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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?

#501

Post by jimbokun »

card_zero wrote: post #486
asdfman123 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people I'm very much an atheist and a positivist too. I rejected religion growing up. But we don't have to cede the concept of spirituality to organized religion. Spirituality is so much more than that. It's about purpose, connection, and what it means to be a human. You can practice spirituality by meditating at home, just sitting with your thou…

Using a long phrase like "Purpose, connection, and what it means to be a human" seems preferable to enabling supernatural belief to slink in through the gap in the now-ambiguous word "spirituality". I say leave it to Madame Blavatsky. Oh wait that's spiritualism . Same difference. Ooh, how about zeitgeist? I like that word. Then you'd still have spirits, but rational German ones.

What’s your proposed alternative for flourishing, content, joyful human lives?

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

#502

Post by [deleted] »

lambdaone wrote: post #73

I once aspired to American citizenship, and was dazzled by its wealth, opportunity, can-do attitude and freedom. Now I can't imagine wanting to go there - everything I see or hear, from both American and other sources, right or left, suggests a deeply unhappy country at war with itself.

[deleted]

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

#503

Post by BrenBarn »

everdrive wrote: post #134
anonu wrote: post #58

The earlier NYT article on the topic was interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/economy-attitudes... It was succinctly put: the top 10% of earners - those making 250k or more - do 50% of the spending. If you're a company with a product or service, are you going to cater to the 90% or the affluent 10%? Clearly the latter - so as a result the bottom 90% of the country just feels like they're "keeping u…

I'd like to see a spending breakdown. I wonder just how much of that 50% of spending is stuff that the bottom 90% would actually be competing for -- eg: an expensive bathroom remodel, a luxury car, etc, vs something basic such as tennis shoes or groceries from the local market.

But if that stuff is stuff the bottom 90% wouldn't be competing for, it's even worse in a way, because it means that portion of the market is entirely focused on stuff that's entirely out of reach for that 90%. If there are people out there who could be making tennis shoes but are instead making luxury cars, that's a problem.

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

#504

Post by Garlef »

Going to the US always feels weird:

It's very nice on the surface but it underneath it all, there's always someone trying to extract value from you. At almost every little step.

Simply enjoying life is guarded beyond a glass wall and you need to pay an entrance fee.

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

#505

Post by jimbokun »

nathan_compton wrote: post #313
asdfman123 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I agree. I think we're deep into a spiritual crisis, a crisis of meaning . A lot of people are blind to the trend because those aren't easy things to measure. But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning. The spi…

I don't know, I'm a die hard nihilist and atheist and I'm married, have kids, friends, and think life is beautiful and generally ok. I don't see why people need to believe in imaginary stuff and I don't really see how it makes people happy.

It’s just an empirically observable reality.

Religious people tend to be less lonely , more likely to be married and have children, and more happy and less likely to experience mental illness, on average.

It’s certainly not true for every religious person nor the opposite for every atheist, but the effect can be seen across populations.

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

#506

Post by maerF0x0 »

I mean, it seems pretty obvious, no?

Wealth is concentrated and can skew the averages, but happiness, even if rated on a scale, is not particularly able to skew the number up... so as wealthy americans got spectacularly rich, pulling up the "rich" side, maybe making them equisitely happy... a more widespread shift in sentiments are pulling down the average.

And a lot of this makes sense... Wealth doesn't add much happiness over a certain threshold. A naive happiness maximizing algo would probably do something like cap someone around that number and redistribute the wealth to those below it.

Plus there's the monkey grape/cucumber experiment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo ... Humans are social status sensitive, meaning we're likely to have bad feelings (and make irrational choices) when we feel our place in the herd is falling or below someone else's. Eg: People living near lottery winners are more likely to go bankrupt than similar people who don’t have a winning neighbor, presumed to be a "keeping up with the joneses" kind of issue.

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

#507

Post by shimman »

gypsy_boots wrote: post #137
CPLX wrote: post #83

Important thing to know about Derek Thompson is that he has a very specific job in the culture. His job is to present compelling, interesting narratives about why the world is the way it is and what we should do about it that have one specific attribute. The attribute is that we must never actually do anything to address the real problem, which is that the lion's share of the wealth and resources are being claimed by…

> The attribute is that we must never actually do anything to address the real problem, which is that the lion's share of the wealth and resources are being claimed by a tiny group of people who use monopolies, coercive tactics, buying up politics and technology to hoard and protect their wealth and power. Yes, thank you for saying this. Truly the "Steven Pinker" of these times. "There is actually something wrong wit…

Someone once described Derek Thomas as a dumber Malcom Gladwell and it felt so perfect.

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

#508

Post by kakacik »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #436
pelasaco wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No sarcasm, your reply is insulting. But stupidity, blindness and greed-driven techno-optimism displayed on this site got to a vomit-inducing level recently.

Don't swing to the extremes, world is a bit bigger than news portals and US ones are beyond toxic regardless of the party favored. Nature is still beautiful, traveling is as enlightening as ever, meeting new cultures, foods, learning real history of the world as you visit places is priceless. Raising kids is hard but extremely rewarding. And so on.

Times are not easy, but they are not doomish. Or, every decade there were doomish periods where you could have the same view. every. single. one. How would you feel in late 30s when big part of the world was visibly inching to global war? This is nothing and nobody knows where this current moment will lead us to.

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

#509

Post by pnw »

IMHO the top ten countries on World Happiness Report are primarily those that are good at expectation management. The Nordic countries always rank well because culturally they manage their citizens expectations in life so as not to expect too much (cf The Jante Law). Australia and New Zealand have similar cultural drives where being too successful is seen as a negative. The US does not - if anything, US culture is the polar opposite of expectation management.

When walking through the CPH airport with one of my Danish colleagues, they would always roll their eyes at the "Welcome to the happiest country on Earth signs" and point out that Denmark was ranked #1 in SSRI use in Europe.

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

#510

Post by Glyptodon »

I do not buy that income / housing / cost of living related issues are not part of the story so much as I buy that they're very intertwined with inflation and labor costs. The other thing that this waves over that I think is very real is how the nature of employment has changed. Most people who have a job, and especially after things like Doge and endless layoff cycles, where everything is about psycho dark patterns, surveillance, and penny pinching, do not feel like their job assures anything. And this is on top of people who have complicated situations to begin with and often work multiple part time jobs or gig work.

Literally most everyone working I know basically thinks everything is always getting more expensive, that most wage gains were/have been less than how much costs have gone up, that housing is so expensive it might be worth moving to West Virginia, and that all it would take to ruin 20 years of work is an unexpected layoff or major life event like a medical issue, lawsuit, car or home issue. And that's non tech people mostly. Who also have increasing resentment for how scumbags and flim flam dealers seem to always be the ones getting ahead.

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