Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

derekthompson.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

871–880 of 1001 posts

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

#871

Post by dingaling »

WalterBright wrote: post #574
jbxntuehineoh wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, with his own two hands?? Incredible! How did he do it???

It is an amazing story. There are several biographies of Musk which go into a lot of detail how he did it. None of his wealth was transferred to him.

> None of his wealth was transferred to him.

Mr Musk's move to the USA was funded by his father, and his first company was started with a loan from his father. The advantages of the family running an undocumented emerald mine in Zambia.

Not 'inherited wealth' I concede, but still not something available to Average Joe.

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

#872

Post by pelasaco »

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.

lol, what? How can you assume that people in the internet will connect this:

"If you're already happy you should think carefully about having kids though. I was extremely, extremely satisfied with my life before children. My kid is wonderful and healthy but as an introvert I didn't realize just how crushing it is to never get an extended period alone to recharge"

with

"I was doing stuff like fighting in a foreign civil war and commercial fishing in the Bering Sea." ?

Both sentences dont add up, at all.

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

#873

Post by leonidasrup »

Many America's are not rich, so it's understandable that they are sad.

"The costs of inequality: When a fair shake isn’t"

"One measure of American inequality is the percentage of the nation’s overall wealth owned by different parts of the population. The graphic above shows that the richest 20 percent of the country owns 88.9 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 40 percent owes more than it owns."

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/02/the-costs-of-...

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

#874

Post by pb7 »

watwut wrote: post #425
nephihaha wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Europeans, Canadians, and Australians are used to living in nanny states that dictate their lives.

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

#875

Post by ActorNightly »

anon291 wrote: post #680
gjm11 wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#876

Post by Danox »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #527
cjs_ac wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK all have housing and affordability problems, out of the five I can understand the UK but the other four countries I absolutely do not…

What do they all have in common English similar economies and relatively similar governments.

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

#877

Post by sebastiennight »

jimbokun wrote: post #441
lamasery wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Everyone expecting to escape the “middle class“ reminds me of Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average.

To be statistically accurate, it is possible for all the children except one to be above average.

I remember a certain Dave Chappelle show a couple of years back where every single one of the ~10,000 attendees was about 20 million dollars poorer than the average net worth in the room.

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

#878

Post by theturtlemoves »

"Cultural conservatives might try to explain the Tragic Twenties by citing the rise of secular individualism among American liberals and pointing to the fact that religion seems to be a tonic for unhappiness. But the rise of religious non-affiliation in America has been a steady 30-year trend, whereas this falloff in well-being started in 2020, when secularism reached its recent peak. So, that explanation won’t do."

Tipping point?

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

#879

Post by ActorNightly »

sph wrote: post #434
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.

Sure, because the world was just great before 2016. The orange idiot is just the culmination of decades of decline, not a random blip in American history.

I mean, in a roundabout way you are right in your second sentence, it just wasn't decades of decline, on the opposite, it was a decade of positive growth. The world was pretty good prior to 2016. By all accounts, economy was doing good, tech was happening, cool things were being done.

Most of the actual important issues were solved or on the way of being solved, so people slowly started to make the trivial problems seem way grander than they are. Hedonistic adaptation is part of human nature, and the cycle has been seen in history many times in many civilizations.

Meanwhile, ironically, in societies where there is significant hardship every day, whether its going out and farming or having to work harder for your meal at home, dealing with adverse weather, and other things, you tend to see way more inclusion and coherence between humans, because they really never get a chance to get accustomed to a good life.

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

#880

Post by tzs »

phtrivier wrote: post #417
bjourne wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, to be fair, it allowed some of the old people to survive more than two years, so... Young people should react by voting in people who will defend them. Instead, they joined the elderly un voting for Trump. Go figure.

Boomers only slightly favored Trump in 2024.

Young voters (Gen Z) went Harris by 10 points.

People in the first ~1/2 of middle age (Millennials) slightly favored Harris.

It was the second ~1/2 of middle age (Gen X) that were pro Trump, by 6 points.

Boomers had the best turnout. 31% of eligible voters but 40% of actual voters. Gen X was 28% of eligible voters and 26% of actual voters. Millennials were also 28% of eligible voters and were 25% of actual voters. Gen Z was 13% of eligible voters but only 9% of actual voters.

Post reply on HN