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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?

#521

Post by Lammy »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #459
bontaq wrote: post #409

My mom said, "whatever we built isn't working anymore," and I think that captures most of the sentiment. It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home? Work has if anything gotten worse in general. Remote's gone. Pay's less. ADHD maximum AI use required. Nobody can take a break. Pressure's on. 1.5 trillion more to the mi…

Money should only have the purpose of realizing ones goals, it has no purpose in itself. The whole society has lost its goal when the only target is to maximize money.

It was inevitable as soon as enough people believed that spending money is necessary to live. Money is the next stage of life. As individuals, people's only truly limited resource is their attention, their time, and so the same is true of Humanity as a singular whole. Money is a way to coerce another person's attention toward an endeavor that benefits the spender, like paying the chain of farmers/pickers/processors/distributors to grow and ship my food to me instead of having to do it all myself. And so people say Time = Money.

As a commutative operation, then, also Money = Time. Humanity and Money are both driven to create more of themselves, but as long as the growth of money is allowed to outpace the growth of Humanity, money will become the dominant life-form once there is more of it than there are humans to be the Time-unit. The only thing keeping it from happening before now was the lack of an instantaneous global means to transact.

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

#522

Post by triceratops »

cpursley wrote: post #451
snikeris wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

US interest rates have been historically some of the lowest anywhere. And there's nations with very high interest rates that don't have the same housing cost problems...

You're both saying the same thing...

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

#523

Post by notlenin »

mothballed wrote: post #386
pelasaco wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 yea…

I think it's a bit presumptuous to think I was just relaxing. I was doing stuff like fighting in a foreign civil war and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea. I wasn't really 'relaxing' so much as doing things that are impossible to do without being alone from family. I'm probably an odd ball but those are the sorts of things that 'recharge' me.

1) okay, I'm fascinated by the 'fighting in a foreign civil war' thing, can you expound on that?

2) this may sound weird, but I do think that if you want to be a good parent (and please note, I don't actually have kids yet, so ignore this advice if it doesn't ring true) is finding ways to get your 'alone' time despite family responsibilities. I'm also an introvert, but my 'recharge' time is stuff like meditation and solo-programming and math time, so that's pretty easy to do, just set aside a few hours a day to recharge my batteries so I can be fully present for my family the rest of the time, I can see that fighting in a foreign civil war isn't exactly the type of thing you can fit into an hour in the morning before the kids wake up, but if you have similar introverted activities that recharge you that can be more easily done alongside family life, I would argue that you'll be doing your family a disservice not to do them- they deserve you at your best, which means you should give yourself time do fully recharge yourself so you can be there for them the rest of the time.

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

#524

Post by ProllyInfamous »

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…

>On my trip to Austin a couple of years ago it'd got really expensive.

That's Austin & life in the 21st Century, friend.

I grew up ATX-style in the 90s, and cannot afford to live there anymore. But also chose not to years before then.

There're still a few regions where living hasn't gotten life-prohibitive, yet (my answer: anywhere there is a Cookout and/or Pal's fastfood restaurant).

But nothing is cheap, anymore.

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

#525

Post by abhijitr »

For me personally working in big tech, there was a sharp increase of work-related malaise in 2020 that never went down. IMO it was largely driven by 1) covid-era hiring blitz followed by layoffs, 2) so-called zoom fatigue. Teams became more geographically distributed, lots of newbies showed up, coordination overhead went up, competitiveness and backstabbing increased, work seemed to progress much slower.

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

#526

Post by mcphage »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #128
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" And yet we elected Jesus.

> And yet we elected Jesus.

You mean that doctor?

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

#527

Post by bigfatkitten »

cjs_ac wrote: post #255
anovikov wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell is wrong about avocados really? They are a cheap staple food.

The avocado meme started in Australia, where avocados are expensive due to their water requirements, and where there’s been a housing crisis for at least twenty years.

It wasn’t the cost of avocados as a raw ingredient.

An opinion columnist for one of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘newspapers’ blamed the decline in home ownership amongst millennials on excessive spending on discretionary food, specifically avocado on toast in cafes.

He suggested that if they cut back on such minor luxuries, they could afford to buy houses.

https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/bernard-salt-says-his-smashed...

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

#528

Post by danesparza »

abhijitr wrote: post #525

For me personally working in big tech, there was a sharp increase of work-related malaise in 2020 that never went down. IMO it was largely driven by 1) covid-era hiring blitz followed by layoffs, 2) so-called zoom fatigue. Teams became more geographically distributed, lots of newbies showed up, coordination overhead went up, competitiveness and backstabbing increased, work seemed to progress much slower.

And now is getting eaten by AI

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

#530

Post by thewillowcat »

bontaq wrote: post #409

My mom said, "whatever we built isn't working anymore," and I think that captures most of the sentiment. It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home? Work has if anything gotten worse in general. Remote's gone. Pay's less. ADHD maximum AI use required. Nobody can take a break. Pressure's on. 1.5 trillion more to the mi…

This is mostly true, but things were almost universally worse in the mid-to-late 1970s. There was a similar feeling of anomie, stagflation, and a sense that the country was on the wrong track. But people still reported themselves as happier than now.
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