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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?

#371

Post by 9rx »

xyzelement wrote: post #75

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.…

> America has undergone a VERY rapid secularization.

I'm not so sure of that. America has rapidly moved away from believing in some kind of magical spirit in the sky, but they most certainly haven't given up on religion in general. They have latched on to other blind faiths and rituals.

What hasn't typically come with those new religions, like you allude to, is a church; a place where fellowship occurs. That is a reasonable possibility for the decline in happiness. Research regularly suggests that most people find happiness in relationships with other people.

Nothing is ever single-faceted, though.

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

#372

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mothballed wrote: post #365
pelasaco wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can still get time alone to recharge - maybe not as much as you like, but at least some. The price is, you also have to take the kid solo sometimes, to give your spouse a chance to get alone and recharge. They need it too, even if they aren't as much of an introvert as you are. They may not needs as much, but they probably need some.

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

#373

Post by tempaccountabcd »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #311
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll go further. Oppenheimer and Whitehead (neither Christian) have stated, in their respective histories of science, that the Judeo-Christian world view was absolutely necessary for the start of real science, that it could not have originated in a society with a different worldview. Why? Because the Christian view was that God was a reasonable God, and He made the universe. And because He also gave us reason when He…

A huge surprise to the ancient Greeks, who outlined the concept of reason centuries before Christianity appeared, and invented a fair amount of math and the foundations of empiricism while they were at it. In fact Christianity halted scientific progress in the West for around a millennium. Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and vio…

Reddit would be that way. > In fact Christianity halted scientific progress in the West for around a millennium. Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence. I'm surprised anyone is still repeating such a laughable myth. Almost everything from classical antiquity would've been lost if not for Christians copying texts. > Before the Renaissance rediscovered Greek philosophy, the Christian world operated on hierarchy, rhetoric, scholasticism, and violence. Do you know what scholasticism means?

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

#374

Post by joe_mamba »

nephihaha wrote: post #327
deeg wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was COVID, though, wouldn't we expect to see the same thing in other countries?

You do. I don't live in the USA and things are worse since lockdown. Don't believe the propaganda that Nordic people are happiest. I reckon it's probably one of the Pacific islands.

>You do. I don't live in the USA and things are worse since lockdown.

Yep, this. It's been worse everywhere since then. I didn't know how much I'd be missing the days of 2014-2018 right about now. If only I knew how good we had it.

>Don't believe the propaganda that Nordic people are happiest.

When you have the highest rates of suicides, coffee, alcohol and antidepressant usage, you're only left with the happy people ;)

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

#375

Post by jmyeet »

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…

Covid wasn't some magical line in the sand when things got bad. It's really the tipping point for a trend that began in the 1970s of increasing inequality. Two big things happened in the pandemic that have nothing to do with other issues of social isolation:

1. The fear companies had of raising prices went away thanks to inflation. It's when dynamic pricing in various forms (eg RealPage for rents) really took off. Supermarkets started engaging in essentially unspoken collusion. This tends to get labelled as "price leadership" rather than "price fixing" where the only difference is the first is legal and the second isn't but they're otherwise identical; and

2. Governments around the world engaged in massive wealth transfer to the wealthy, which creates asset price inflation, particularly with housing. Some countries tried to claw some of this back with so-called windfall profits tax. Personally, I think there should've been a corporate tax of 80%+ for 2020-2023 (at least).

The usual tool that governments use to tackle inflation is monetary policy. The theory goes that you raise interest rates, it makes borrowing more expensive and it dampens the heat in the economy. That's true but it's also a very blunt instrument. It hurts everyone from the biggest borrowers to people buying homes.

What never gets serious discussion let alone policy discussion (at least in the US) is fiscal policy, secpfically taxation. Temporarily high corporate taxes would've had a similar effect on tempering M&A, share buybacks, etc but it would've only targeted companies who were profiting from, say, a huge spike in oil prices.

But there are other factors too that existed before Covid such as private equity, which is simply buying up all the competition, making everything more expensive, paying back an LBO and then loading up a company with exploding debt so some sucker down the line can buy it before it blows up.

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

#376

Post by pelasaco »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #352
pelasaco wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, it was, but now we have AI and there is no future for our kids, so it's even worse.

> Yeah, it was, but now we have AI and there is no future for our kids, so it's even worse.

what? We went through so many bad periods in our history..is it sarcasm?

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

#377

Post by crooked-v »

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…

A big part of it is that literally almost every major US city has a self-inflicted housing shortage (https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives...), which then has cascading effects on every other part of cost of living.

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

#378

Post by picsao »

mvdtnz wrote: post #317
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…

I wonder if COVID revealed to Americans how toxic their individualistic culture is. For a long time it kind of seemed like individualism was working well for you but COVID was the first crisis since WW2 where the country was asked to pull in the same direction together and it really just fell apart. I'd be miderable too if I learned my entire worldview, and that of my countrymen, was dangerously wrong and there's no…

[dead]

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

#379

Post by pelasaco »

mothballed wrote: post #365
pelasaco wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though.

Well then you get your 60s and your focus changes. Kids become adults. Family is the true legacy. We didnt come so far as society searching for netflix and chill.

> I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge.

You cannot just relax, because guess what, some human beings depends on you. But yeah, some phases are harder than others.. but thats life.

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

#380

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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