Daaaaaamn 😔
I certainly hope the younger generation Americans examine Denmark and copy their system.
I think one thing we’re all going to have to remember, is that living in unprecedented times means we’re going to have to start holding ourselves to unprecedented standards. We should all be very angry and demanding better as a society, but it’s important to give ourselves grace as individuals, remember it’s up to us to try and avoid the things that make us unhappy as much as we can, and be proud of ourselves when we do manage to find glimmers of happiness while living in a dystopian society.
I say that to remind myself as much as to give advice to anyone else. I remember dreading 30 as it approached, and feeling like I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. It felt like I had done everything I was supposed to do, but just never saw the payout for doing it. I had gotten a college degree, then a graduate degree. This allowed me to get a 9-5 job that I dreaded going to everyday. I was under a mountain of college loan debt. I barely made enough to cover my rent, let alone ever consider buying a house. I felt like I was going nowhere fast, and when I looked at social media, it felt like I was way behind all of my peers.
That was also around the time I decided that if I couldn’t obtain the material things that were supposed to make me feel happy and successful, I would focus on maximizing the activities and relationships that made me happy while slowly (and sometimes painfully) cutting out the things that only made me more miserable.
Flashforward a decade as I begin to approach 40, and I wish I could tell you that the material things eventually all worked themselves out, but pretty sure you already know they didn’t.
Financially I’m in basically the same situation I was then, except now I have a child to take care of, so obviously that means less money. Even with cost of living and merit based raises over the years, with inflation and an even worse housing market, it just never seemed to work out to making much of a difference. I’m still buried under the mountain of student debt and barely make rent each month. I also found out this past week that I’m losing my job soon, and as a federally funded science researcher, the prospects of me finding one to replace it aren’t great to say the least.
However, even though the stakes are more dire than ever, and hard times are only forecast to get harder, I don’t feel quite as pessimistic as I did when I was approaching 30. I actually feel a bit of comradery with the majority of Americans, because I think most of us are in a pretty similar boat. As far as my personal relationships and family, I’m happier than I’ve ever been.
Maybe it’s just a part of mellowing out with age, but I feel it’s also in part due to being very happy with my personal relationships, and the people that are in my life now vs a decade ago. I’ve gotten involved in community work in my free time, and as of 2025 I feel a drive to embrace that kind of work more than ever. In a lot of ways starting from scratch at almost 40 is scary, but in some ways it’s actually somewhat of a relief. The last of a mirage that was keeping me in my stable career has been destroyed, and it would feel a bit more delusional of me to jump ship to a similar job which will eventually meet the same fate.
Again, I want to stress I don’t say this as a way to get people to be docile and just accept what’s happening, but to channel your anger and frustration into something that gives you a sense of accomplishment. If anyone in your life is making you think that being unhappy with the current situation is strictly a you problem, and not a reflection of reality, that’s a good sign you should probably lessen your ties to them for now. If they want to do some self reflection and try to come back later, that’s always an option.
Finding others in your community that feel the same way, and working together locally to keep people informed and prepared for policy changes before they happen, is one of the easiest ways you can improve your immediate surroundings and feel some power in a situation where we’re all pretty powerless.
Most of the senators and representatives we’ve elected to represent us and look out for our interests are failing hard. It’s important to keep in mind that everything happening at a federal level is going to start happening at state levels. In many red states it has already begun. DOGE inspired taskforces are popping up all over the country. I’ve been keeping a list of them, but even since my most recent update a few weeks ago, more have been announced.
Regardless of where they’re located, all of these DOGE task forces have a common goal. Make up a dollar amount to show how much they’re saving tax payers, find excuses to cut money for social programs (and in some cases even cuts to government safety programs!) to make that number a reality, make the lives of citizens worse and make governors and their wealthy friends even wealthier, all in the name of trimming wasteful spending and getting rid of bureaucracy.
It’s easy to get stuck in a mindset where you let the reality of yesterday influence the way you view your present, but it’s a mental trap. I haven’t used any form of social media that isn’t anonymous in almost a decade. No Facebook or Instagram. I don’t scroll by pictures of a lifestyle that never even came close to matching my reality. I think it’s no coincidence that I no longer feel left out among my peers, when I’m not acknowledging false public images people attempt to shape for themselves online. Instead, I feel more connected to a bigger chunk of America than ever before, and it’s helped me to realize how much we all have in common regardless of political identity.
Thank you for the perspective and positivity.
What was it your rapist conman pedo president said? Shithole country, that’s it.
I’m 50 and miserable. Everyone who isn’t well off is miserable, and that’s like 75% of the country.
I’m over 30 and still unhappy
Fuck this shithole of a country and fuck the wealthy in my parents generation who threw away my future. Damn right young people are miserable.
I will never forgive the Baby Boomers for gleefully throwing every successive generation off a cliff while Boomers failed upwards through life.
to be fair, there were good boomers.
they just didn’t live long enough for you to meet them.
yeah, people always come at me with “don’t blame generations, it is a distraction meant to divide us and besides there are plenty of older people who got screwed too”…
…and yes, this is vitally important to recognize, especially as a leftist that at least claims to be focused on building solidarity and refocusing the conversation on wealth inequality…
…however damn, if you meet wealthy baby-boomers or even “temporarily embarassed” wealthy baby-boomers who aren’t even rich just made it more than their peers… it makes it DAMN HARD not to hate baby-boomers sometimes.
This isn’t a generational thing, this isn’t even new, but the shear AMOUNT of narcissistic completely ideologically lobotomized wealthy baby-boomers there are actively strangling their kids futures in the US is fucking disgusting and it makes it hard not to hate the whole fucking generation.
I don’t, there are plenty of good people in the baby-boomer generation, but baby-boomers dont make it easy not to hate their fucking guts sometimes like holy shit.
I disagree. I think it IS a generational thing.
It is only ok to think of it this way though if you immediately qualify that with it is a problem with a specific subsection of a generation within colonial powers who are or believe they are middle-class, upper-middle class or wealthy.
I guess that can seem like a pedantic qualification, but it actually isn’t because all of the energy in people’s agitation just siphons off into hating old people from a perspective that doesn’t illuminate anything, and it REALLY isolates older people who weren’t included in that collective selfish foreclosure of our future. All the seniors who are forced to work, living in poverty or alone. Even if they have shitty politics, when we just talk about it as a generational problem we deny their agency and potential as individual human beings.
We also feed into an unspoken centering of the experience of people in colonial powers and ignore the colonized who have been excluded categorically.
At the same time I also bristle when people get upset at people exclaiming shit like “gahh man, fuck boomers” without an acknolwedgement that… yeah I mean fuck boomers kinda…
It is like if someone says “fuck men” in exasperation nearby me, yeah well I am a man and in my heart I try to be a good person and I know there are good men who are loving and mature… but like… I join in with the vibes because I know they aren’t talking about me (or if they are maybe I need to take a step back, breathe, and listen?). I don’t say “not all men!!!” and I think there is a tiny bit of that in the response people have to shutting down people exasperated with boomers because the truth is complicated.
TL;DR Vent, be wary of people who snap at you the moment you vent about something understandable, but also be wary of narratives simplifying to a hurtful point
Ok there’s a point when you get so obsessed about shoving colonialism into EVERY conversation it just gets funny. It’s like you’re a fresh faced college kid who just learned a New Thing and it blew your mind so now you have to talk about it all the time.
Ok there’s a point when you get so obsessed about shoving colonialism into EVERY conversation it just gets funny.
aw thank you, that is a very sincere compliment, as cynical as I can be sometimes it feels good to know I haven’t lost a youthful perspective : )
Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?-- in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow’d Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp’d, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,-- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ’s Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe til the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur’d and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,-- winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.
Seeing alot of (for good reason) depressed folks here. I think we need to build community, in real life or online if there’s no other way.
Or we can just emigrate to a better country. I’m going back to Korea after I save some more money at $job
If you have the means to, sure go for it. In the end I think you’ll need some form of community as well in any new country you go to.
Wouldn’t it be funny if that broken spirit is by intention because the possibilities of the internet are big enough that a motivated youth could change everything?
I mean, they would have to value different things if they want things to change.
For some reason, this generation is proud to be a follower rather than a leader.
It’s like they enjoy being foot-soldiers of the people who keep them in their destitute positions. Rather than fight the ruling class, they envy them.
I love your perspective.
Came across my feed yesterday. He’s in the UK but it applies to almost every country.
I’m 45 and since I was a kid I heard my father telling me his gen was the last getting richer than the one before.
We (westerns), did reach the peak and now every gen will be poorer year after year.
That’s why rich people is hoarding wealth like never before. That’s why Elmo wants to establish fascism, abolish worker rights and wants the people doing more childs. It doesn’t matter for him if we get even poorer, he just wants to make his wealth future proof.
His wealth already is future proof, this is something else. This is about power.
no. it’s about fear, and a whole… thing. when you live in hierarchy, you’re never REALLY safe unless you’re on top, unless the only power is you, not principles not axioms not morality. you.
Precisely.
Sure, I took Elmo as a reference, bit I should have said the 1%, or the establishment or whatever.
The 1% needs a basement to stay on. The wider it get, the more stable it will be. Since the piramid it’s not getting taller anymore, they’re trying to make it wider at the bottom.
That’s still about power not wealth.
I don’t understand why you care so much, for me money and power get along 🤷
In our system they are synonymous
I think so.
It might do a difference in some situations, but probably not here.
AOC for example as a lot of power if compared to her wealth, while Musk sucks at politics and needs the money to achive power. At the same time AOC is galaxies away from the power Musk has just because of his money.
Putin for example wants to hide it, but he’s not only powerful, before the war was worth 200 billions. I see money and power like interchangeable things.
No shit, and how does quantifying our misery help? Like, “Congratulations, ‘you people’ are more miserable than others. See? I made a chart.”
Fuck off.
First step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is a problem.
“Hey dude, you feel miserable? Well you’re not alone, and maybe we can start to think about why we all feel miserable”.
You’re just seeing a perfectly reasonable study in the worst light possible, because you and most of us have been made to feel like shit about our lives.
Those of us in our mid-50s aren’t exactly happy either right now.
You still at least had the option to buy a house. But yeah I get it.
Slightly related perhaps, at least if you’re an HBS grad.
Portion of job-seeking Harvard Business School students who were unemployed three months after graduation
- in 2022 : 1/10
- In 2024 : 1/4
From Harper’s Index 4/2025
Harvard business bros is how we got into this mess in the first place. Quarterly targets are a scourge on humanity.
Jack fucking Welch is why we have this mess, the rest are just imitators.
Maybe having money hungry dads who were in their 20s in the 80s when Regan was creaming his pleats over deregulating banks and Wall Street who then went on to send their wet socks to business schools was a scam all along.
I’m 41 and I’ve been miserable since elementary school.
anyone paying attention in the US should be
this country has been fucked since at least 9/11 and citizens united
Definitely, I remember being a senior in high school the day 9/11 happened and even then I felt that the world was going to change and not change for the better.
“but look how much technology you’ve gotten to see as it evolved every 3 years.”
Tech can fuck off. All these technological advances have served some Capitalist at the expense of imploding the middle class, or distracting the masses with some shiny bauble while shareholders extort more flesh each quarter.
If tech advances don’t create a rising tide, they’re just a tool for exploitation.
Its me, hi, im the problem it’s me
I think you should identify as a problem instead of identifying as the problem if possible. The former attitude has more ‘spunk’ as the yanks say.
Are you me?
Could be, we’re are these voices coming from?
They’re me too. Hello, us!
Israel ranked 8th in 2025, if I recall correctly. 8th happiest country on earth, higher than my country (UK) or USA. Mind you, in 2024 they were 5th happiest so its not all sunshine and roses for the IDF. For comparison, I could not find rankings for Palestine or Hamas.
Makes me wonder exactly what they were measuring as ‘happiness’, how they measure it, and who they asked!?! They certainly did not ask Israelis opposed to genocide and doing their best to put Netanyahu in gaol - I have Israeli friends like this and they are off the chart miserable right now.
I guess MAGA cultists of all ages, Nazis, Christo-fascists, first-time Gen Z male voters enthralled by the triumph of the Trump, that Alpha Male so adored by the not gay but straight very straight get that right straight as straight as Vance he’s married and she’s not his beard manly Manosphere influncers like that guy whose name I forgot but was accused of rape in Romania, or the Gen Z Betas 100% in bed with the incels (so to speak), plus Tesla customers, and OpenAI employees, plus anyone who shot his balls off to own the libs, are all enjoying peak happiness right now - actually their Venn diagram is just one big happy circle. So cheer up, USA, its not bleak for everyone! /s.
Seriously, this happiness ranking is clickbait bullshit, don’t let it spoil your day.
