22 ms·

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

• anal_reactor 6mo ago
  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.
• jdw64 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• functionmouse 6mo ago
  because America's not rich; like 100 people here just have more money than most countries
  • some_random 6mo ago
    That's just objectively untrue. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
    • david927 6mo ago
      - 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.
      • mathgradthrow 6mo ago
        You are responding to data about the median American.
        • david927 6mo ago
          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.
        • john_strinlai 6mo ago
          income data about the median american. income data alone does not tell a very complete story.
          • mathgradthrow 6mo ago
            Income is by far the dominant term, you're being ridiculous.
            • deleted 6mo ago
              [deleted]
      • ipsento606 6mo ago
        > 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?
        • bombcar 6mo ago
          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.
          • some_random 6mo ago
            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?
            • kelnos 6mo ago
              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.
      • knubie 6mo ago
        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.
      • some_random 6mo ago
        Fun fact, that's also untrue or at least dubious. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/16/facebook-posts/though-many-americans-live-paycheck-paycheck-some-/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/16/facebook-p...
        • JKCalhoun 6mo ago
          "Data from 2020 through 2022 found that between 50% and 63% of Americans report living paycheck to paycheck." (Well, that's a relief.)
          • some_random 6mo ago
            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."
      • jandrewrogers 6mo ago
        > 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.
        • david927 6mo ago
          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.
          • nradov 6mo ago
            No one forced those people to take on a $1000 monthly car loan payment.
      • partiallypro 6mo ago
        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.
        • some_random 6mo ago
          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.
          • bombcar 6mo ago
            > 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).
          • hunterpayne 6mo ago
            So it has selection bias in addition to the bias from self reporting. Got it. Your stats professor is crying somewhere.
        • bean469 6mo ago
          > 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
      • WalterBright 6mo ago
        > 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.
    • CorrectHorseBat 6mo ago
      Median doesn't say anything about the extremes and income isn't wealth.
    • dv_dt 6mo ago
      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.
      • some_random 6mo ago
        Yeah I totally agree that income and happiness are not interchangeable, I'm just really tired of people lying about objective facts.
        • dv_dt 6mo ago
          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...
          • some_random 6mo ago
            That's super cool, in this particular comment thread that's not what we're talking about.
        • david927 6mo ago
          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.
        • hunterpayne 6mo ago
          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.
    • JKCalhoun 6mo ago
      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.
      • some_random 6mo ago
        If only the US was a petrostate, that would solve all our problems.
        • eloisant 6mo ago
          I can't tell if you're sarcastic or not! You're aware that the US is the biggest oil producer in the world?
          • Geee 6mo ago
            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?country=USA~SAU~KWT~ARE~OWID_EUR~NOR~GUY~QAT https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-prod-per-capita?count...
            • themanualstates 6mo ago
              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_gas_production 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.
          • bigtex88 6mo ago
            "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.
    • iso1631 6mo ago
      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.
      • some_random 6mo ago
        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.
    • abraxas 6mo ago
      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.
      • some_random 6mo ago
        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.
  • jandrewrogers 6mo ago
    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.
    • ljf 6mo ago
      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.
      • bombcar 6mo ago
        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.
    • metalliqaz 6mo ago
      A lot of money, but disposable? HCOL takes up the slack in so many cases.
    • kdheiwns 6mo ago
      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.
  • fl4regun 6mo ago
    there's over 20 million millionaires in the USA, that's like, what, 1 in 20?
    • QuantumFunnel 6mo ago
      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.
      • fl4regun 6mo ago
        I'm sorry a million dollars is still a huge amount of money for normal people, whether it comes from their home or otherwise.
      • matwood 6mo ago
        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.
        • mikestew 6mo ago
          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?
          • eloisant 6mo ago
            You can get those dollars back and rent your home. Or buy a cheaper one.
    • rawgabbit 6mo ago
      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.
  • cmiles8 6mo ago
    The US is broadly wealthier. Folks like to bash the US, but it is wealthier.
  • lanthissa 6mo ago
    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
    • mbgerring 6mo ago
      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.
      • shimman 6mo ago
        Wait, you're telling me that I shouldn't have to work a $200k job in order to get 4 weeks of PTO?
      • hunterpayne 6mo ago
        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.
    • spwa4 6mo ago
      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.
• rootusrootus 6mo ago
  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 ;-)
  • thewebguyd 6mo ago
    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.
    • ku-man 6mo ago
      [dead]
    • brandon272 6mo ago
      >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)
• Induane 6mo ago
  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.
  • reactordev 6mo ago
    I think that’s only one aspect, the other is the economics make it so you have to be extraordinary to live ordinary.
    • justonceokay 6mo ago
      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.
      • reactordev 6mo ago
        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.
      • bluefirebrand 6mo ago
        > 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
  • metalliqaz 6mo ago
    I wouldn't call that 'Christian'. The 'extraordinary work ethic' exists in Japan, too. Not very Christian over there.
• comrade1234 6mo ago
  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.
  • conductr 6mo ago
    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.
    • ericmay 6mo ago
      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.
• lbrito 6mo ago
  Good article with a weird title. Why assume wealth and happiness are correlated?
  • ambicapter 6mo ago
    It's how Americans think life works (I've fallen victim to it as well).
    • john_strinlai 6mo ago
      it is how life works money and happiness are correlated.
      • JKCalhoun 6mo ago
        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.)
        • john_strinlai 6mo ago
          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.
          • JKCalhoun 6mo ago
            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.
          • bdangubic 6mo ago
            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)
• zepppotemkin 6mo ago
  Interesting, have they not tried youtube?
• jazz9k 6mo ago
  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.
• pkilgore 6mo ago
  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.
  • warkdarrior 6mo ago
    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.
    • shimman 6mo ago
      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.
    • pkilgore 6mo ago
      Did I miss the breakdown by class/wealth? I saw a bunch of other cross tabs. Not that one.
• detourdog 6mo ago
  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.
• hiAndrewQuinn 6mo ago
  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.
  • asdfman123 6mo ago
    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.
    • hiAndrewQuinn 6mo ago
      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.
  • Arodex 6mo ago
    "Voting Republican" being of course highly correlated, and thus a good proxy, to "being White".
    • hunterpayne 6mo ago
      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.
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• testplzignore 6mo ago
  > 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...
• slackfan 6mo ago
  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.
  • voxadam 6mo ago
    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?
    • slackfan 6mo ago
      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.
      • voxadam 6mo ago
        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.
        • slackfan 6mo ago
          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.
        • hunterpayne 6mo ago
          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.
• tyleo 6mo ago
  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.
  • ilamont 6mo ago
    Isn't that what Britain used to do? "Tax exiles" living in exotic places for years at a time?
• etchalon 6mo ago
  Healthcare. The answer to this shit is usually healthcare.
• quantum_state 6mo ago
  This trend will continue as long as tax payers money is wasted in useless and unnecessary wars …
• cynicalpeace 6mo ago
  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"
  • 0x1ceb00da 6mo ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff2jQGz6DxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff2jQGz6DxM
  • ambicapter 6mo ago
    If you're secular and simple-minded, sure.
• slopinthebag 6mo ago
  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.
  • asdfman123 6mo ago
    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.
    • slopinthebag 6mo ago
      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.
• anonu 6mo ago
  The earlier NYT article on the topic was interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/economy-attitudes-republicans-democrats.html 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...
  • lotsofpulp 6mo ago
    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.
    • nyeah 6mo ago
      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.
    • wat10000 6mo ago
      I wonder how avocados became the poster child for unreasonably expensive food. They're not actually that costly.
      • deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
• amadeuspagel 6mo ago
  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.
• eBombzor 6mo ago
  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.
  • pb7 6mo ago
    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.
    • ewjt 6mo ago
      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.
    • jbxntuehineoh 6mo ago
      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.
• lambdaone 6mo ago
  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.
  • bombcar 6mo ago
    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.
  • WalterBright 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  • czscout 6mo ago
    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.
    • hoipaloi 6mo ago
      Where else have you lived?
    • krapp 6mo ago
      "If you ignore reality, reality is awesome!"
      • traderj0e 6mo ago
        The internet isn't reality
    • traderj0e 6mo ago
      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.
• xyzelement 6mo ago
  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.
  • asdfman123 6mo ago
    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.
• lastofthemojito 6mo ago
  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#2025_country_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index#2...
• CPLX 6mo ago
  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.
  • gypsy_boots 6mo ago
    > 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.
• mbfg 6mo ago
  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.
  • WalterBright 6mo ago
    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.
    • jbxntuehineoh 6mo ago
      Wow, with his own two hands?? Incredible! How did he do it???
      • WalterBright 6mo ago
        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.
        • dingaling 6mo ago
          > 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.
          • WalterBright 6mo ago
            [flagged]
    • bean469 6mo ago
      > For example, Musk created the wealth he has. It wasn't distributed to him from others. The jokes write themselves
• kilroy123 6mo ago
  It all shifted in 2012: https://wtfhappened2012.com https://wtfhappened2012.com I am an optimist, so I do think things will improve eventually, and we're going through a tough transition.
  • newsoftheday 6mo ago
    This graph on that page was very interesting to me: "Below-Basic Reading Levels". People's education levels are dropping.
    • bombcar 6mo ago
      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-mississippi-reading-miracle-looks-to-be-real-after-all/ https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...
      • hunterpayne 6mo ago
        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...
• mykowebhn 6mo ago
  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.
  • mancerayder 6mo ago
    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.
    • hunterpayne 6mo ago
      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.
    • stuxnet79 6mo ago
      > 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.
• Joel_Mckay 6mo ago
  Every man, woman, and child... are $113k in debt. https://usdebtclock.org/ 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
• woodydesign 6mo ago
  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.
• intended 6mo ago
  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.
• Taikonerd 6mo ago
  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.
  • bombcar 6mo ago
    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?
    • autoexec 6mo ago
      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.
  • kenjackson 6mo ago
• regularization 6mo ago
  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.
  • orangecat 6mo ago
    The average inflation-adjusted hourly wage in the US has fallen over the past 50 years. No: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
    • regularization 6mo ago
      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.
• alsetmusic 6mo ago
  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.
• FrustratedMonky 6mo ago
  Hello. Inflation. Wage Contraction. Sure, money doesn't buy happiness. But you need some minimum. The Maslow's Pyramid. Food, Shelter.
  • asdfman123 6mo ago
    Relatively well off people seem very unhappy now too, so that's not enough to explain what's going on.
    • FrustratedMonky 6mo ago
      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.
      • asdfman123 6mo ago
        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.
        • FrustratedMonky 6mo ago
          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.
• yalogin 6mo ago
  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.
  • jerlam 6mo ago
    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.
    • globular-toast 6mo ago
      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.
      • hunterpayne 6mo ago
        Which is why we also publish a median (50th percentile) per capita (per person) number too. And its a measure of income, not wealth.
  • JALTU 6mo ago
    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/ https://ofdollarsanddata.com/climbing-the-wealth-ladder/
• theowaway 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • mbgerring 6mo ago
    You’re going to get downvoted for this, but you’re right. Literally any international travel to an actual first world country will ruin America for you. This country is a backwater in terms of infrastructure, culture and quality of life.
    • theowaway 6mo ago
      could be so nice, but they just keep choosing inequality
• mbgerring 6mo ago
  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.
  • xg15 6mo ago
    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'."
  • WalterBright 6mo ago
    > relative quality of life Relative to what?
    • mbgerring 6mo ago
      - 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
    • happytoexplain 6mo ago
      Relative to itself. I.e. the QoL for the upper, middle, and poor are each getting worse.
      • WalterBright 6mo ago
        > Relative to itself Then it would be an absolute change, not a relative one.
• ChrisLTD 6mo ago
  Having to read about the crazy things Donald Trump is doing for 10 straight years hasn’t been good for my emotional health.
• bjourne 6mo ago
  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.
  • warkdarrior 6mo ago
    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?
    • bjourne 6mo ago
      Yes. They are wasting their abundance on dumb shit. Even poor Americans have more resources than me. But their society is ridiculously inefficient.
  • ecshafer 6mo ago
    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.
    • bjourne 6mo ago
      The obvious solution is to reuse the same plastic cup for all customers each morning. Voila, now you save 309 plastic cups/day.
      • nobody9999 6mo ago
        >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-mysophobia-germophobia https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22436-mysopho...
• manoDev 6mo ago
  This is the expected result of a society optimizing for GDP and quarterly results.
• threethirtytwo 6mo ago
  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).
• stego-tech 6mo ago
  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.
• stronglikedan 6mo ago
  crony capitalism is the root cause
• themafia 6mo ago
  Wealth inequality.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo ago
  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"
  • cortesoft 6mo ago
    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.
  • fl4regun 6mo ago
    how would you measure "happiness" if you were tasked to do so for a study?
    • hunterpayne 6mo ago
      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.
      • jltsiren 6mo ago
        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.
• netcan 6mo ago
  > 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.
• anovikov 6mo ago
  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.
  • anovikov 6mo ago
    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.
• MattGrommes 6mo ago
  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.
  • hunterpayne 6mo ago
    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.
• MattRogish 6mo ago
  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.)
  • hunterpayne 6mo ago
    Dear god, get offline for a while...
• czscout 6mo ago
  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".
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• riversflow 6mo ago
  Man, it's almost like materialism actually is a root of suffering. Who'da thunkit?
• mancerayder 6mo ago
  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.
  • mannanj 6mo ago
    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?
    • mancerayder 6mo ago
      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.
      • 6mo ago
• tim333 6mo ago
  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.
  • nephihaha 6mo ago
    The UK's the same. The lockdown was a major driver of this.
    • fakedang 6mo ago
      Can say from experience volunteering, I was mighty surprised when literally children were being rendered hungry and homeless in London during Covid.
    • websap 6mo ago
      The UK (at least London) is cheaper than Seattle, and far cheaper than NYC.
      • cguess 6mo ago
        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).
      • nephihaha 6mo ago
• matthest 6mo ago
  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.
• yodsanklai 6mo ago
  I would start by question the premises. America is rich, but there are high inequalities and harsh conditions for a lot of people.
• stephc_int13 6mo ago
  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.
• brightball 6mo ago
  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.
• fl4regun 6mo ago
  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.
  • Arodex 6mo ago
    >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.
• booleandilemma 6mo ago
  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.
• cortesoft 6mo ago
  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.
  • traderj0e 6mo ago
    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.
    • hunterpayne 6mo ago
      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.
• mrwh 6mo ago
  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.
• cyberax 6mo ago
  My TLDR; version: urbanism and (economically) forced migration into large cities.
• thomukas 6mo ago
  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 ..
  • crooked-v 6mo ago
    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".
    • thomukas 6mo ago
      they are just an economic actor maximising profit by exploiting a low-regulation environment where anything can be monetised even hate (again “freedom”)
    • hunterpayne 6mo ago
      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.
• globular-toast 6mo ago
  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.
• seniorThrowaway 6mo ago
  https://www.thefp.com/p/why-do-americans-feel-poor-because https://www.thefp.com/p/why-do-americans-feel-poor-because The gist: the statistics used to define poverty are old and inaccurate.
• tracker1 6mo ago
  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.
• CamperBob2 6mo ago
  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.
  • hunterpayne 6mo ago
    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"
    • defrost 6mo ago
      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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • CamperBob2 6mo ago
        It does, however, come across as a comment fully in line with https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_hit_dog_will_holler https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_hit_dog_will_holler .
• bontaq 6mo ago
  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?
  • randomNumber7 6mo ago
    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.
    • lo_zamoyski 6mo ago
      Popularize the notion of chrematistics.
    • Lammy 6mo ago
      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.
      • vakili 6mo ago
        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".
• Erem 6mo ago
  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.
• Havoc 6mo ago
  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.
• _DeadFred_ 6mo ago
  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.
• sssilver 6mo ago
  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.
• khriss 6mo ago
  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.
• slibhb 6mo ago
  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.
  • hunterpayne 6mo ago
    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.
• mirrorlogic 6mo ago
  Worship of the 1% and social disorder.
• jimbo808 6mo ago
  [dead]
• bryanlarsen 6mo ago
  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.
• lo_zamoyski 6mo ago
  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.)
• HEmanZ 6mo ago
  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.
• zaptheimpaler 6mo ago
  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.
  • maerF0x0 6mo ago
    would you please recap the 5-6 reasons?
    • zaptheimpaler 6mo ago
      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.
• BobbyJo 6mo ago
  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.
• Garlef 6mo ago
  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.
• maerF0x0 6mo ago
  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 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.
• pnw 6mo ago
  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.
• Glyptodon 6mo ago
  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.
• christkv 6mo ago
  My theory is that everyone is overstimulated by constant information, dooming and context switches.
• Beijinger 6mo ago
  "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."
• abhijitr 6mo ago
  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.
  • danesparza 6mo ago
    And now is getting eaten by AI
• cutler 6mo ago
  It must be hard to remain sane, let alone happy, after 2 terms of Donald Trump.
  • qgin 6mo ago
    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.
    • hunterpayne 6mo ago
      It takes 2 to tango and everyone that takes a "its only the other side doing it", is the problem.
• thewillowcat 6mo ago
  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.
• shell0x 6mo ago
  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.
• Henchman21 6mo ago
  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.
• ForgotMyUUID 6mo ago
  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.
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• rstuart4133 6mo ago
  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.
  • alex43578 6mo ago
    I really don’t think Americans broadly are concerned with the Ukraine war on a day to day basis.
• ahaferburg 6mo ago
  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.
• GS523523 6mo ago
  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.
• molsongolden 6mo ago
  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.
• pico303 6mo ago
  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.
• digitaltrees 6mo ago
  Concentration
• bonyt 6mo ago
  “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
• odyssey7 6mo ago
  All work and no play... gives you a birth rate crisis, apparently.
  • hunterpayne 6mo ago
    Its urbanization that causes that. COVID had nothing do with it.
    • lotsofpulp 6mo ago
      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.
      • hunterpayne 6mo ago
        That correlation doesn't hold. There are plenty of places with few women's rights and big cities that have a low birth rates.
        • lotsofpulp 6mo ago
          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/10.1080/17441730.2024.2430035#d1e1203 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17441730.2024.2...
• assimpleaspossi 6mo ago
  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.
• stefantalpalaru 6mo ago
  [dead]
• Kuyawa 6mo ago
  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.
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• shadowtree 6mo ago
  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-emerge-rideshare-rapist-san-francisco-uber-lyft/ 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.
• davesque 6mo ago
  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.
  • hunterpayne 6mo ago
    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.
    • defrost 6mo ago
      > 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.
• senectus1 6mo ago
  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.
• keeda 6mo ago
  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.
• diogenescynic 6mo ago
  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.
  • hunterpayne 6mo ago
    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.
• _carbyau_ 6mo ago
  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.
• latentframe 6mo ago
  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
• leonidasrup 6mo ago
  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-inequality-when-a-fair-shake-isnt/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-...
• theturtlemoves 6mo ago
  "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?
• Suzuran 6mo ago
  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.
  • cindyllm 6mo ago
    [dead]
• trepaura 6mo ago
  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.
• naishoya 6mo ago
  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 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.
• abustamam 6mo ago
  > 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.
• insane_dreamer 6mo ago
  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).
• skrlet13 6mo ago
  America isn't rich, just a few people there are.
• plumbees 6mo ago
  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.
• lucy_hnatchuk 6mo ago
  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.