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

derekthompson.org

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

#421

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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…

Austin prices absolutely exploded from about 2010 to 2022. A huge part of that was housing, and then just before the pandemic Austin became sort of a weird "meme stock" ("Elon Musk is moving there!", "Joe Rogan is moving there") where its popular vision far outstripped its actual reality. I remember travelling around 2018 or so and telling people I was from Austin, and nearly every time I got a "Oh cool, I've heard that's such an awesome city" in response, which was far different a response I'd get in like 2005 or so. I mean, I like Austin, but we also had 2 months straight of 105+ degree weather a few years ago...

Like the article states, when housing goes up everywhere, it means that even the lowest wage workers need to be paid a lot more to survive, so the reason basic sandwiches are so expensive there is that entry level pay is now about $25/hr.

The other issue you saw, homelessness, is especially concentrated in Austin. Austin is perhaps the most liberal city in deep red Texas, so homeless people flock to Austin because it has good services and a generally sympathetic populace, and some rural conservative locales have even been giving homeless people one way bus tickets to Austin.

I guess the good news is that Austin built a shit ton of housing since 2021-2022, so housing prices (including rentals) are falling faster in Austin than anywhere else in the US.

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

#422

Post by websap »

nephihaha wrote: post #324
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 UK's the same. The lockdown was a major driver of this.

The UK (at least London) is cheaper than Seattle, and far cheaper than NYC.

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

#423

Post by chasd00 »

nephihaha wrote: post #337
mvdtnz wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lockdown, not "Covid". And that Covid lockdown was a little taste of the extreme form of top down collectivism. (Covid was around both before and after the lockdowns.) The USA got off lockdown lightly in the main. Continental Europe, Canada and Australia all went nuts with it. Especially the Northern Territory and State of Victoria.

> top down collectivism

The Dallas County judge was driving my neighborhood berating people for walking their dogs and telling them to get inside. It was totally insane, i couldn't believe what I was seeing. I met him at a fundraiser once and asked him why he wasn't wearing a mask. My wife's friend (hosting the fundraiser) asked me to leave. His little hobby authoritarian regime during that time was the stupidest thing i'd ever seen but what made me the most angry/shocked is everyone just complied.

/I live in Dallas, TX. The judge is Clay Jenkons https://www.dallascounty.org/government/comcrt/jenkins/

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

#424

Post by snikeris »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #393
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…

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-tec…

Houses got expensive because of usury (loans made for unproductive purposes). It destroys civilizations over time. That is why it was encoded into ancient religious traditions.

Housing, education, and cars, all typically financed via loans, all exorbitantly expensive.

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

#425

Post by watwut »

nephihaha wrote: post #337
mvdtnz wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lockdown, not "Covid". And that Covid lockdown was a little taste of the extreme form of top down collectivism. (Covid was around both before and after the lockdowns.) The USA got off lockdown lightly in the main. Continental Europe, Canada and Australia all went nuts with it. Especially the Northern Territory and State of Victoria.

But Europeans and Canadians and Australians are not nearly as much "traumatized" by idea that OMG lockdown happened due to covid.

The complete societal inability to adapt seems to be bigger issue in USA.

Neither Europe nor Canada are as much affected despite having more lockdowns. It was not lockdown as such, but something else about Americans

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

#426

Post by tayo42 »

chasd00 wrote: post #413
mvdtnz wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> where the country was asked to pull in the same direction together There was no asking, if the country was asked then the term "lockdown" wouldn't have been used. On the other hand, there were no soldiers on the street forcing everyone inside. People chose to do it and maybe that's where the social strife really comes from, people realized they just do what they're told by authority and they're not the free-thinkin…

There were riots in the streets, it was just over another black guy being killed by a racist cop though.

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

#427

Post by lamasery »

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 can say that post-Covid inflation took us from feeling like we were on the edge of escaping the middle class, to feeling like we aren't even close and realistically won't ever be again. Even as our incomes went up quite a bit at the same time.

And we're a lot better off than median. I can't imagine how crushing it's been lower "down the ladder".

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

#428

Post by something765478 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #303
xyzelement wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Of course you can cherry pick famous scientists from the past to support your point, especially when it's an historical fact that theism was the default for centuries. But this is a straightforwardly transparent attempt at apologetics. It looks weak when it goes up against answersingenesis.org, and a rabidly (maybe not literally, yet, but give it time...) culture of opposition to basic science, such as vaccination, a…

> It looks weak when it goes up against answersingenesis.org, and a rabidly (maybe not literally, yet, but give it time...) culture of opposition to basic science, such as vaccination, among many evangelicals.

But that's a problem with American evangelicals, not religion as a whole. The earliest universities were sponsored by the church; and the works of ancient scholars were preserved by Catholics and Muslims.

> Ultimately the claims of religion are moral, and they're on very thin ice when religion has such an appalling history of support for slavery, torture, murder, exploitation, grift, war, paedophilia, and biblical literalism.

Sure, but religion also has a long history of fighting against those claims; a lot of slaves adopted Christianity, and used it as a tool to fight against oppression. It was also a large part of the civil rights movement; Martin Luther King Jr was a Baptist Minister, and Malcolm X was a Muslim.

> and an apparently endless series of scandals and court cases featuring youth pastors and grifting megachurch multimillionaires.

Plenty of grift among the sciences too. Look at the replication crisis, or companies like Theranos and FTX. In the United States, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death.

> Personally I'd rather not be in any community that trades comfort for complicity and/or denial, no matter how nice its social events feel.

You should probably stay off Hacker News then. For example, plenty of people here celebrate electrification, even though the raw materials needed for that are mined by children and slaves.

> But you're far more likely to see atheists trying to progress public ethics than religious believers, especially in the US.

I'm curious, do you have any examples?

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

#429

Post by watwut »

bjourne wrote: post #408
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…

100% right. What we (rather 80+ year old corrupt politicians) did to young people during covid was downright criminal. Almost two of their most important years destroyed.

Young people were more pro lockdowns then old people.

And also, America did nit had two years of lockdowns.

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

#430

Post by jmcgough »

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 almost certainly had something to do with it, but the US isn't the only country that faced lockdowns, nor is it the only country that experienced inflation. Why is it that most other countries' happiness scores have returned to near-baseline since then, while the US is still so much lower?
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