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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?

#791

Post by autoexec »

bombcar wrote: post #143
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 suspect that for many people, the pounding outside is what mainly affects their happiness - if everything reported in the news is sunshine and happiness, they tend happier. And if it's all doom and gloom and "go outside and you kill grandma" - are we surprised they get sad?

In my experience most people don't care about what the news tells them anywhere near as much as what's going on in their personal lives.

If they've got money and they aren't worried about paying their bills or the price of food or the price of gas and they can afford a nice place to live and can afford to send their kids to college and can take at least one big vacation a year and they're spending their time going out with their friends they aren't losing much sleep over news stories that mention war in Somalia, or some politician's latest scandal, or how deforestation is threatening the habitat of a bunch of animals. They might not like what they hear, but they'll feel pretty happy about their life.

When their standard of living declines and they have to cut back to make ends meet and they watch their children struggle in ways they didn't have to at their age and their grandma actually dies because she went outside people start to get upset and suddenly the constant news stories about the latest pointless trillion dollar war, and the politician stealing from taxpayers, and the huge decline in wildlife populations starts to hit differently.

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

#792

Post by epicureanideal »

james_marks wrote: post #694
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…

At almost 50, I feel like there has been a cultural shift since I was a kid. It isn’t enough to be middle class, to have the proverbial white picket fence. The reach now is for glamor and wealth, which is by definition out of reach for the majority. If that’s the ideal you compare your own life to, you will be unhappy. And the debt, etc you take on to mimic it will make you even more unhappy. The shift was already ha…

> If that’s the ideal you compare your own life to, you will be unhappy.

Most people in this conversation on HN seem to just be talking about a regular house and a lifestyle that would’ve been normal for a manual laborer 60-70 years ago.

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

#793

Post by pizzafeelsright »

eBombzor wrote: post #72

I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace. On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people. Despite all the hype of Altman and whonots, I feel like people just don…

Children would change that, instantly.

I wasn't a father until late in life and then all of a sudden, everything is easy.

The moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, every moment has meaning and purpose. Nothing, no meal, no evening, no dollar is wasted.

As my children grow - the only question is how long do I have until I have grandchildren. After that - how long until I no longer have skin in the game?

I do full time AI stuff and it is meaningless other than the provision it provides.

I would not recommend avoiding the biological imperative. Reproduce. Everything else after that moment is clarity.

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

#794

Post by hunterpayne »

some_random wrote: post #50
dv_dt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's a key indicator, even PPP adjusted income metrics are insufficient to compare happiness. e.g even if PPP may adjust for some aspects of outsized US health care costs, the risk and unreliability of access and affordability of US healthcare is not reflected in median income values.

Yeah I totally agree that income and happiness are not interchangeable, I'm just really tired of people lying about objective facts.

If we outlawed that, every single politician and journalist would be in prison for the rest of their natural lives along with most of the people who follow politics too much. Perhaps that's a good idea, perhaps not.

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

#795

Post by diogenescynic »

xethos wrote: post #759
Aurornis wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why did houses used to be affordable even in those dense regions with high paying jobs? Because those city centers have remained the same size while demand for living there continues to increase More demand for a fixed set of land drives prices up. Those city centers today are not equivalent to the same city centers 35 year ago.

> More demand for a fixed set of land drives prices up. This works because both you and GP specified "[free-standing] house". This is not true of homes , where multiple homes can occupy the same land - just 15 feet higher or lower Perhaps someday more American cities will discover the third dimension, allowing for cheaper housing

I think you're focusing on the wrong thing and missing the point. Housing supplies have not significantly increased with population growth (demand) in decades--thus the price equilibrium has moved up. I don't care if you build up or out and neither does the law of supply and demand. The left gets all hung up on 'the right kind of housing' and doesn't realize they're part of the problem--making it harder to build housing (of any kind) is pushing housing costs up.

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

#796

Post by [deleted] »

pizzafeelsright wrote: post #793
eBombzor wrote: post #72

I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace. On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people. Despite all the hype of Altman and whonots, I feel like people just don…

Children would change that, instantly. I wasn't a father until late in life and then all of a sudden, everything is easy. The moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, every moment has meaning and purpose. Nothing, no meal, no evening, no dollar is wasted. As my children grow - the only question is how long do I have until I have grandchildren. After that - how long until I no longer have skin in the game? I do f…

[deleted]

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

#797

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

epicureanideal wrote: post #792
james_marks wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At almost 50, I feel like there has been a cultural shift since I was a kid. It isn’t enough to be middle class, to have the proverbial white picket fence. The reach now is for glamor and wealth, which is by definition out of reach for the majority. If that’s the ideal you compare your own life to, you will be unhappy. And the debt, etc you take on to mimic it will make you even more unhappy. The shift was already ha…

> If that’s the ideal you compare your own life to, you will be unhappy. Most people in this conversation on HN seem to just be talking about a regular house and a lifestyle that would’ve been normal for a manual laborer 60-70 years ago.

60-70 years ago would have been the 1950s-1960s, the American post-WW2 economic boom. The rest of the world was rebuilding their cities and mourning their dead.

Sure, you can have another post-war economic boom if you're willing to go through another world war to get to it and a drone doesn't get you. You're in luck, seems like we'll be having one soon.

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

#798

Post by lovich »

greenavocado wrote: post #783
HDBaseT wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home "ownership" is misleading. You don't own a home until you've paid it off. Younger people are getting into more debt, for much longer in order to be able to survive. When we start comparing the numbers (i.e, house paid off, even reflected as a percentage paid off, relative to age) the numbers reveal the real crisis. Anecdotally, I know tons of 20-30 year olds getting into the property market (with insane levels o…

To be pedantic what most people consider ownership is a revocable land lease from the state government which you forfeit if you fail to pay protection money to the gov. True ownership is non-existent.

You could always seastead!

But yes, you do not truly own anything unless you are a sovereign power.

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

#799

Post by FpUser »

Aurornis wrote: post #618
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…

> 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? Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic because everywhere you turn there's a Reddit post or news headline about how housing is impossible to afford. > Pay's less. Less than the narrow window of…

Cut the bullshit please. I bought house in 1998 for $200K, guess what's the price is now. And salaries did not all that much since then. Definitely not 5 times.

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

#800

Post by diogenescynic »

james_marks wrote: post #694
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…

At almost 50, I feel like there has been a cultural shift since I was a kid. It isn’t enough to be middle class, to have the proverbial white picket fence. The reach now is for glamor and wealth, which is by definition out of reach for the majority. If that’s the ideal you compare your own life to, you will be unhappy. And the debt, etc you take on to mimic it will make you even more unhappy. The shift was already ha…

I think it was boomers who demanded McMansions with 3 car garages and new cars every 4 years and drove lifestyle inflation to a point it's no longer sustainable/affordable for the next generation. Millenials are struggling to afford the bare minimum. Housing used to be 3-5x your salary. Now it's 10-15x in some areas. Meanwhile our taxes are sent to Israel to subsidize genocide and we can't even pave roads in the most expensive zip codes (La Jolla). There's something fundamentally broken with our society at the moment.
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