Housing in the US is really a non-issue or ambiguous.
However, in the rest of the Anglosphere, especially Canada and Australia, it's apocalyptic. >300% increase relative to wages, ownership rates have crashed. It's projected that 50 year olds in Gen Z will own less housing outright than Boomers when they were 25! Retirement age has increased by 10 years in the past 20. The mood is distressing, everyone is jaded and despondent. Life has become serfdom to the mortgage.
Good article, Seb. You actually make a good, data-driven argument for why happiness has decreased without making up bullshit about how somehow the greatly improved technological and material advancements don't count.
Eventually, we're just gonna have to junk the Civil Rights Act. It created exactly the sort of parallel constitution it's harshest critics anticipated, and it's most devoted supporters secretly wanted. The compromise of trying to simultaneously respect individual liberty while bringing about equality as a fact and result is just untenable. Rightoids need to stop being too stupid, ignorant, and cowardly to advocate this.
Why did you decide to mark happiness as only "slightly worse"? The stated happiness chart shows a pretty drastic decrease in happiness for both genders.
Life seems to have drastically improved for people over age 65, and gotten significantly worse for people under age 35. If we presume that the 1950s was great because of WWII, then the only way back to the 1950s is a world war where we destroy our next closest competitor. It used to be Germany, and is now China. Even then it might only buy a few decades.
People who like the 1950s want 2025 technology with 1950s social norms. There is no reason that modern medicine or computers should mean we have to have crime and divorce. They don’t have crime and divorce in Japan for instance despite smart phones.
Basically, I think “technological advancement” is due to shit nerds would have done even we kept most 1950s cultural norms.
Something that needs to be kept in mind for the suicide rates is that A, today anti-depressants are widespread which no doubt lower the suicide rate than what it would be if people only had access to 1950s technology and B, the cause of suicide has probably changed over time. In the past it might've been old or sick people killing themselves because of chronic pain or a fatal illness or someone killing themselves in response to social ostracization where as today young people killing themselves over general unhappiness seems a lot more common.
The other aspect to this is that suicide rates aren't a perfect indicator of overall happiness or mental wellbeing. Most studies show woman in the west having worse mental well being than men but men commit suicide at 3-4 the rate of females. Interestingly, even though men commit suicide at higher rates, the rate they attempt suicide is actually lower. I theorize this is because men are less scared of death than woman so they're more willing to attempt suicide using more lethal means (gunshot to the head, jumping off high point ect). Suicide attempt rate would be a better indicator of mental wellbeing. It would be interesting to see if testosterone is what contributes to men being more risk averse, and therefore the decline in the west has masked an increase in unhappiness.
I'm used to arguing with 50-zoids about wages, so when you admit that the economy has improved it deflates my tactics. I would argue that health has gotten worse because the average person is less athletic.
Out of these problems, education seems like the easiest to solve (put sebjenseb in charge of DOE), political culture is next easiest (limit suffrage and regulate social media), but dating seems semi-impossible.
I'm hopeful that the miserable dating world leads to positive selection pressures.
The happiness rate is a lie: fat people are not happy, they only tell themselves they are. And Americans are faaaaat. That alone is enough to make people wistful for a more visually appealing society, poor though it was. The nostalgia will continue until waistlines improve.
Once you adjust the overall economy for inflation, it doesn’t seem correct to apply demerits for costs in education. It seems you should focus on results or outcomes.
The good news is, per those charts, male and female happiness have finally reached a state of perfect group equity.
As one would expect, as a result, the two sexes are now in harmony and nobody complains anymore.
Which undoubtedly contains a lesson on how important equity is.
xaxaxaxaxaxa
Blud has no rizz, I aint reading allat lil bro 💀💀💀
...
Housing in the US is really a non-issue or ambiguous.
However, in the rest of the Anglosphere, especially Canada and Australia, it's apocalyptic. >300% increase relative to wages, ownership rates have crashed. It's projected that 50 year olds in Gen Z will own less housing outright than Boomers when they were 25! Retirement age has increased by 10 years in the past 20. The mood is distressing, everyone is jaded and despondent. Life has become serfdom to the mortgage.
Good article, Seb. You actually make a good, data-driven argument for why happiness has decreased without making up bullshit about how somehow the greatly improved technological and material advancements don't count.
Eventually, we're just gonna have to junk the Civil Rights Act. It created exactly the sort of parallel constitution it's harshest critics anticipated, and it's most devoted supporters secretly wanted. The compromise of trying to simultaneously respect individual liberty while bringing about equality as a fact and result is just untenable. Rightoids need to stop being too stupid, ignorant, and cowardly to advocate this.
Why did you decide to mark happiness as only "slightly worse"? The stated happiness chart shows a pretty drastic decrease in happiness for both genders.
Life seems to have drastically improved for people over age 65, and gotten significantly worse for people under age 35. If we presume that the 1950s was great because of WWII, then the only way back to the 1950s is a world war where we destroy our next closest competitor. It used to be Germany, and is now China. Even then it might only buy a few decades.
People who like the 1950s want 2025 technology with 1950s social norms. There is no reason that modern medicine or computers should mean we have to have crime and divorce. They don’t have crime and divorce in Japan for instance despite smart phones.
Basically, I think “technological advancement” is due to shit nerds would have done even we kept most 1950s cultural norms.
Japan doesn't have a ton of divorce but it has very lackluster marriage and family formation among the young.
So does the entire developed world.
Something that needs to be kept in mind for the suicide rates is that A, today anti-depressants are widespread which no doubt lower the suicide rate than what it would be if people only had access to 1950s technology and B, the cause of suicide has probably changed over time. In the past it might've been old or sick people killing themselves because of chronic pain or a fatal illness or someone killing themselves in response to social ostracization where as today young people killing themselves over general unhappiness seems a lot more common.
The other aspect to this is that suicide rates aren't a perfect indicator of overall happiness or mental wellbeing. Most studies show woman in the west having worse mental well being than men but men commit suicide at 3-4 the rate of females. Interestingly, even though men commit suicide at higher rates, the rate they attempt suicide is actually lower. I theorize this is because men are less scared of death than woman so they're more willing to attempt suicide using more lethal means (gunshot to the head, jumping off high point ect). Suicide attempt rate would be a better indicator of mental wellbeing. It would be interesting to see if testosterone is what contributes to men being more risk averse, and therefore the decline in the west has masked an increase in unhappiness.
Linked at my post Real or Mythical? America’s Past Golden Age.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/74106.html
I'm used to arguing with 50-zoids about wages, so when you admit that the economy has improved it deflates my tactics. I would argue that health has gotten worse because the average person is less athletic.
Out of these problems, education seems like the easiest to solve (put sebjenseb in charge of DOE), political culture is next easiest (limit suffrage and regulate social media), but dating seems semi-impossible.
I'm hopeful that the miserable dating world leads to positive selection pressures.
I wonder how many of these stats are controlled for race because of America's constantly changing demographics.
The happiness rate is a lie: fat people are not happy, they only tell themselves they are. And Americans are faaaaat. That alone is enough to make people wistful for a more visually appealing society, poor though it was. The nostalgia will continue until waistlines improve.
>fat people are not happy
I assume they are less happy on average, but I doubt all of them are unhappy.
There is the stereotype of the jolly and rotund fellow, I wonder how accurate it is.
Maybe it is due to alcohol and inebriation, which also expands one's waistline. On net though, overweight people may indeed be less happy.
Thanks for the excellent analysis. One comment…
Once you adjust the overall economy for inflation, it doesn’t seem correct to apply demerits for costs in education. It seems you should focus on results or outcomes.