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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?

#671

Post by anon291 »

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…

Partially this is because of the strength of the dollar. I lived briefly in England in 2013ish and everything was expensive. I went back last year and it seemed cheaper, but only because the dollar has increased in value. Thus, if you've been visiting from England, you're probably seeing a huge increase in price due to the pound weakening.

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

#672

Post by anon291 »

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…

I mean this is just silly. If anything, America was more communal than most countries during covid, as churches, clubs, gyms, continued to meet, even if in secret. Except for the extremists, no one really cared to be honest.

If anything, it made me realize how uninterested in being governed Americans are, and how pervasive this attitude is. Lest you think it's all 'MAGA' types, consider my brother who lives on the Central Coast of California in a heavily hispanic enclave. We visited a few times.

Despite California being one of the strictest states, I don't think there was a single sign or signal that anything was going on. My sister-in-law's large hispanic family continued to hold every family event indoors or at parks, without masking, or anything. We had a great time with the cousins.

Our church continued to meet in secret, flaunting the spirit of the law, if not the letter, and people were fine. COVID ran through once at the beginning, and then we were just there laughing at the government. Great bonding time honestly.

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

#673

Post by hunterpayne »

pepperoni_pizza wrote: post #412
kenjackson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the article is smarter than the title makes it seem. And honestly, much better than comments on HN. The articles keeps diving deeper and asking questions. The comments here take hold of a single theory, without even thinking about the counters that article mentions. This is probably the best example of read the article, and not the comments.

The HN comments are sadly mostly just people pushing their favorite thing, whether COVID denialism, "everything is going bad because people are atheists" or whatever, without engaging with the article at all.

[flagged]

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

#674

Post by traderj0e »

krapp wrote: post #312
czscout wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just don't partake in the omniscient, pervasive, manufactured negativity in the news cycle and online, America is objectively fucking awesome. I love living here.

"If you ignore reality, reality is awesome!"

The internet isn't reality

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

#675

Post by bsder »

jcranmer wrote: post #478
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…

> Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Yes, real wages have been on the rise for the past few years. With the exception of the somewhat artificial COVID peak, median real wages are the highest on record: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

The "inflation basket" keeps getting rejiggled to hide things.

Rent as percentage of income is up. Groceries as percentage of income is up. Medical insurance as percentage of income is up. etc.

People aren't stupid. They can see and feel this.

Yes, it's nice that computers and phones are super cheap and powerful. That doesn't help people eat.

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

#676

Post by sokoloff »

mcphage wrote: post #516
nslsm wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> No, it was government mandates that played hell with peoples' social lives. What did the government mandate about your social life?

Closing restaurants, bars, and movie theaters had a negative effect on social lives as a direct result of government mandates.

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

#677

Post by tempaccount5050 »

freetime2 wrote: post #663
tempaccount5050 wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, yes. My 24 year old coworker makes $65k/year and has a $2200/mo mortgage. It's an old starter home in the Midwest, nothing fancy. It stresses him out to the point of not going to a happy hour once in a while unless there's a buy one get one deal or something or I offer to buy (which I do happily). No vacations, no eating out, no fun. It's super sad to see. He talks about being in his prime but…

For what it's worth, when I was 24 I was only really focused on my career and didn't really have much of a social life. It wasn't until my late 20s and 30s that I started being able to comfortably afford drinks with coworkers after work, travel, etc. A $2200/mo mortgage on a $65k salary does indeed sound like a stretch. But even having a mortgage at all at 24 is pretty impressive, and he's probably still a ways off f…

Yeah, I agree, but it makes me think of my 20s when I was paying $275 for rent with one roommate, working part time and easily making it work. I worked nights chucking boxes in a warehouse and was able to take a vacation to Jamaica. This guy is a sysadmin, helping to keep a billion dollar company online and can't afford to go to Florida for a few days. It's a raw deal and I hate it for this generation.

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

#678

Post by selimthegrim »

roncesvalles wrote: post #643
sidewndr46 wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got the cause and effect backwards here. The average purchase price of a car in constant dollars is about double now because those are the only cars to purchase and the only group that can afford those cars are those who are affluent. In general the people who purchase new vehicles ironically are not the ones who own them. They consistently purchase new vehicles at a regular cadence. The existence of some base…

>because those are the only cars to purchase and the only group that can afford those cars are those who are affluent What is the basis for you to assume this and not, for example, the fact that people simply spend a bigger percentage of their earnings on cars now? You can definitely buy the base model Civic that you see online. It was only during COVID that you couldn't due to inventory shortages.

You're going to be waiting for a while as the dealership finance people make you run the gantlet.

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

#679

Post by Lammy »

maxerickson wrote: post #650
Lammy wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/d…

This is a silly inversion of causality. The thing that causes increased economic activity is people working for it. Not just the wealthy with their vast resources, the many people that work alongside them because they think it will be beneficial.

> Not just the wealthy

I think you misread. I literally used myself as an example and am definitely not that wealthy :p

> because they think it will be beneficial

The Capital-class have, on the other hand, definitely constructed a world where this is true for us as individual. However I am talking about the effect on Us the collective-singular.

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

#680

Post by anon291 »

gjm11 wrote: post #652
ActorNightly wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What plot? All the plots in the article either (1) show the change for the worse happening in 2020 or later or (2) are explicitly comparing "before 2020" with "after 2020". (I do agree that Mr Trump is a shockingly bad president in oh so many ways. But the malaise being described here doesn't seem to have started in 2016. Not every bad thing is his fault.)

Trump is a terrible president and person. Unfortunately, Trump derangement syndrome is also a real thing. We are a country full of fools of one persuasion or another.
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