I also think that the pessimism is vastly overstated. Constant comparison is a recipe for disappointment just as much as if you compared your life to a celebrity on social media. There are still vast sources for happiness and life satisfaction that are untappd
This isn't "they have a BMW and I have a Corolla." The basic things are further and further out of reach.
Again, if you say to someone "well at least you aren't a slave" they'll scoff at you. We've progressed to a certain point and are on the verge of regressing if we haven't already.
I assume you are talking specifically about middle class American issues in the last couple decades. Even so, this is really really hard to separate reality from imagination, and avoid the biases of looking at the negatives and ignoring the positives. You really have to take a deep dive on specific topics.
I often hear people talk about home ownership as a prime example. Home ownership is indeed lower today than it was 10-15 years ago, but people ignore the fact that tons of people that bought houses when it was easier were foreclosed on and lost them! Home ownership is higher across all ages than they were any time before the 70s and within a few percent of where they have been since. [1][2] At the same time, the country has urbanized, moving to cities where it is much harder to own a home[3].
People also have a major bias due to social mobility. For people who's parents owned a house and they don't, it seems like everything is falling out of reach. They don't have the perspective of the equal number of people who are in the opposite situation, where they are homeowners and their parents weren't.
It is really really hard to make an apples to apples comparison of "quality of life" across generations.
For example, you can look back just 10-20 years and see significant progress in civil rights, homicide rates, and social services. Medicaid didn't even exist before 65' and has undergone a number of large expansions since. It is easy to forget little things like 2+ million boomers were forcibly drafted to go fight in a foreign war.
How do you weigh that against a completely different metric like the homeownership for people in their 20s. I make this not to say that things are easier or harder, but to say that the entire process of general comparison is impossible, because people experience only one life and the grass is always greener on the other side.
I do think that when you look at the specific topics in detail, things are not nearly as bad as the pessimists proclaim.
I think the single biggest factor working against the happiness of younger generations is a lack of community, in person social interactions, and relatedly mental health. This is where the numbers are very clearly showing a huge difference for younger people.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-one-thing-will-make-h...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S
https://www.multihousingnews.com/economy-watch-how-millennia...
Now as interest rates rise and houses are still overpriced, the difficulties will multiply.
> People also have a major bias from due to social mobility. For people who's parents owned a house and they don't, it seems like everything is falling out of reach. They don't have the perspective of the equal number of people who are in the opposite situation, where they are homeowners and their parents weren't.
Social mobility is key - but social mobility has significantly slowed down. There is a stark divide with millennials - the college educated have done just about the same as boomers, but the non-college educated have done worse.
> For example, you can look back just 10-20 years and see significant progress in civil rights, homicide rates, and social services. Medicaid didn't even exist before 65' and has undergone a number of large expansions since. It is easy to forget little things like 2+ million boomers were forcibly drafted to go fight in a foreign war.
You can go back and forth with qualitative comparisons. Boomers didn't have a global pandemic or a recession that matched 2008. Inflation now is matching the 80s, so that argument goes out. Iraq and Afghanistan exist, and the largest attack on US soil was committed. Oh, the cold war? Yea Russia is still threatening nuclear war and we have the largest war in Europe since World War 2.
In any case, the numbers that matter prove the point: generations are not doing better than their predecessors for the first time in a long time. Millennials are slower to homeownership, slower to marriage, have to get more educated to compete, etc. These are all quantitative.
The pissing contest doesn't matter much if people are storming the capitol. People are unhappy, for good reason. Telling them they're just alarmist is just sticking your head in the sand. There's a reason fascist politics are back and socialism is gaining ground - people are struggling, more of them are, and more are becoming desperate.
