@sdcuddleguy: There's a difference between how fast inflation rises and how much things actually cost. Yeah, inflation spiked in 1980. But, despite this, one US dollar in 1980 still had the purchasing power $3.60 does today, and the federal minimum wage (adjusted for inflation) was $10.27—it's $7.25 today.
@sunnysideup I'm more inclined to think that as material conditions improve, people have less need to feel they're being watched over, or that there's a wonderful afterlife to make up for the hard life they're living now
People can find plenty of meaning without looking skyward: friendships, romance, children, work, charity, activism, art. These all involve connections to others. If people are having a crisis of meaning, social atomization seems a more likely cause than lack of religious faith.
@sdcuddleguy Your example only talks about inflation. It never factors in ratios to income which is more revealing. For example. Look at rent from 1960-2010:
https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/rent-growth-since-1960
And it worse now than 12 years ago!
@sdcuddleguy And then there is this delectable little article. Your dollar is devalued now days for the typical person. Pew is non-partisan and highly respected for its research.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
I selected. "Other." because when faced with several major contributors, I don't think that it's possible to determine which is the greatest cause. The choice is made especially difficult, in not impossible, by the fact that many of the choices have complicated, interlocking cause and effect considerations to totally confound the question.
Why must there be an answer? Which is the greater crime, murdering one person, or swindling 500 people out of their life savings? Some questions have no answer.
A thought experiment: what if we used 1980s dollars to describe what young American adults are experiencing today?
So you're a young adult, no longer living with your parents.
Federal minimum wage is $2.02/hr. You're making $2.78—above minimum wage. At forty hours a week, you're making a sweet $444.80 a month. Not bad!
Your apartment runs you $229.73 a month, which is amazing: the mean rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $338.19, and they can go as high as $756 or more. Utilities, of course, cost more: about $80.65.
You've still got $134.42 left, which is good, because you need food. If you really scrimp, maybe you can pull off spending a mere $58.41 a month.
Now you have $76.
That's a very good thing, because you still have to get to and from work! A cheap, used car will cost you somewhere around $8343.57... ah. Well, never mind. You can get around this: find a job within walking distance, or one that always schedules your shifts in a way that works with the bus schedule (~$16.80 a month), or beg rides off someone who already owns a car.
Your clothes are wearing out. You can get a cheap pair of shoes from Walmart for maybe $4.17, but they won't last long. A good pair of shoes will run you at least $11.12, maybe as much as $27.81. But they'll last.
You also need new socks. New pants. Oh, and soap: laundry soap, hand soap, dish soap. Toothpaste, too. Deodorant. Toilet paper.
Man, you'd really like to own your own home some day, but you're down to $20 and one of your teeth really hurts but your job doesn't have dental in the employee insurance plan—fixing this could cost $55, $60.
You're in debt now, and the average home costs $119,229. It's not likely to ever happen for you, is it?
At least you don't have kids.
Hm. Depressing. I'm going to bed.
@FunCartel I get what you’re driving at, but doesn’t it all boil down to whether people will attempt on their own to get ahead and EARN a more reasonable income or whether they just want their government to fix it for them???
I have and continue to get educated and work hard to get ahead. I’m surrounded by people in their late 20’s and 30’s who work for me and EARN $20-25k per month. They didn’t wait for someone to do something for them - they’re doing what it takes for themselves and their families and then back to the original theme, they’re finding happiness through a sense of accomplishment in building their own American dream.
@sdcuddleguy So someone making 50,000 a year isn’t earning it? You have picked out an extremely small sample size. Most people do not make 20,000 a month. Most people work…too much for less when you factor in that wages have not kept up with the cost of living. One could get a college degree for $4000 a year full time 40 years ago. That doesn’t even pay for a semester now. The example you gave is typical of less than 1percent of the population. And just because someone doesn’t pull down 20k a month does not mean they work any less harder.
Not saying they’re not working. I’m saying they’re unhappy for one. Another is possibly they’ve chosen the wrong path if they’re not satisfied with making $50k and working for it. But then to think it’s someone else who is to blame - that’s what I’m saying is off and a root cause here. They’re not finding any satisfaction is accomplishing success because of choosing a path that won’t get them there and then sitting around choosing to blame our system for not supporting them better just because they’re trying. I think you’re missing my point.
@sdcuddleguy
doesn’t it all boil down to whether people will attempt on their own to get ahead and EARN a more reasonable income
Yes. And young adults in the US seem considerably more determined to do this than the previous generation.
I'm afraid your microeconomic example simply speaks to the widening income gap. Those high-earners are in the top 10% of earners, who have money coming out of their ears. For the 90%, rent and college fees have increased proportionately faster than earnings. If you have to survive on your earnings, and the ratios are going away from you, there is basically nothing you can do because doing more work doesn't actually make any difference to your prospects.
I don't know exactly what's driving the increase in college fees, but it seems reasonable that it is at least partly due to significantly increased demand from the current generation compared to the previous generation.
And if higher demand pushes college fees up even more, then the number of jobs that provide enough income to repay the college debt goes down. I have no idea if the following is true or not, but one of the possibility that concerns me about the long term US economy is a future avalanche of bad student loans as the current generation die having not been able to pay them off.
To put it another way, if the boardroom, the finance department and the sales department take too much of the pie, then there isn't enough left to go around. It doesn't matter how hard you scrape the bowl.
If your point was true, then college fees would be falling as a proportion of income.
It’s widely known that having friends is primarily what makes people happy. Of course that follows after the base needs are met like food, shelter and safety. People who don’t have friends are more likely to be on social media, complaining about something. For this reason, I think all the unhappiness expressed on social media is a biased sample.
I’ve come across several sources that link to Gallup that refer to Colombia and other non-rich countries as the happiest. Why is that?
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/colombia-not-finland-may-be-happiest-country-in-world.htm
As the “science.howstuffworks.com” link shows, the gallup poll for happiness is more of a measure of well being rather than happiness. This is why European and Nordic nations top this list. However when the gallup poll assesses nations for their recent happiness levels and positive emotional experiences most of the countries that top the list are poor, religious, conflict challenged Latin American countries.
A lot of the northern European countries are on the top of the list for happiness.
My intuition is that these countries outsource military protection to the United States and therefore have much more money to spend on infrastructure and social services.
I could be wrong. I'd have to compare percent of GDP these countries spend on defense.
Edit: Quick Google search shows America spends 38% of budget in military spending. Finland spends 1.5%.
Which is interesting because Finland borders a hostile superpower.
I haven’t had a chance to read any other responses, though in a free moment I’m looking forward to it. Perhaps someone has already said this:
I think humans have had more time and ability to gather and express their thoughts. This isn’t the only reason for the decline in happiness, but I do think it’s a significant one. People have always had messy negative experiences, that’s what being human is about. But we are now more comfortable putting language to it, and are now registering unhappiness at a higher levels; it’s always been there.
I mean, if we're looking at defense budgets as a percentage of GDP, that does shift things a little.
[source]
By contrast, the USA only spent 3.74% of GDP on defense in 2020.
Good thread. I hope y'all keep going.
I would venture that political corruption is one of the root causes. Everything else probably falls into place when your government actually works for its citizens. This would also explain Finland and Denmark being so high on the happiness scale.
The internet
I want to thank everyone who has participated in this thread. I think the only “wrong” answer would be if someone says “it is ALL because of ________.”
That is why I was careful to ask the opinion question of what do you think is the biggest contributing factor. As @GreatHornedOwl pointed out, many of the possible answers I listed in the question are intertwined with each other. An over reliance on / addiction to technology is likely a major cause of why so many people do not have meaningful connections to real people in their lives.
I am not as good as @SunsetSnuggles in keeping up with and responding to every comment but I do want to give a special shout out to @DaringSprinter for his research and links that he shared in his posts, to @sdcuddleguy & @Mike_Girard who both expressed some opinions similar to my own (and a few that differ from mine) but it’s all good.
Thanks again to everyone who has shared your thoughts and to any future participants in this thread.
@JohnR1972 You are too kind. I'm afraid I haven't been active here at all, recently, while entertaining two sets of out of state guests, and going out of state myself again, but I have missed everyone!
~ Sunset Snuggles
Having traveled to quite a few other countries, to include a couple in the 'unhappiest' list, my observation of the US is that our unhappiness is due to a multi-faceted buildup of stress. Our entire culture is based on sensationalism. We drive the biggest, fastest, flashiest cars... We live in expansive houses full of the latest gadgets... Our celebrities are the flashiest and live the craziest lives... and we eat it all up because it's the American way. We are taught that the 'extravagant' is what we need to express how successful we are. The information (good or bad) we consume is no different. Everything is 'Breaking News', everything is marketed as the best, newest, shiniest thing. The coolest people are rated by the number of 'likes' and 'views' they have. ALL OF US, by our income. Keeping up with the Jones' is stressful.
As @sdcuddleguy points out, those 20-somethings that work for him are making good money because they worked hard. NOPE, working hard DOES NOT make you good money. If it did, 90% of the population would control 90% of the wealth in this country. Should everyone be 'entitled' to the possibility of a better life? Resoundingly, Yes.
...and our society as a whole is not structured to allow EVERYONE to succeed. The current system requires a good portion of the populace to live paycheck-to-paycheck and within six months of homelessness. This FORCES us to work. The need for employer-provided medical insurance ensures that we won't constantly be looking for better paying jobs. The need for college degrees act as a gate-keeper for the better-paying jobs, while the associated student loans act as an anchor to keep you needing to work like everyone else. Sure, there are outliers, but you are not INTENDED to get ahead unless you start out ahead. The easiest way to make money is to have money. (NOT the same as 'earning it.')
Eek! I'm gonna have to stop the rant right here.
I believe it’s dishonesty about all they above and more. It seems that on either side of any argument is the fact that neither side will be completely honest in dialogue and use less than honest methods to prove their own point.
Capitalism.
@jaswbrown I liked what you are humbly calling a rant and especially agree with the first paragraph. One of the many reasons some people are so unhappy is they think more of flash than substance.
Poison
@JohnR1972 oh my. This is such a thought provoking thread.
My friend and I were just discussing the book by Viktor Frankle Man's Search for Meaning
This was an interesting little video take on the book, but I found fascinating was his stance that through something so horrific as a concentration camp, he and others had a different ability to cope with hardship because of their desire to find meaning in life.
I'm not aligning with the idea that we all have to find the SAME meaning to life, but just specifically a purpose that is greater than ourselves. There are plenty of different avenues to explore that, but I have seen this manifested in the people around me. Those who can find no greater purpose other than "existing" seem like they have less capacity for suffering.
There was also an interview with Dr. Frankle where he mentioned that the AVAILABLE SPACE you have to endure suffering might be directly correlated to how much SPACE you have for other things like happiness and joy and gratefulness. People can feel like they are suffering in exactly the same magnitude even if one person is enduring torture and the other got a flat tire on the way to work.
Thinking about the possibility of this was so intriguing. I'll have to scrounge around and find the specific interview in order to not be misquoting. Very very very interesting. I think the correlation I have made is that each generation has benefit and detriment with their ideologies but some unhappiness can come from a feeling that you alone are the only person struggling and the unfairness of your suffering.
I know this sounds rambly, but wow.... its very thought provoking.