251–260 of 1001 posts
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.
> 90% of Americans are not rich.
Compared to 250 years ago, about 99% of Americans are rich.
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Religion has nice side effects (community), but vast downsides (non-scientific worldview, brainwashing). I think you can get the community feeling also by simply meeting with people you know, in hackerspaces for instance.
"non-scientific worldview" I find this an oft repeated meme. The men to whom we own our scientific understanding were all deeply religious (not just lived in a time when everyone went to church) For example - Darwin had trained to be an Anglican vikar prior to his journey on the Beagle and wrote to his future wife letters full of discussion of divinity. Newton was obviously deeply religious and wrote more about relig…
> that I don't think are matched by atheism at its best
There are plenty of scientists including Feynman and Hawkings. These are unrelated things.
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- 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.
> 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 aft…
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.
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Modern christianity in America is a primary contributor to my sadness.
Can you explain that?
https://kepetersen.substack.com/p/the-gospel-of-hypocrisy-ho...
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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 c…
What the hell is wrong about avocados really? They are a cheap staple food.
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That's just objectively untrue. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
- Around 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. - 71% of adults say that their monthly debt payments prevent them from saving. When we say America, we can't just mean the 20% who are ok. It has to mean the 70% who aren't. America is not rich. It used to be. It is not now.
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.
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I think that’s only one aspect, the other is the economics make it so you have to be extraordinary to live ordinary.
If that’s how you feel then you might have an unreasonable standard. People you might consider to be living in abject poverty might not be so downtrodden as you suspect. Even though there are extreme downsides and externalities to being relatively poor, being lonely is not one of them.
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
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Large sections of China, Japan, etc are atheists. Why do you think it hasn't worked?
Well for one obvious example is both of those societies are only recently atheist (<100 years) and that they both have an absolute dismal birth rate that makes it hard to imagine how they will look like a hundred years from now.
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Young people with good jobs who live in dense urban areas seem uniquely unhappy, though.
So then the obvious follow up question is whether it's the young, the job or the urban area (or all three) that's making them unhappy?
Just going off of my personal experience, the same highrise I used to rent is roughly 50% more. 2k to 3k. Two of the entire nightlife districts that were very close are completely gone, torn down and converted to high rise buildings with very boring very expensive ground level retail. The few places that remain are expensive, $12 for a drink is normal, maybe a draft beer is $8. In contrast, I could go out any night and find $2-3 drinks. $5 pitcher of beer, and get a solid meal for under $10. Almost all of the sports leagues at the park next to the highrise are gone. The only festivals that can afford to operate depend on high ticket sales and drawing people from out of town which makes huge annoying crowds.
And I'm not even going back 10 years, this was like 7-8 years ago. If you go back to like 2010 things were even cheaper and more fun.