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This point also confirms my relativity of perception thoughts. Yes, compared to me, the bottom 50% certainly has more adversity. But why stop there? The bottom

• sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "I don't believe that thinking about nameless, faceless people thousands and thousands of miles away is particularly effective " But this is what is implied by the opening statement 'The Average American' etc. etc. , no? The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are barely getting by. Imagine middle aged parents without spectacular health care coverage, someone gets a cavity and needs a root canal. That's $1000 - and actually beyond the 'average Americans' ability to pay for out of hand. A cavity can be little economic emergency. It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach, or no piano lessons for the kids, or worse, having to put it on the Credit Card, pay terrible rates etc.. And 'cousin Joe' was pulled over for DUI. He'll lose his job if he doesn't make bail, he needs you to co-sign for him. Now you have to make sure he shows up for court. Parents are inching older, have some income but likely need to go into a home, which will be exceedingly expensive. There are umpteen such challenges is 'most people's lives'. So I agree with the sentiment that normal, employed middle class families wherein there's stability and gainful employment, low crime etc. - yes, it's effete, and not much adversity there. There is a class of Americans for whom life doesn't have a lot of adversity, fully agree. But it's not 'most'.
  • sigstoat 7y ago
    > The 'The Average American' does face 'adversity', because most people are barely getting by. > ... > It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach were you trying to make the point that people concoct adversity where it doesn't exist? because i think you're doing good work on that front. keep it up.
    • deleted 7y ago
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    • sonnyblarney 7y ago
      Yes - a 'car trip' to a crappy dive like Myrtle Beach and it's shady Motels as one's only, tiny respite from a life of slinging coffee at the Waffle House, in the balance of financial emergencies from something as trivial as some basic dental work - absolutely implies 'adversity'. In case you're having trouble contextualizing: a family in that situation is an inch from ruin. They will never have anything, and odds are, they'll hit a bump now and again and it will get messy. Those kinds of families are always coming in and out of financial difficulty.
  • benj111 7y ago
    "It means no car trip to Myrtle Beach, or no piano lessons for the kids, or worse, having to put it on the Credit Card" That's your example of facing adversity? Did you read the article? If you're lying awake at night worrying whether you can afford little Timmy's piano lessons you aren't in the same boat as a cave man that's worried about getting eaten by a lion.
    • AstralStorm 7y ago
      There's more. If Timmy does not make the competitive job market he might as well have been eaten by the lion. Which depends on access to right tutoring and right connections more than right skills. Getting eaten by a lion is less misery. And a lion you can fight with a few guys. Job market? Might as well be hitting a tank with your bare fists. If anything, it's the lack of control and not the level of adversity that is the problem.
      • benj111 7y ago
        Are you trolling? Getting eaten by a lion is in no way similar to not getting a 'good' job, in fact I'll go further and say it's not similar to not getting a job at all.
        • AstralStorm 7y ago
          It actually is way worse than being eaten by a lion. Like long torture of varying degrees. There are worse kinds of torture but it is one of the most common, the other being social exclusion, and finally chronic illnesses. Except this one nobody can really fix. The drawback of invisible poorly understood market processes with many inputs. The only thing you can try to do is make your chances better, be adaptable and adapt. Even bad illness can often be abated with a few (commonly known as terrible) exceptions.
    • sonnyblarney 7y ago
      So if your threshold for 'adversity' is getting 'eaten by Lions' I would imagine you're trolling? My point was to illustrate a family that might have next to nothing - and who's only aspirational escape from slinging coffee at the Waffle House is a low-budget weekender at a slimly dive like Myrtle Beach, will with one tiny blip of a minor medical issue, have that taken away, and possibly go into debt. Could you imagine a life of serving at a restaurant, never able to afford even the most basic getaway, going ever deeper into debt for basic things like 'visits to the dentist'? When you tack on just a couple of 'issues', it all comes apart. Those families have $500 'net worth' and are at any time inches away from ruin, no retirement savings, no way to send their kids to college. If they have a bad day at work, or if their boss doesn't like them they could lose their jobs. If they inure themselves playing softball - it's calamity. Getting one credit card to pay off the other. 'Pay day loans'. Unable to cobble together 'first and last months' rent. Bad credit. A minor offence and unable to make bail. A car that breaks down, no way to get to work, and a boss that doesn't care one bit. Coming down with something as minor as 'late onset Asthma' which is $50/month of meds they cannot afford. That is the grinding adversity that about 1/2 of America faces with no way out.
• hurrdurr2 7y ago
  Not necessarily disagreeing with you but skid row in LA looks and feels like a third world country.
  • kortilla 7y ago
    Skid row isn’t the bottom 50% though. It’s the bottom 0.01%
    • dajohnson89 7y ago
      what's frightening is how many people are very very close to ending up on skid row. in la alone, there are a million people at least who if they missed pay for two months, would be right there.
• 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  I think you are on the right track. I'm not sure the article is. Because the article keeps talking about objective realities. But human beings experience life subjectively. Making more than your brother in law is a big ego boost. Having the highest degree in your family, even if that is only a BA. Human beings judge ourselves subjectively. Technology has broken down borders, increased our self awareness and provided us with education. Which is a good thing, but it also has it's negatives. One of those negatives is the borders: we are now all part of a global economy. Everyone intertwined with everyone else. I used to be able to go to a town hall that had a lot more sway in how things worked. Now it's a global system that will grind on and grind up anyone who dares get in it's way. The other point is our self awareness. It's now impossible to live without understanding that... I'm complicit in some child's slavery because I have a phone in my pocket. Likely some of that meat I eat was treated with horrendous cruelty. The pages I need to print and waste because of some bureaucratic rule will cost the lives of thousands of animals in a rain forest where the trees were cut down in a terrible way. My tax dollars will be used to kill and torture people for profit. My car is costing other people their live's from it's pollution, the same as my plane trip. The arguments we used to use to justify this, have been proven false. Coming to terms with our own terrible behavior would be easier if not for our increase in education. Since the time of the Gutenberg press, population has gone up 10~, but educated population has gone up something like 1000 or even 10,000 times. This increase in education has had a huge increase in scientific knowledge. But it also makes any individual much less likely to be outstanding. So again, our individuality is lessened. But worse, you are average. Mediocre. When there's 100 biologists in the world, you can always find some way to be slightly different. With 3,000,000 biologists in the world, how could you expect to shine? I think these things add to something that's been brewing for a couple of hundred years: a loss of meaning. The latest things that we used to feel special: capitalism, communism, our nationality, our race, our religion, have also been falling by the wayside, dying with other idols and invincible messiahs. We use to think of ourselves as special for a lot of reasons. Science and tech have made it very clear, we aren't special. Just a random primate descendant on a lonely little rock in the middle of a totally uncaring universe. Now we can't even take console in being the best at something in our own little area. I think these real negatives are suppressed because they speak poorly of human nature (we are silly creatures) and it leads to irrational negativity in other areas; whether it is worrying over a 'growing crime rate' which doesn't exist, or complaining about vaccines. Not sure how to handle these issues, I don't really have any suggestions. Just more pointless observations. :p
• pytester 7y ago
  >The bottom 50% in America is likely the top 20% somewhere else (I'm making all of this up, of course). Then the bottom 50% of that 20% is likely the top 1% somewhere else. And on and on it goes. This is if you don't take into account purchasing power parity and the relative expense of things like education, medical care and housing. Being homeless in San Francisco isn't going to be as fun than being, say, lower middle class in Uruguay even if your nominal income is higher.
• luckydata 7y ago
  Nah, this is very dangerous thinking, that somehow we're so much better than every other country. Truth to be told, aside very limited exceptions, life in the USA is quite bad for a lot of people, and very risky. Most countries have a better safety net than here, either through government or familial ties.
  • nostrademons 7y ago
    In the developed world, yeah, the U.S. is behind a lot of regions like Taiwan, Canada, Scandinavia, Western Europe, Australia & NZ in terms of the social safety net. Among the world's population at large, no way. Even homeless Americans are way better off than the average person in Asia, Africa, or South America. In China people regularly work 9-9-6 (9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week); if you lose your job, you have zero social safety net other than your savings and your family; your property can be confiscated if you piss off the wrong party official; and there's a callous disregard for life so that if you get run over by a taxi it's your own problem. In parts of Central America the nominal government has no control, and you can be caught in a random crossfire. My wife served in the Peace Corps in Peru; she stayed with the richest woman in the village, who owned a house with 3.5 walls and a regular stream of reptilian visitors. That woman's occupation? Brewing moonshine in 55 gallon oil drums, to serve as the village's primary beverage and social lubricant.
• marcus_holmes 7y ago
  I've spent a couple of years wandering around SE Asia, and that involves seeing a lot of real poverty close up. The striking thing about what I noticed is is: Only the lonely people are unhappy. Give the average Cambodian a bucket of chicken feet and a carton of beer and they'll immediately share it with their friends/family and be unbelievably happy. They have really strong community and family ties, and while that does have downsides (especially for women, whose behaviour is under control almost all the time), it also gives incredible support and comfort. The contrast between Camobodia and Australia is noticeable: Cambodians are mostly poor and happy, and Australians are mostly rich and angry.