expensive.

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.

> and the idea was you needed to live in the city to do it.

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!

My theory is that unhappiness is not all the various factors other people are talking about, not fundamentally: not money, not neighborhood design, not living in the city vs. living in the country -- its a deeper spiritual problem.

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.

Corporate jobs and happiness are incompatible.

If it's any consolation - older people at corporate jobs are also unhappy.

The suburb move is sort of a nouveau-riche/upper middle class thing.

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.

>The suburb move is sort of a nouveau-riche/upper middle class thing.

Used to just be a middle class thing.

This reads a lot like "the way I choose to live is the best and everyone else is sad." Anyone in a dense suburb is getting all the fresh food they want from a choice of 6 different grocery stores. And it's silly to complain about suburbs being crowded in comparison to cities.

Especially since America is happier than most European countries [1]. And the ones that are happier are the Nordics and Ireland which are more suburban and less dense.

[1] https://data.worldhappiness.report/table

I totally agree with your analysis of suburban Americans' lifestyles! Social isolation is endemic in suburbs.

> 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.

I would suggest that grocery quality is higher in the suburbs than in the city, but restaurant quality typically isn't.

That's probably true but a lot of people don't really eat out at restaurants regularly.

You might use oat milk as a proxy for ultra-processed food. I used to live next door to a farm and I know how milking works - don’t ask me to milk an oat, though.

At least oats don't have to be perpetually kept pregnant while taking their offspring away from their mothers. See, snide comments cut both ways.

Indeed. I’m only making the suggestion that the metric might not be good as a proxy.

It’s a brutal business.

I see someone has no idea how farming actually works.

Why don't you enlighten us?

1. Grind whole oats into flour (to add surface area) 2. Soak the flour in water 3. Strain (remove the pulp)

Not ultra-processed; just ultra-marketed.

Quibble, Europe has worse air quality than the US. Not sure what 'dangerous food standards' you're referring to either. A lot of European food regs serve more as protectionist schemes for their local industry than things that actually have an impact on public health.

I live in a nice suburb outside of Austin in the hills, and it's incredible. If I moved to Europe, I would still live outside of the city with some land where I have privacy. Living in a dense area is cool for some people, but not others.

Exactly!

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)

Are you implying 30 minutes away by car is a short / good thing? That's adding an hour to anything you want to do. Assuming you work 8 hours and sleep 8 hours that's taking like 15% of your free time just in getting somewhere.

Or you just cook at home more--which isn't really a bad thing. I have tons of places within 10 or 15 minutes but don't really go out to eat much. Of course, if you really want to eat out all the time that's a different thing.

> they live far outside the city in crowded suburbs

Suburbs more crowded than a city? Is this for real?

Counterpoint, suburbs are awesome. Can’t wait to watch all my fruit trees about to bloom.

My pink crabapple is developing beautiful buds this year. Last year there was a windstorm that blew off all the flowers right before it reached full bloom.

Last year my crabapple, going into its 12th year, decided to almost double in size. Apparently that used up all its energy and there were almost no buds at all. It was very sad.

This year it just completely exploded with flowers, more than making up for that disappointment.

It's hard when there's so little good news. I mean what good news has there been in the past 10 years? What progress has been made that has really improved our lives? Maybe I'm overly cynical but I can't think of anything.

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).

Kinda lost me when he got to the bit about English proficiency.

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...

Our per-capita SSRI consumption is lower than more than a few EU countries'.

Also sadness is a natural and ok state of being. Being a gronked out happy zombie is unnatural and should be suspect.

What percentage of the US population that finds themselves in need of an SSRI or similar medication can afford to obtain and fill such a prescription as compared with citizens of EU countries that enjoy universal healthcare?

I realize that you're baiting, but it's just a google search away. We're at about 10%, vs some EU countries' 13-14%. Considering that - it's highly unlikely that anybody who needs access to SSRIs does not have it.

Forgive me, I wasn't baiting. I was just trying to elude to the fact that a substantial percentage of the American population can not afford to get a doctor to prescribe them medication and often can not afford to fill that prescription. The lack of insurance and prevalence of underinsurance in the US very likely an important aspect of what we're talking about.

Concern bait is still bait, considering I've worked in the healthcare system enough to know you're adamantly incorrect about both the cost and availability of psychiatric care. Unfortunately I also know that attempting to convince you otherwise is a mug's game.

That both isn't true and ignores how long it takes in Europe to get an appointment. The US healthcare system isn't bad, its expensive. Its expensive because regulations force it to be expensive, often for the best reasons (minimum standards of care). It isn't an accident that rich Europeans travel to the US for healthcare. You can probably see the problem with all of this. But who wants to be the politician that legalizes cheaper care for poor folks. Even though its good public policy, the other side will vilify them for it. Most public policy problems are caused by those with no knowledge of a topic getting involved (even if its just voting based upon that issue) in it.

One should not trivialise depression. It is a lot different than just a feeling.

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.

If you haven't stared at a wall deciding whether to continue living or not - you have not lived. No trivialization here.

All of my life experience up to 2016 suggested that about 1% to 3% of us are seriously bad eggs, people who will cheerfully and thoughtlessly screw over everyone around them for even the smallest perceived advantage or political "win."

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.

Would it make you feel better to learn that that's not really true. Its just that you don't know anything about public policy and are moderately economically successful so you are isolated from the problems that your political beliefs were/are causing. And when this expressed itself in politics instead of learning why others were unhappy, you instead just call them names and declare them all "shitheels". So all you have really done is to prove the old saw..."when you point fingers, there will be 5 more pointing back at you"

When did you first meet CamperBob2 and learn all this information about them?

Or are you just strawmanning for effect?

It does come across as a comment not in line with: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It does, however, come across as a comment fully in line with https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_hit_dog_will_holler .

I think everyone I see writing anywhere whether these comments or substacks or just talking to in real life, we all pretty much agree on why we're sad. Its the same 5-6 reasons. We all know. There are much deeper analyses showing trends that started in the 1980s that took away our power too.

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.

would you please recap the 5-6 reasons?

1. Breakdown of community & support structures. Isolated, atomized society. Few friends and family, weak relationships between them, dating market accustomed to infinite choice.

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.

Every man, woman, and child... are $113k in debt.

https://usdebtclock.org/

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

Not just America, the whole West is in decline IMHO.Hong Kong is also done after the China security law.

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.

This was a great article. I particularly like that it even identified English speaking nations as a cohort.

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.

I see one real thing here - since 2017, the sense of stability in everyone's lives has been throughly upended - and perhaps, stability really matters for people to the point that rich, but unstable and precarious life feels worse than poorer, but predictable one. Too many things change too fast and no one knows what comes next. A lot of those things were actually positive changes, but people are afraid and bitterly unhappy anyway.

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.

But really that contrasts with the previous ~15 years during which literally nothing changed. Smartphone was basically the only invention that went mainstream between 2002 and 2017 that had any sizeable social or economic consequences. That was comfy, but not good for the future.

As someone who's immigrated into the United States around 2010s, I have experienced a life in Central Texas that was much better than it was expensive before COVID, and much more expensive than it's good after COVID.

It all shifted in 2012:

https://wtfhappened2012.com

I am an optimist, so I do think things will improve eventually, and we're going through a tough transition.

This graph on that page was very interesting to me: "Below-Basic Reading Levels". People's education levels are dropping.

Any "aggregate" statistic needs to be broken out until it is understood. Is everyone dropping, or is it a certain subset of poor, etc that is dropping?

E.g., does the Mississippi Miracle translate into something notable? https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...

It does and for far simpler reasons than most public policy problems. The problem is that we changed how we teach kids to read. We switched from Phonics (which works) to something called "whole language learning" which doesn't. The DOE pushed this change starting in the late 90s. It was a disaster and because of politics nobody in education was willing to admit it was a disaster. When LA and MS switched back to Phonics about 2-3 years ago, the trend reversed. But now there are a lot of people in ed admin who have a years supply of egg on their face. Guess how they are reacting? Politics destroys everything it touches...

The wealth of America may not be the money held by the average population but the buying power and choices available to the average population. I just spent 5 months in the richest country in the Caribbean and the purchasing choices are limited in all but the largest cities. The largest cities still don't have selection of consumer products available in most of the USA. I understand that this doesn't buy happiness but it is eye opening. I never really understood this measure of consumerism before but it is clear to me now.

Poverty sucks, but if you think material wealth is sufficient for or even the key to happiness, then you've already lost the plot.

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.)

Important thing to know about Derek Thompson is that he has a very specific job in the culture.

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.

> 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.

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.

Yes, I am well aware that I have posted my comment on the promotional website for a multi-billion dollar private equity fund.

I guess I can think of worse audiences to try to get this message across to, somehow, one person at a time.

Someone once described Derek Thomas as a dumber Malcom Gladwell and it felt so perfect.

I get the sense (from afar) that income rather than wealth is where the problem is. Or put differently reckon the US is very inefficient at converting high salary numbers into a good life.

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.

I'll throw my hat in the ring as to what might be causing this. I am turning 30 years old this year, and in my experience, I was probably happier prior to graduation from university. I think there is something deeply unsatisfying about the structure of modern adult life - mostly how and where we engage with work.

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.

>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.

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.

Some universities also have this type of culture (I know of 1 in particular near me which is like this), mine was quite the opposite, lots of collaboration between students. I liked that aspect of it as well.

just turned 32 and I feel this as well. I feel into a deep depression shortly after graduating for this exact reason; mourning the loss of that regular contact with similar-age, similar-interest people as they all moved across the country to start their careers. Similar thing happened a few years later when I was internally transferred to another group at work with no people my age. It's never been the same since.

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 the US hotel I stayed at they had a waffle machine so that you could eat waffles for breakfast. To make waffles you took a plastic cup to the "faucet" of the waffle machine, filled it with paste and then poured it into the waffle frying pan. Then you threw the cup away. Apparently, there was no need for a more efficient way. Americans seem to be very, very good at working very, very hard but not so good at efficiency.

I am failing to make the connection with the topic of the article. Are Americans sad because they are not efficient with their waffle-batter cups?

Yes. They are wasting their abundance on dumb shit. Even poor Americans have more resources than me. But their society is ridiculously inefficient.

It would probably be less efficient to have a more complicated waffle machine with a dispenser attached that costs more. Having a re-usable glass or metal cup, would require cleaning, and waffle batter is kind of annoying clean. Instead you buy a big ole sleeve of paper cups that are used one time and cost $.01 each. It is more efficient than paying someone making $20/hr to spend 5 minutes a day scrubbing it.

The obvious solution is to reuse the same plastic cup for all customers each morning. Voila, now you save 309 plastic cups/day.

>The obvious solution is to reuse the same plastic cup for all customers each morning. Voila, now you save 309 plastic cups/day.

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...

>At the US hotel I stayed at they had a waffle machine so that you could eat waffles for breakfast. To make waffles you took a plastic cup to the "faucet" of the waffle machine, filled it with paste and then poured it into the waffle frying pan. Then you threw the cup away. Apparently, there was no need for a more efficient way. Americans seem to be very, very good at working very, very hard but not so good at efficiency.

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.

I wonder if the 'English language speakers saw the biggest increases in unhappiness' is related to something else I keep reading about, which is that countries like Russia are spending huge amounts of money on campaigns to decrease stability in the west.

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.

I've been suspicious of this. It's typical for mainstream social media to become negative because that's where legitimately unhappy people go to complain, but things like Reddit and Twitter seem completely bot-farmed on top of that. And more and more people have been online, especially starting 2020. Even seems like Trump or his close contacts are browsing Reddit comments.

Look farther afield. For example, remember that brief "war" between India and Pakistan last year? Right after it ended, a couple of populations of bots appeared on X. One group of bots spammed anti-Muslim propaganda. Another group of bots spammed anti-Indian propaganda. We know this because when there were Internet outages later last year (in that part of the world), whole groups of accounts went silent at once.

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.

For me personally working in big tech, there was a sharp increase of work-related malaise in 2020 that never went down. IMO it was largely driven by 1) covid-era hiring blitz followed by layoffs, 2) so-called zoom fatigue. Teams became more geographically distributed, lots of newbies showed up, coordination overhead went up, competitiveness and backstabbing increased, work seemed to progress much slower.

And now is getting eaten by AI

Technological advancement is speeding up. When you don't have to worry about selling your labor, it is an increasingly powerful source of comfort. When you do have to sell your labor, it is an increasingly powerful source of insecurity.

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.

The "trust as shock absorber" point hits hardest. We didn't just lose money or stability — we lost the basic faith in each other that makes hard times survivable.

I agree with the authors point at large, but he misses one key pillar to defend his thesis: happiness requires health, and many of us never fully recovered physically from our first bouts with COVID.

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.

Trust is a major theme & I agree. Beyond trust, I think individualism is another major theme, especially from the perspective of an Eastern cultural background. If too much of my time and energy is spent turning inward and focusing on myself, that feels completely opposite to what Buddhism teaches: letting go of self-grasping is the path to happiness.

One element that seems to be rarely discussed is the link between obesity and mental health/happiness.

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.

Social media destroyed people's happiness. It not only created echo chambers for people to reaffirm their mental illnesses (instead of getting real help for it), but also a real loneliness epidemic.

I'm probably the happiest now than I've been in my entire life. It's all about perspective.

> What’s more, Peltzman’s analysis finds that some of the largest declines in happiness seem concentrated among well-to-do demographics, like older people, white people, and college graduates.

The same demographics that are the most likely to have gone from working in the office to working from home...

My theory is that everyone is overstimulated by constant information, dooming and context switches.

One of the clear detriments of a secular culture is you lose the source code that tells you in clear words: pursuit of material wealth is only a small part of a full life

And when you only pursue material wealth, well... that is "the root of all evil"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff2jQGz6DxM

If you're secular and simple-minded, sure.

America is not rich, the government and their cronies are. The people is just realizing that there are no more crumbs falling off the tables, vultures have eaten them all. It will take a hard reset to start it all over again.

I've repeatedly observed (from outside of the US) that the core of the culture of the US appears to be that everything is a consumable.. including and especially its people.

its social contract is poisoned by this proposition.

Because it creeped up on us in the last decade, the US is not the technological powerhouse it was once before. It's not that it's so sad here, overall America is a declining country and losing dominance along every possible vector.

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).

Life is about habits. The pandemic interrupted many good habits people had--going outside, doing sports, meeting people--and many people haven't restarted these habits, in part due to a collective cold start problem.

Good article with a weird title. Why assume wealth and happiness are correlated?

It's how Americans think life works (I've fallen victim to it as well).

it is how life works

money and happiness are correlated.

Having been covered a good deal of the wealth across my life, I disagree. (Although it is possible of course that I was just happier when I was younger—poverty being beside the point.)

it is well established that they are correlated.

that doesnt mean that wealth is the only factor of happiness, nor is it the strongest. but it is correlated.

I don't question that.

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.

if you spend time traveling (I have, significant time - can't imagine a different life) you will unmistakably conclude that happiest people, by far are from the poor(est) countries. it is only "western minds" that think (this is ingrained in societies like USA) wealth and happiness are correlated.

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)

Because research on this topic supports it. Happiness and wealth are correlated.

Really? Last I read the correlation breaks above a certain threshold, roughly that of "I don't need to worry about food or bills".

No, that study was constantly misreported on. There's a nice correlation all the way up.

And that threshold would set someone in among richest 1 percent in the world.

And when is that exactly? It definitely isn't making (unadjusted for inflation) the $70k that study suggests.

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?

It's worth noting that while the curve flattens above a threshold, it doesn't level off completely at that threshold, there is still a positive correlation, just a smaller one.

Only up to a certain point, no? I remember it was something around 100k USD, maybe 10ish years ago.

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.

Recent research disproves the old limit which has grabbed headlines like that old half a glass of red wine is good for you paper.

And also. Up to a certain point is still a correlation. Getting a lot of downvotes by people not knowing what a correlation is.

Because it is mostly true? I've seen wealth and happiness in society a lot more than poverty and happiness.

Richard Easterlin found a correlation in 1974, and subsequent studies have reinforced that. See the Introduction in https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9802463/.

Stereotypes of extrema in wealth are attached to images of extrema in happiness. The poor sad person vs the rich happy one. Cliché are often great tools to make quick judgment, but of course quick judgements often fail miserably when it comes to scale the idea.

The author argues that the reason America is sad is because of global trade and the interest rate policy. Perhaps having a culture that equates happiness with the economy is the real reason America is sad.

I do not buy that income / housing / cost of living related issues are not part of the story so much as I buy that they're very intertwined with inflation and labor costs. The other thing that this waves over that I think is very real is how the nature of employment has changed. Most people who have a job, and especially after things like Doge and endless layoff cycles, where everything is about psycho dark patterns, surveillance, and penny pinching, do not feel like their job assures anything. And this is on top of people who have complicated situations to begin with and often work multiple part time jobs or gig work.

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.

Americans hate each others guts that’s why. And they are not equipped for a more cplx world.

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 ..

When talking about that polarization, it feels irresponsible not to mention the role of Fox News and companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group in pushing 24/7 fear-and-hate programming nationwide, partly to continuously promote right-wing politics, partly because angry and scared people are more vulnerable to ads like "use all your money to buy gold from us because it's the only safe investment".

they are just an economic actor maximising profit by exploiting a low-regulation environment where anything can be monetised even hate (again “freedom”)

If you take the "its the other side doing it" slant on it, you are the problem. There are good reasons why CNN's ratings are terrible. And they are just as dishonest as Fox. If you don't realize this, you are the problem.

That shows wealth can go up without people feeling better, if most gains come from assets then it mainly helps those who already have those assets while others mostly see higher costs

I think it is related to who can make a higher % of wealth gain.

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.

I have zero chances of getting married. I see my friends about once per two weeks and that's a huge upgrade from not having friends at all.

Hello. Inflation. Wage Contraction.

Sure, money doesn't buy happiness. But you need some minimum. The Maslow's Pyramid. Food, Shelter.

Relatively well off people seem very unhappy now too, so that's not enough to explain what's going on.

Presumably in a general survey, there are a lot more poor, than rich. Hence they are the 1%. So 1% of the survey respondents are rich, and unhappy. Versus the 99% that are poor and unhappy.

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 this just sounds like you're sticking to a viewpoint regardless of the facts presented. "Poor people are unhappy due to their lack of money, and rich people should be happy due to their money."

But the truth is everyone is less happy. Maybe there's something else going on.

Because money is a big issue.

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.

I would start by question the premises. America is rich, but there are high inequalities and harsh conditions for a lot of people.

The biggest difference between the US and other first world countries is inequality. The article rules this out in a ridiculous way. First it only mentions wage inequality, then it just says that median wages have risen, which says nothing about inequality at all. But wage inequality is nothing, it's wealth inequality that matters. People are more happy when they don't see others having more than they'll could ever dream of everywhere.

IMHO the top ten countries on World Happiness Report are primarily those that are good at expectation management. The Nordic countries always rank well because culturally they manage their citizens expectations in life so as not to expect too much (cf The Jante Law). Australia and New Zealand have similar cultural drives where being too successful is seen as a negative. The US does not - if anything, US culture is the polar opposite of expectation management.

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.

Interesting, have they not tried youtube?

Here is pretty much the full rebuttal to the "It really is better, but everyone is whining" points of view:

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 find it interesting that all the trend lines start going negative around 2001. I wonder why that's not remarked upon? 9/11 itself was - obviously - epically terrible, but the impact of the event was recoverable.

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.)

Dear god, get offline for a while...

Something discussed in the article, but absent in the diagnosis of the final paragraph: the unique phenomenon of Donald Trump in American life. To half the country (including me), he's the worst leader in the country's history. Even if a person has faith in humanity, they may still feel like they are swimming against the man's personal tide of anger and bad judgement. Things might be great if it weren't for the disastrous tariff policy and Iran war, which have needlessly crippled the economy. As long as a person like him is in charge, it feels like we're always taking two steps forward and twenty steps back, and for no good reason. To the other half, Trump rode in atop a wave of grievance, so even to those who like him, he's sold them the notion that their society is on the brink of collapse (because Democrats, leftists, etc.). Overall, the sum effect of his presence has been to shift the entire national culture (and even the world's culture) towards knee-jerk rage and resentment, in accord with his behavior and personality.

If Trump changed his name to Andrew, he wouldn't even be in the top 2 worst Presidents named Andrew. If you don't know history, you think everything is happening for the first time ever. You have probably never seen something truly unique happen in your lifetime but you don't know that because you don't know history.

PS There was once a major political party in the US literally called the "Know Nothings" and that name wasn't ironic.

> There was once a major political party in the US literally called the "Know Nothings"

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.

Unchecked issuance of work visas and massive, unending immigration. Pretty much the opposite of Japan. I know people don't like to hear it but that's the answer. We really need to scale both of these things back as soon as possible. Especially if AI is going to displace a lot of people.

It's been discussed multiple times here before. The blunt reality is that

* 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.

I listened to a podcast recently which mentioned a rich person living in Florida for tax reasons but really wanting to live in New York. They had an app that counted down how long they needed to be in Florida day-by-day. They hated Florida.

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.

Isn't that what Britain used to do? "Tax exiles" living in exotic places for years at a time?

I mean, it seems pretty obvious, no?

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.

All work and no play... gives you a birth rate crisis, apparently.

Its urbanization that causes that. COVID had nothing do with it.

It’s women’s rights that causes that. Turns out, making and raising a baby more than one or two times is not a preferred option. And zero is preferred a lot of times too.

That correlation doesn't hold. There are plenty of places with few women's rights and big cities that have a low birth rates.

It's not a correlation, it's a conditional statement.

If women have the option to choose, then the vast majority choose 0, 1, or 2 kids. This conditional statement is upheld by basically all the total fertility rate trends in the world.

I'm seeing the same trends in rural and urban areas.

See figure 1:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17441730.2024.2...

Going to the US always feels weird:

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.

https://www.thefp.com/p/why-do-americans-feel-poor-because

The gist: the statistics used to define poverty are old and inaccurate.

1. We stopped allowing housing to be built, skyrocketing the cost of existing housing.

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.

America is not rich. A handful of Americans are rich. The rest of us are not, and can never be allowed to become rich because that would not be in the interests of the aforementioned handful.

"If we’re being clear-eyed about it, America has, historically, been brutal to many of its citizens. For some, that treatment is far more recent and unfamiliar, inspiring the desire to find happiness, safety, and security elsewhere. And while it’s tempting to believe this sense of urgency can be wholly blamed on Donald Trump, he was, in reality, an accelerant to a necrotic system.

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."

Wealth inequality.

I have no information to back this up or suggest this isn't anything but anecdotal, but from my perspective, we have a Federal government that stopped promoting the well-being of its people. We've twisted the message and convinced people that promoting business and wealth at the cost of everything else is good for everyone. So we drop every social safety net in favor of unregulated growth, which leaves the poor and middle class struggling to get by with a promise of good fortune sometime in the future, while the wealthy ride high on the hog.

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.

Worship of the 1% and social disorder.

Regardless of exactly how it started, the constant negativity you see everywhere (including HN...) has become a self-perpetuating social contagion. Notice that it mainly affects the English-speaking world, which hints that it spreads and survives through language.

Its caused by active influence campaigns and institutional ideology. Its not native, it doesn't come from the population and it doesn't reflect society. That's why politicians who embrace it usually lose. Only the reactionaries (who go against it) do well in elections. Those "people" you see online pushing it, those are bots and they are rarely operated by Americans or even native English speakers.

PS A foreign example, the entire Scottish Independence movement online (post say 2020) was caused by foreign bot farm.

"Cultural conservatives might try to explain the Tragic Twenties by citing the rise of secular individualism among American liberals and pointing to the fact that religion seems to be a tonic for unhappiness. But the rise of religious non-affiliation in America has been a steady 30-year trend, whereas this falloff in well-being started in 2020, when secularism reached its recent peak. So, that explanation won’t do."

Tipping point?

The everything crisis is somewhat apt, but if I look at my cohort (older gen z/very young millennial) it’s really mostly a cost of housing crisis.

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.

America is rich, Americans not so much. We've strip mined the middle class since the 1970s. Good jobs were outsourced. Then we used immigration to make sure that the good paying jobs were unavailable for most native born citizens. Now they import H-1Bs and L-1Bs to use as indentured servants and scab workers to undermine whoever is left with a job. Then on top of that a shitty healthcare system that only extracts wealth and cares little about the outcomes of its customers. You can't even own a home anywhere nice anymore because now you as an individual have to compete with AirBNBs and home flippers. The stock market has never been higher, but the economy itself feels paper thin. Quality of almost everything is in rapid decline--restaurant food/service, new homes are low quality (using lower quality materials, almost no brick or wood), college education is no longer a signal for actually being intelligent, you buy a vegetable at the grocery store (Whole Foods) and it's still several months old junk from sitting in a packing house and now it goes back in a week when you bring it up. Meat prices at Costco are up 25% in a single year.

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.

There are only 3 industries that cause most of that. All 3 advertise heavily on news programs and all 3 are heavily regulated. They are also the only 3 industries whose prices have gone up (inflation adjusted) over the last 25 or so years. Those 3 industries are education, housing and health care. You take out those expenses and everything is different.

This is the expected result of a society optimizing for GDP and quarterly results.

So the whole mechanism of capitalism is based on the fact that there are haves, and have-nots, albeit with freedom to move upward. The system literally does not work with everyone being a "have", if that happens, the newly minted "haves" just bring down the existing "haves" into a new class of "have-nots". That's essentially what's happened, the lowest of the "have-nots" have risen, which has led to everything being more expensive for the preexisting "haves".

America isn't rich, just a few people there are.

It must be hard to remain sane, let alone happy, after 2 terms of Donald Trump.

I don’t think this discussion is complete without mentioning Trump, if not as an outright cause, at least a symbol and a symptom.

The level of toxicity and cynicism and nihilism that has been brought to the foreground every day is really something to see.

It takes 2 to tango and everyone that takes a "its only the other side doing it", is the problem.

What an asinine question. The wealth is all in the hands of a tiny fraction of the population and they care nothing for the rest of us beyond how to exploit us for even more. Sure, we have a ton of nice stuff that benefits ordinary people like access to some of the coolest consumer gadgets at effectively-subsidized prices through exploitation of the workers in other countries, but that doesn't nullify the high visibility of how we're being treated by corps and the mega-wealthy.

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.

Concentration

The answer to the question posed by the headline is simple:

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.

Having to read about the crazy things Donald Trump is doing for 10 straight years hasn’t been good for my emotional health.

Healthcare.

The answer to this shit is usually healthcare.

The average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US has fallen over the past 50 years. With productivity and wealth gains, the median worker working for an hour is making less. Meanwhile, the heirs and rentiers and "rich kids of Instagram" are doing better than ever. Trump just sued the SPLC for investigating neo-nazis and the Ku Klux Klan while Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Lebanon, Gaza etc. are bombed, blockade and whatnot. We"re not living under the Bew Deal or Great Society any more. Things are not going back, this is the new future. Meanwhile, Democratic Socialists of America just cracked 100,000 members, and people might be surprised how active they are in many smaller (and bigger) cities around the US.

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.

The average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US has fallen over the past 50 years.

No: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

What I said is correct. Inflation-adjusted hourly wages are down.

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.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG

Man, it's almost like materialism actually is a root of suffering. Who'da thunkit?

I think the pandemic broke the feeling most Americans had that we were all in the same boat and we could work together to solve our problems. Liberals stopped seeing Trump's election as a fluke but an indication that conservatives were living by a fundamentally different set of values. Conservatives started to see liberal policies as a threat to the basic fabric of American life.

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.

Every time I read one of these it’s the same. No one ever even tries to look at quality of life measurements, or cost of living relative to income, or measurements of precarity (e.g. How secure is my job? How secure is my housing?).

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.

Yeah, the "economist" view of a country's state always seems awfully reductionists: "Those few KPIs look good, so there can't possibly be a way in which things are bad. So the rest must be 'feelings'."

> relative quality of life

Relative to what?

- relative to last year

- 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

Relative to itself. I.e. the QoL for the upper, middle, and poor are each getting worse.

> Relative to itself

Then it would be an absolute change, not a relative one.

I'm speaking colloquially, not statistically. More literally, I mean "absolutely, but also relative to various things." See the parent's reply to you for concrete examples.

I asked because if a coworker gets a bigger raise than Bob, then Bob is relatively poorer. But Bob isn't actually poorer.

I mean there’s that quote from Bezos: “ When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right”

Sure a single anecdote is unreliable, but common feelings of a generation probably point to the data not capturing reality well

And why that anecdote happened is pretty informative. Someone was cooking the data to make themselves look good. It took 1 call to support to prove this was the case. I'm betting they didn't last long after that.

Is this not addressing quality of life getting worse?

"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."

I've seen plenty of people look at those metrics and they certainly do tell a story of growing inequality and instability. To me, it seems more obvious that those issues are largely unaddressed by the people in power because they're more concerned with growing their wealth than taking care of their people. I suspect that's obvious to Americans given their overwhelming distrust for institutions, politicians, etc. Unfortunately Americans seem to lack the ability to discern who actually cares about them. By seeking change we've ironically bolstered the opposition to our basic human needs.

My TLDR; version: urbanism and (economically) forced migration into large cities.

crony capitalism is the root cause

It got sad because enough folks across enough strata aren't doing well in enough ways that matter, and yet are constantly told that the numbers/statistics/data tell the opposite so clearly they're in the wrong.

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.

My personal theory, represented in the points in TFA but not quite pinpointed, is that it is due to smartphones and the overall media environment (not just social media). Specifically:

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 the rustbelt/loss of famliy farms/loss of real decent jobs in small town America/the cities' working class forgetting those were the pipeline that generated the children that went on be the young vibrant energy that knew how to do things/grew our economy/contributed to our culture and strength.

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.

This trend will continue as long as tax payers money is wasted in useless and unnecessary wars …

Can be explained with one word: Inequality. America being rich is a smokescreen. Some Americans are very rich. Most are not. The very rich Americans are not sad, actually.

Crime and Grime - which is what SF is currently trying to turn around, but LA is still in full denial mode about.

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.

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