7 ms·

I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. I am from Greenboro, WI and I can tell you it’s the opposite amo

I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. I am from Greenboro, WI and I can tell you it’s the opposite among the population in the areas I grew up. Most young people like me who had more than a high school degree have moved away and ones that are left there are either in some kind of struggling business or are plain into dark places dealing with addictions (alcohol and opioid). Even people like me who did move to the cities, I don’t see how the optimism can be so high. I mean I work in tech and have pretty much accepted that I am forever priced out of the housing market I am in. The school district system of where I live also doesn’t look very promising so my kids will have a better education (and future). Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job. Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt.

spicybright 5y ago
Nothing stopping the elites from pumping out fake polls to keep us distracted from how bad things are getting.
- tag2103 5y ago
  A new flavor of bread and circuses with added "appeal to authority" goodness.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Do you have evidence the poll is faked, or does it just go against your confirmation bias?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. It's easy to confuse our own personal bubbles with the general population. There's nothing inconsistent about you living in an area with low life satisfaction and a poll that says 60% of people across the entire country have high life satisfaction. The way you describe your home town sounds depressing and it's easy to believe that they wouldn't be part of the 60% of Americans rating themselves as thriving in this poll. However, what you're describing is very far from the norm for towns in America. Occurs too often, yes, but it's not what life in the average American city looks like. > Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job. The entire Bay Area represents around 2% of the US population. It's not expected that a national poll would reflect the realities of a single geographic region. That said, I have several friends and extended families starting families in the Bay Area who are very happy with their circumstances. > Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt. The poll said 60% of Americans see themselves as "thriving". That doesn't meant that no one is struggling. It's important to look at these polls as ways to get a glimpse of life outside of our own bubbles. It's also important to view them as a distribution rather than a binary outcome.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Love this take!
- chadanon 5y ago
  Every now and again I read a comment like this and tell myself, "this is why I read Hacker News".
  - jfengel 5y ago
    Ironically, it's the parent to that post that makes me think, "This is why I should give up Hacker News". A post of the form "This must be biased, because my anecdote is X". Your specific experience is the most biased thing there can be. I think they're trying to get at "deliberately altered for political ends", but with no basis for that statement. It feels like projection: "I know what I want the result to be therefore you must be deliberately saying the opposite". To see it expressed so baldly like that really takes the wind out of my sails, regardless of the cogent and coherent reply.
rayiner 5y ago
Meanwhile I’m an older millennial with kids and live in a suburban community with lots of kids. Most people seem pretty happy. People in Iowa, where my wife went to high school, and Oregon, where she grew up, seem pretty happy too. Rust Belt decay is obviously less conducive to happiness, but I think “boom towns” (where a marquee industry makes a small percentage of the population very rich) also aren’t conductive to happiness. Might explain why the politics out of place as like San Francisco is so apocalyptic. People want to have a normal life but the economy of the city has bifurcated the population into “rich but stressed out” and “struggling to get by.” To be fair I get the sentiment. DC was the same way. In DC it was childless wealthy professionals on one side (mostly white and Asian) and service workers on the other (mostly Black and Latino). It was depressing as hell and we had to get out.
- Retric 5y ago
  Population isn’t evenly distributed. Iowa has a little over 1/3 or NYC’s population even excluding everything over the Hudson. Your “boom towns” represent a large chunk of everyone in the US.
  - cjaybo 5y ago
    You seem to be conflating "boom town" and "large city". NYC is not a boom town.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Why not? It seems like finance fills the “marquee industry makes a small percentage of the population very rich” for NYC.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - sidibe 5y ago
        And many other industries make other small percentages of the population rich. It's not a one industry town like many places in the rust belt were and Silicon Valley currently is
pfortuny 5y ago
It may seem counterintuitive but 60% is not so much for this to be noticed “everywhere”. Even less when your own area is not much populated.
lumost 5y ago
Wages on the low-end are starting to rise for the first time in decades. Employers are having to compete for every kind of worker which is making them nicer and more agreeable. When people see an upward trendline in their lives and can imagine it continuing they're more apt to lean in push harder. I'd imagine that even in the bay area, wages are probably rising fast for your typical worker and rents have tapered off due to the pandemic. While in many cases we built a society where having a family is financially impractical to impossible - it's not hard to imagine that changing with a 20-30 dollar/hr 10th percentile wage ( which we get to in under ~5-10 years if the bottom quintile sees a 10% annual bump ).
cstejerean 5y ago
Why stay in the Bay Area in that case? A good number of tech companies will allow you to work remotely, and even with a moderate cost of living pay cut you can go from not being able to afford a house in the Bay Area to being able to buy a nice house in a great neighborhood with good schools somewhere else.

spicybright 5y ago

Nothing stopping the elites from pumping out fake polls to keep us distracted from how bad things are getting.

tag2103 5y ago
A new flavor of bread and circuses with added "appeal to authority" goodness.
goatlover 5y ago
Do you have evidence the poll is faked, or does it just go against your confirmation bias?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> I find these polls are biased and not represent equally well the entire spectrum of population. It's easy to confuse our own personal bubbles with the general population. There's nothing inconsistent about you living in an area with low life satisfaction and a poll that says 60% of people across the entire country have high life satisfaction. The way you describe your home town sounds depressing and it's easy to believe that they wouldn't be part of the 60% of Americans rating themselves as thriving in this poll. However, what you're describing is very far from the norm for towns in America. Occurs too often, yes, but it's not what life in the average American city looks like. > Starting a family with a single income in Bay Area, meeting ends meet is hard even with a tech job. The entire Bay Area represents around 2% of the US population. It's not expected that a national poll would reflect the realities of a single geographic region. That said, I have several friends and extended families starting families in the Bay Area who are very happy with their circumstances. > Like every other news these days, I take these polls with a grain of salt. The poll said 60% of Americans see themselves as "thriving". That doesn't meant that no one is struggling. It's important to look at these polls as ways to get a glimpse of life outside of our own bubbles. It's also important to view them as a distribution rather than a binary outcome.

xeromal 5y ago
Love this take!
chadanon 5y ago
Every now and again I read a comment like this and tell myself, "this is why I read Hacker News".
- jfengel 5y ago
  Ironically, it's the parent to that post that makes me think, "This is why I should give up Hacker News". A post of the form "This must be biased, because my anecdote is X". Your specific experience is the most biased thing there can be. I think they're trying to get at "deliberately altered for political ends", but with no basis for that statement. It feels like projection: "I know what I want the result to be therefore you must be deliberately saying the opposite". To see it expressed so baldly like that really takes the wind out of my sails, regardless of the cogent and coherent reply.

rayiner 5y ago

Meanwhile I’m an older millennial with kids and live in a suburban community with lots of kids. Most people seem pretty happy. People in Iowa, where my wife went to high school, and Oregon, where she grew up, seem pretty happy too. Rust Belt decay is obviously less conducive to happiness, but I think “boom towns” (where a marquee industry makes a small percentage of the population very rich) also aren’t conductive to happiness. Might explain why the politics out of place as like San Francisco is so apocalyptic. People want to have a normal life but the economy of the city has bifurcated the population into “rich but stressed out” and “struggling to get by.” To be fair I get the sentiment. DC was the same way. In DC it was childless wealthy professionals on one side (mostly white and Asian) and service workers on the other (mostly Black and Latino). It was depressing as hell and we had to get out.

Retric 5y ago
Population isn’t evenly distributed. Iowa has a little over 1/3 or NYC’s population even excluding everything over the Hudson. Your “boom towns” represent a large chunk of everyone in the US.
- cjaybo 5y ago
  You seem to be conflating "boom town" and "large city". NYC is not a boom town.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Why not? It seems like finance fills the “marquee industry makes a small percentage of the population very rich” for NYC.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - sidibe 5y ago
      And many other industries make other small percentages of the population rich. It's not a one industry town like many places in the rust belt were and Silicon Valley currently is

pfortuny 5y ago

It may seem counterintuitive but 60% is not so much for this to be noticed “everywhere”. Even less when your own area is not much populated.

lumost 5y ago

Wages on the low-end are starting to rise for the first time in decades. Employers are having to compete for every kind of worker which is making them nicer and more agreeable. When people see an upward trendline in their lives and can imagine it continuing they're more apt to lean in push harder. I'd imagine that even in the bay area, wages are probably rising fast for your typical worker and rents have tapered off due to the pandemic. While in many cases we built a society where having a family is financially impractical to impossible - it's not hard to imagine that changing with a 20-30 dollar/hr 10th percentile wage ( which we get to in under ~5-10 years if the bottom quintile sees a 10% annual bump ).

cstejerean 5y ago

Why stay in the Bay Area in that case? A good number of tech companies will allow you to work remotely, and even with a moderate cost of living pay cut you can go from not being able to afford a house in the Bay Area to being able to buy a nice house in a great neighborhood with good schools somewhere else.