Must be all the fascism
Corporations paying poverty wages while reporting record profits probably doesn’t help either.
probablydefinitelyActually, wages are higher during Biden’s term than they have ever been in the history of America
These meager token “raises” are, for many if not most of us, wildly insufficient compared to the rising costs of everything (due in very large part to the aforementioned corporations and their year over year record profits).
That’s not true, wages have outpaced inflation. So for most people, their costs have been covered by higher wages.
Can you cite a source for this? It is not what most people are anecdotally experiencing so you are being down voted.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-purchasing-power-of-american-households
Most people actually are better off, because 50% (the median) is doing much better under Biden than under Trump
Sounds nice on paper but that’s not reality for a significant number of people still scraping by paycheck to paycheck, many with college degrees and years of experience, one shitty day away from being homeless.
This was just as true four years ago, and it was true twenty years ago. I’m talking about the improvements under Biden:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-purchasing-power-of-american-households
I refer you to my previous comment.
Given their posting history, I’m sure OP will find a way to say it’s Biden and the Democratic party’s fault.
Looking at the states through this lens is like all the articles that blame “congress” while ignoring which people in which party of which half of congress caused the issue of the day.
There are a multitude of reasons why this metric would come to be, but according to the comments here the important part is to keep saying “America sucks right now” without identifying any realistic solutions.
Best you’ll get is a half assed hand wave of people mumbling about Karl Marx like that helps anything.
What is there to be happy about?
Cats.
I’m very allergic. But I’ll go with dogs.
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?
Enough to make my life good enough that I’m a generally happy person? No. Do you know any generally happy Americans that aren’t rich?
Your question was “what is there to be happy about?”
And yes, I do. Quite a few.
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.
They won’t be as happy then, no.
Still, I was responding to the original question that seemed like it was pure, unrestrained despair instead of this one focused on specific problems.
Not everything is bad.
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 was it ever so high?
Because despite the propaganda, it’s actually, relatively speaking, a good place to live.
despite the propaganda
Yeah, what propaganda might that be…?
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.
Removed by mod
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.
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
“The World Happiness Report and the Gallup/Meta social connectedness data show peak loneliness for younger Americans. It’s widely recognized that social support and feelings of loneliness are influential factors in determining overall happiness, and these dynamics differ across various age groups,” she said. “The quality of interpersonal relationships may impact the wellbeing of younger and older individuals in distinct ways.”
Wouldn’t this be the first time the 2024 world happiness report was published?
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.
I corelate that with having to pay for multiple streaming service.
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.
I’m more surprised this is the first time…
For the first time they actually asked real people or had a better sample.
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.
Israel is #5
I’d be happier if I could slaughter my neighbors too.
deleted by creator
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.
Thanks DNC
