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

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

#361

Post by rconti »

burningChrome wrote: post #172
eBombzor wrote: post #72

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…

I sense your lack of hope and see it in a lot of younger people these days. I grew up in the 80's. College in the late 90's. Start of career in the mid aughts. Went through two dot com busts, and have seen a lot of shit. The one thing that my generation (Gen X) seemed to have was always some optimism for the future. Some hope that as bad as it is now? It will eventually get better. The economy will recover, tech jobs…

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

However, my perspective has gotten a lot worse the last couple of years. Enshittification, corporate consolidation, tech market, AI, etc. I didn't once worry during the dot com bust, or the financial crisis, or the outsourcing boom.

It feels VERY different this time.

Basically it feels like tech was the last place where you could do well and outrun the long term real wage stagnation the country's faced since the 70s. And it's not anymore.

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

#362

Post by JALTU »

yalogin wrote: post #122

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 d…

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/

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

#363

Post by nozzlegear »

jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #308
pb7 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peopl…

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

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

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

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

#364

Post by GetTheFacts »

pstuart wrote: post #185
725686 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has atheism anything to do with this?

I think the value add of religion per the top comment is that it typically has a built in community and sense of connection. Churches bring people together in multiple ways. I write that as an atheist who is more isolated than I'd like. I'm working on community and connection but it's challenging when one works remotely and relocates to a new town. While I recognize the community value of religion and the comfort it…

>While I recognize the community value of religion and the comfort it brings people, it comes at a huge cost that far outweighs the benefits. IMHO, organized religion is a cancer on modern society. I think there's other ways to get the good parts from it but that's a team effort.

   Those who abandon the Path are evil.

   Those who reject the path to enlightenment must be destroyed!
Hallowed are the Ori!

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

#365

Post by mothballed »

pelasaco wrote: post #316
eBombzor wrote: post #72

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…

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

If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though. I was extremely, extremely satisfied with my life before children. My kid is wonderful and healthy but as an introvert I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge.

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

#366

Post by keiferski »

xyzelement wrote: post #237
lpcvoid wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Which is why if anyone starts claiming that “religion is good/bad” in simplistic terms, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. It is far too broad a label to make such declarations.

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

#367

Post by amanaplanacanal »

nslsm wrote: post #283
Taikonerd wrote: post #107

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…

>Just to state the obvious: 2020 was the year of COVID, which played hell with peoples' social lives. No, it was government mandates that played hell with peoples' social lives.

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

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

#368

Post by crooked-v »

thomukas wrote: post #356

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 di…

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".

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

#369

Post by oooyay »

cvoss wrote: post #345
tim333 wrote: post #305

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…

The US has an enormous land area and the cost of living varies dramatically across it. Intense pockets develop where the high paying jobs are, and everyone wants to cram in there to compete for those jobs, and then they're competing for the housing there, so the prices skyrocket, so the jobs have to pay higher still. Wealthy as the average person may be, the poverty slope is very steep in such places. The SF / Bay Ar…

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

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

#370

Post by picsao »

cvoss wrote: post #345
tim333 wrote: post #305

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…

The US has an enormous land area and the cost of living varies dramatically across it. Intense pockets develop where the high paying jobs are, and everyone wants to cram in there to compete for those jobs, and then they're competing for the housing there, so the prices skyrocket, so the jobs have to pay higher still. Wealthy as the average person may be, the poverty slope is very steep in such places. The SF / Bay Ar…

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