> Marriage, land ownership, religion, tradition, real communities, family is still nominally there but there's little left of it.
Curious about where you live and where you grew up? I ask because none of these rings true for me. Many of my friends have bought homes and started families, along the way, they’ve created their own traditions, and are part of communities where they know their neighbors. And this isn’t in just in one place in the country.
> If you want to see the canary in the coal mine, try befriending someone who works in the service industry.
I have a couple of very close friends in the service industry.
They are less well off than others I know and it’s reflected in their lives (still renting, fewer vacations), but no signs of societal collapse (have families and community relationships) there either.
Service industry doesn’t necessarily mean poverty wages. For hotel housekeeping and similar it probably is though.
Had a friend making about $50k waiting tables depending on the year in a city you’d likely never heard of before switching to sales.
Another working in a kitchen planning to buy a home soon.
I know a couple local bartenders who do much better than I expected for a neighborhood bar.
Met a guy years ago who was a school janitor and for whatever reason I always thought they would be poor. Turns out that’s a pretty good job.
That said, none of these people work as a cashier at McDonald’s or hotel room cleaner either. The one making $50k worked at a national steakhouse chain, not a fancy one but a step up from Applebees.
Yeah, you didn't mention their families though. And regardless divorce rates are way up.
If the incentive to work is "yeah you can show up and nothing will go wrong." Great. The same thing happens if you don't leave your parent's basement/subsidized housing/your friend's couch and you won't have to put up with as much crap or pay for a car. Do you see why people aren't bothering?
I’m not sure this is true anymore. The median American will never be able to afford their own home at current housing prices. Sure, we have a higher gdp per capita, but it doesn’t buy us the things we actually need like housing, health care, etc.
Perhaps what’s needed is to bring back family homesteads, but that doesn’t feel like much progress.
I'd say the difference between those times is the feeling of agency/possibility of a good life (defining good life by what that meant at the time). Objectively, material conditions were worse, but due to a variety of factors, the average person felt that society was getting better. We'll put up with a lot of shit if we think it's temporary or something that we could change.
And some people honestly liked living like that. My great-great grandparents lived until the 1980s (born in the 1870s) and refused to get indoor plumbing. People are weird and sentiment matters.
Meaningless, no, because we're hairless chaos apes living in hives of other hairless chaos apes and plenty of our fellow apes live their lives based on this subjective measure which means it needs to be considered in governing and managerial decisions.
I want to add that the current feeling the country is getting worse, in my opinion, is pushed by right wing media.
One of the main themes of conservatives is that then is better than now as well as holding back change their supporters push the notion that things are getting worse (regardless if it's true or what specifics) to help them get elected
The right are open about pushing 'it's worse than it's ever been'. The left prefers to memory-hole history and combine that memory hole with thought terminating hyperbole: They like to present threats completely divorced of historical context.
(I worked in political communications and spent a couple of years getting lists of stories and headlines from all sides of the aisle fed to my email.)
One example of this is all the fear-mongering the Dems/their media arms do around things like abortion rights or queer rights/safety. (And before anybody comes for me, I'm a lesbian so I'm impacted by both.) Like apparently I'm supposed to be constantly terrified by the backsliding on both. And they do concern me but like I grew up in the 90s? I personally remember things being worse and I wasn't curled up in a ball throwing money at the Dems to Save Me. (And speaking of memory holing, as a gay millennial I remember quite clearly how long it took for the Dems to get behind gay marriage: Let's not pretend the current socially progressive planks are anything other than realizing we're a voting bloc that can be pandered to as hard as the MAGA people. I have no doubt the Dems would throw queer people under the bus tomorrow if it were a more viable electoral strategy to do so.)
Finland is in the top position in the world happiness report in 2022. Followed by Denmark and Iceland in second and third place. Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Israel and New Zealand, were among the top 10 'happiest' countries in the world [1].
Except for Israel wouldn't you say though counties have some of the lowest religious participation? What about nationalism?
I'm not trying to prove the opposite of you view as this doesn't show causation but I think it sufficiently counters your view
Obviously there are plenty of individuals where this isn't the case (and there are plenty of people working hard) but the discussion is about the movement of the group and this does appear to be where things are going on both sides.
Not OP, but I think the term "movement" was meant to mean the percentage of people who are starting families, keeping their religion, owning homes, etc. is moving downward. Pew Research has plenty of evidence for this movement downward.
BEFORE the pandemic most americans couldn't afford a $400 emergency bill, people are pretty desperate in the US on average and if you don't encounter that day to day you are living in comparative luxury.
Curious about where you live and where you grew up? I ask because none of these rings true for me. Many of my friends have bought homes and started families, along the way, they’ve created their own traditions, and are part of communities where they know their neighbors. And this isn’t in just in one place in the country.