Just wanna point out to the thread in general that this isn’t just surveying a bunch of people asking “on a scale of 1-10 how happy are you?”
The World Happiness Report uses six factors as predictors of life evaluation: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and corruption.
Edit: the video linked actually doesn’t make much mention of the survey mentioned in the headline.
Yeah… the fact that the country that perfected genocidal white supremacism was on a (so-called) “top 20 happiest countries list” tells me that list wasn’t worth shit to start off with.
The World Happiness Report uses six factors as predictors of life evaluation: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and corruption.
Because we are better than most countries by these metrics
You just be new to Lemmy. There is a constant push here that the us is some huge miserable shit hole. I’m sure some people actually believe it, and the us is far from perfect, but the whole thing comes for propaganda.
So if you believe it, might be time to come up for air and really objectively look around.
We have many advantages. But there are some MAJOR problems that can present gigantic setbacks to future generations. We have the freedom most other countries strive for. The cost of that responsibility is to be effective with those freedoms.
There are those that want to push it to the edge just because they can and it’s fucking it up for the rest that are the writing on the wall.
Just like a teenager that becomes an adult, if you can’t effectively manage your freedoms with some sort of priority, you just end up fucking it all up.
This is why the US is becoming a shit hole. We have all this power and are handling it like a fucking villain that finally beat the superhero. We have no damn idea how to control all the power we have as a nation.
I agree that it’s not the worst place to live, we have major problems, and the trends are not looking good but we also have some nice things too: national parks, cool technology, higher income, freedom of speech, etc. However propaganda is intended to influence, while I’m sure there is anti-American propaganda, I think a large part of it can be attributed to commiserating and a break down of the social order especially among young liberals who have been most effected by the evaporation of real life community. I guess I should go join a meet up or something— anyone down to play pool? Oh wait no sorry my university removed the pool tables to put in a never used “T Rowe Price Innovation center” fml.
Does anyone think it’s a shithole? Maybe if you’re truly poor or a political wingnut on the fringes.
The real issue IMO is that there’s a subset of the population that seems to think America is The Greatest Country On Earth™️, bar none, and gesture randomly in every direction but end up trying to shove the flag up your ass and equating the ability to bomb impoverished foreign countries to a marker of that greatness.
Meanwhile, disparity is wildly increasing, evangelical, right wing theofascists are trying to turn it into a dictatorship/wannabe Russia, Americans are being eaten alive by educational, housing, and medical costs, overrun by functional monopolies, and objectively fare worse in many, many social, health, and economic markers when compared to the rest of the civilized world including upward mobility. Upward mobility being huge as its part of the American Dream™️ in which you allegedly can be anyone you want to be, but in fact countries outside the US offer better chances of changing your station than the US does. Depending on where you live in the US (particularly the south) there is better than a 95% chance your life will never get better. Butwhatabout-ing and saying look how much better off we are than, say, Venezuela isn’t a marker of success, measuring how far you are from the bottom isn’t the same as trying to climb to the top.
So no, the US isn’t a shithole, but if someone is gonna start waving a flag and saying without qualification how great it is here the speaker shouldn’t be surprised when people cover their asses and say hell no it isn’t.
Housing crisis, 40-year out of date poverty level, a minimum wage that hasn't been increased in 15 years and that has had a continuously decreasing purchasing power for almost 60 years. Most expensive healthcare, rampant student loan debt, record-breaking corporate profits, a self-immolating middle class, etc. etc.
Honestly, it's hard to find much to be happy about here right now.
The US is far richer than a lot of the higher ranked countries. Furthermore, it’s the best performing country out of the pandemic. Can’t be the reason for the drop
I’m glad you have insight into my level of happiness and its cause. I’ll correct myself the next time I think about how inflation is keeping me down. WRONG ANSWER, WALLET!
Edit: To be more clear, I’m reasonably well-off and still terrified that I’ll die in a financial crisis. Our system sucks.
Wages are the highest they’ve ever been and cost of living is the highest it’s ever been. Purchasing power is down. It’s a simple economic rule. Look up Biden inflation rule 34 to learn more.
This is the worst part. Every time I see people who mainly consume digital entertainment scoff at getting it for free, it just cements in my mind how most people are useful idiots.
I think it might have something to do with some young people not feeling connected to their communities. In my case, I grew up in a conservative Christian community but as I got older, I didn’t want to be conservative or Christian. I left the only community I had and I haven’t yet found another community to replace it. I don’t think this is an entirely new phenomenon, but whereas in the past young people would move from conservative rural areas to more liberal urban areas, many urban areas today are prohibitively expensive, so that’s not an option, at least not for as many young people. Many people are therefore without a community, left to feel lonely and alienated.
We have an election front runner who called this country a shithole and half of the people say they love him because he tells it like it is. So there you have it.
So there’s really NOTHING that gives you joy? Friends? Family? Hobbies? Pets? A local park or museum? Games you play? Shows you go to? Something you volunteer for or see other people volunteering for? Etc?
A personal sense of joy is not the same as social sense of joy, so while you will find joy in this, the social sphere as a whole would not necessarily do. The highest ranking countries in the list are those with a substantial welfare plan that aren’t ideologically aligned. As far as the list goes, the global level of happiness has been decreasing for the past years (climate change, wars, covid, other stuff).
How many of those quite a few are going to have to make their lives in a future where the U.S. is a totalitarian corporate oligarchy and climate change is making large parts of the Earth unlivable? Because they won’t be as happy then. Even if they vote in favor of it.
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