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

Can we stop pretending that it was Covid, and not the felon pedophile and his cronies in charge of the country? You can see on the plot that the shit started in 2016.

Just speculation:

The houses got expensive because homeowners wanted housing to be an investment, so they voted for laws that make it harder to build or densify housing.

Cars are expensive because the government puts tariffs on perfectly good imports to protect the American car companies. The American car companies produce garbage, and even the electric car companies like Tesla and Rivian are producing super-high-tech luxury land yachts. The government incentives are also captured to produce huge trucks, and many states don't have regular inspections, so lifted trucks are common. The companies don't want to build and sell small cars because the perception is that a small car is going to get pancaked in a crash with a bigger, heavier car. Gas prices don't matter because the government artificially suppresses them, sometimes with war.

Corn and dairy are cheap because the government subsidizes them at the behest of the corn and dairy lobbies, which use small good ol' boy farmers who don't even exist as their marketing. A lot of the corn goes to ethanol for fuel, even though it's a crappy fuel and an acre of solar panels results in many more miles of EV driving than the same acre of corn ethanol. So you can also get a cheap soda and a cheap cheese pizza, but a lot of the food pipeline is captured by seed monopolies and middle-men. Somehow milk became a bit of a right-wing meme, and it's basically a naturally-occurring dessert, so people love milk even though it's not good for you and not a good way to get nutrients.

> Even food where normally you could walk in a shop

You aren't supposed to walk in America. You're supposed to drive. Don't get me started lol

We do see it in other countries. But even if we didn’t see it, it could still be that the situation in the states was at such a precarious position that COVID tipped it there (more) than in other places, making it more visible. Also other places such as Europe in general have bigger safety nets so the fallout of the damage is less.

See my other reply

> I'd like to see a spending breakdown.

Because I live in a low cost-of-living city, locally I'm well within the top 1% of income earners here and within the top 5% nationally. My day-to-day life is not significantly different from my next door neighbors who earn 1/4 or less than what I do. Where the difference in spending happens is primarily in three ways:

1. Quality of goods and services

This is expressed in many ways, but maybe the most obvious is basic daily necessities. Health is wealth, and we invest in our health by being much more conscientious about what food we eat, where it comes from, and how its prepared. We cook at home, as do our neighbors. But our neighbors do it to save money vs eating out, we do it to emphasize our health vs eating out. It would probably be cheaper for us to eat out every meal vs cooking at home, but by eating at home we only consume high quality groceries packaged in a way to minimize our exposure to microplastics and other environmental contaminants (although it literally rains microplastics now, so it's basically impossible to eliminate). We have tens of thousands of dollars in equipment installed in our home to filter the water we get from the city so that we are drinking, cooking, and showering with effectively "perfect" water, where our neighbors just use what the city provides that is technically "safe" but contains PFAS, microplastics, and pesticide contamination.

This also comes about in other aspects, for instance I recently replaced the tires on my car. I replaced them on time, within the appropriate wear levels for replacement. I bought the highest quality tires that were available, without consideration of cost. Most of my neighbors drive on tires until they start to wear through to the steel belts, well past being bald, and buy the cheapest tires available. It was $1250 for new tires on my car, mount and balanced and installed. It would have been $380 for the cheapest tires with the same service, so I spent almost 4x as much but have significantly better tires (and I understand the importance of this).

2. Non-essential services that improve our quality of life

We have a company that manages our mowing and landscaping so I don't have to do it myself during hot Texas summers. I am a competent DIYer but hired people to fix my roof, retile my shower, and do various other home repairs I could have done myself but could afford to hire out. We have bi-weekly house cleaning, because while we keep a fairly clean house ourselves, it's nice to have someone come in and clean every single surface on a regular basis which goes far beyond what we do day-to-day, we even pay extra for a housekeeping service that uses ecofriendly products with minimal direct environmental impact (e.g. are not bad for you to be around, like just using plain vinegar in many cases) and trains their staff specifically on using these types of products which require specific workflows to work effectively as the trade-off to being much safer. I have a mobile detailer come by once in awhile to clean and detail my car and my wife's car inside and out, both of our vehicles are ceramic coated and tinted, we got our home windows tinted as well. It's nice being able to get into a clean car that isn't an oven without having to invest a lot of effort yourself. When I was younger I'd go to a self-spray car wash and feed in $8 in quarters and spend 2 hours going at it myself, but now I don't have to deal with it. My neighbor DIYes all their fixes and spends a Saturday doing a 3-bucket wash on their truck when they get time, they clean their own house and do annual spring cleaning around the time the city does bulk pickup.

3. Additional expenses related to health and hobbies

My neighbor has weights in his garage and a treadmill and works out every day. I have a gym membership, my wife does pilates and yoga classes. My neighbors have several hobbies, but they're hobbies that mostly involve minimal equipment and can be done in public places like parks. I have several hobbies, and while some are pretty cheap, several are fairly expensive and require private memberships or land lease/ownership to participate in. I don't know how often my neighbor goes to the doctor, we don't really discuss that, but my family has a Direct Primary Care membership, goes to the doctor when we need to without any concern, and in a few instances we'd use in-home/concierge health services like nurses on-call that can come give you an IV at home w/ fluids + Zofran when you've got a stomach illness. I would guess my neighbors avoid going to the doctor unless strictly necessary and when they do, they go down the street to urgent care and wait in line.

From the outside, or even inside our home, we don't live a significantly different life than our neighbors. We don't life an particularly affluent gated community, we just live in a normal neighborhood in the city in a normal house with mostly blue collar workers as neighbors. But because we can afford it we spend on our health and on ensuring if we're going to buy something its of the highest quality we can acquire. We don't have a lot of "stuff", we don't need a lot of "stuff", but if we get something it's the best of that thing available.

> I wonder just how much of that 50% of spending is stuff that the bottom 90% would actually be competing for

My observation anecdotally is that everyone wishes they had better stuff and could afford to spend on their health, and they may do so sporadically. You don't need to be rich to get a gym membership or to do yoga, you don't need to be rich to shop at a farmer's market or high-end grocery store for /some/ things. But you pretty much do need to be rich in order to prioritize these things over cost and budgeting. Normal groceries are already expensive for most people, so spending even more to get healthier quality groceries is out of the price range to do for every meal, but it's something people do when they feel they can. Does that qualify as "competing for"? I don't know. But I think the economic gap, partly driven by out-sized inflation, is real, and it is absolutely damaging to most people.

EDIT: Just to add on, I've moved around a bit, but lived in this same city nearly 15 years ago and live here again now. The differences in what the average person can afford are astounding. I think most people had access to higher quality food, for one thing, 15 years ago. Groceries are so absurdly expensive now that the average person is struggling to afford anything, much less high quality things. That's just unacceptable as a country, and if you can't get your basis necessities met in a way which enhances your health it is completely understandable to feel bad about the world. I feel bad about the world and I'm far wealthier than most people around me. Our system in the US is broken, and I feel powerless to fix it, even as I am personally advantaged by it.