Since the US is the wealthiest country in the world, and therefore a minimum standard of living is accessible to the large majority of Americans, my approach to measuring the trends in US society is to look at inequality trends. Inequality (in income but especially in wealth) is the most extreme it has been in decades.

Inequality per se does not rub me the wrong way. Certain amount of inequality, i.e. capital accumulation, is needed for any capitalist society to take off (i.e. so that there are investors who can make big investments which help the process of development). Besides, inequality will always exist because we humans produce it naturally. For example, have you ever seen a bumper sticker that reads "My kid is average"? No, you have seen "My kid is an honors student at blah blah...", which is a way to say "My kid is better than yours". I always like to say that as long as humans have children, they will always be pushing for inequality, because no matter how much you care for society and other people, everyone will always put their kids first, and will try to get ahead of others as much as possible for the benefit of their kids. Since humans will always have kids, inequality will never go away.

Okay, that was a digression. The present situation with US inequality is as follows:

a) Extreme concentration of wealth in the top 5%, 1%, and 0.1% b) Capital accumulation of that nature is not needed for U.S. society to take off because it took off long ago c) A lot of that capital is largely being invested overseas, creating jobs overseas, or used in multiple ways that do not seem to lead to job creation in America. My view of this is that it largely benefits the world, but it does not benefit Americans.

My view of the long run is pessimistic. I do not foresee an improvement towards less inequality and gains in standard of living among the U.S. middle and working classes. And it's not that I hate the rich or envy them. I do neither. It's that an improvement in the prospects of the working and middle classes would necessarily be reflected in less inequality.

In the short term, we are just out of a very deep recession that caused a lot of damage. I don't think we should expect major progress in the short run. Economic history shows that the return of jobs after a major recession is always slow. But in a globalized world like ours, the prospects of all those jobs ever returning are rather slim. For the cost of one manufacturing worker in the U.S. one can hire five in China or India. If the U.S. worker wants five times the pay, he/she must produce five times the value, and while U.S. productivity is higher than Chinese or Indian productivity, they are rapidly catching up.

The Fall of Rome would never have happened if there were no internal struggles, people fighting amongst each other, constant complaints, corruptions, with a generally unhappy population. The barbarians and Germanic peoples wouldn't have succeded in raiding the western half of the Empire, either, if such problems did not arise. Once you have people fighting among themselves, outsiders will find it easy to exploit to their advantage.

Thanks for that alarm!~

However, it's a tempest in a tea pot. "Big Tuna" is actually <crawfb5>. Don't quote me on this, but currently <benji> is known only as "Medium Tuna."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...

I think the article exaggerates changes a little bit. The differences between surveys seem to be small. Also, the use of "ever", when the oldest record is from 2008, is pretty misleading.

On happiness and the economy: <The researchers noted that the improvements in emotional health occur at the same time as Americans' views improved on their standards of living, as well as economic confidence.>

Worst emotional well-being was at the peak of the recession:

I am reading this book because I do not believe in God (any longer), although this book can be quite useful to believers as well (the book is not hostile to religious beliefs, in fact it is quite open about all possibilities.) Folks who believe in God might find efficient ways of increasing their emotional well-being that are based on other, more religiously specific approaches. In general, I believe that when it comes to emotional well-being, there is no universal formula, but there is probably *something* out there that works for each of us. The variation may be based on the genetic differences between us, but also upbringing, etc.