the other issue is jobs are going overseas, and we are importing more than ever.... and soon AI will be here... so it's gonna get worse
thats prolly part of it, but the primary expense in cost of living is housing, which until quite recently, wasn't particularly subject to 'corps' being able to raise prices. Since fedgov openned up the housing market to investment firms around 2010 or so, they have been buying up quite a lot of housing to turn into rentals which is certainly driving up cost of housing, but as of a year or so ago, that still comprised less than 10% of the rental market. Technically speaking, everyone who sells their home for more than they bought it for is to 'blame' for the increasing costs of housing... and so long as home prices are so directly tied foundationally to the health of our economy, there isn't really anything to be done about it. Another way to look at it is the value of real estate relative to the value of everything else. Even taking inflation into account (sortof...), the cost of buying a home has increased about 1000% relative to average income since the 1950s, and the vast bulk of that increase occurred before the market was openned up to corporate investment firms ...though certainly that is making the problem worse.
Oddly enough women were happier before they had those "rights." When are progressives going to recognize that their "progress" makes people unhappy.
the cost of everything, and everything is made cheaper, so you have to replace things more often too - it's called planned obsolescence
There is a good point there, and while its true that things tend to be made shittier now, its also true that people are both less capable and less interested in making/fixing things themselves than they used to be. Which is frankly ridiculous, because I've never looked up 'how to fix X' on youtube and not found a thousand DIY tutorials on how to do it.
they design them so it cost almost as much to fix them as buy new the digital parts are not cheap, 380 for the display board to fix my last washer and then you're only hoping that works they don't seal your phone so you can't replace the battery for nothing, they want you to buy a new phone when the battery dies
washer dryers, tv's, most things with modern digital circuit boards and software, same with cars I wish I could buy a new vehicle, washing machine, dryer etc from the past my current Truck is over 20 years old, and still going, none of that fancy stuff they add today and cloud based products are even worse, hear about Tesla locking a customer out of using all of his battery unless he paid them ransom for it "Tesla Software-Locked a Customer's Battery Pack's 80-Mile Range, then Demanded $4,500 for Repair" https://www.itechpost.com/articles/...mers-battery-packs-80-mile-range-demanded.htm "Tesla owner says he’s locked out after battery died, replacement costs $26K" https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/canadian-man-says-tesla-locked-out-until-changes-battery
Have you ever noticed that conservatives think that rights make people miserable and that people are far happier when they're oppressed? Except for themselves, of course.
many on the right are anti-freedom and anti-equal rights, they want big daddy government choosing for us
In other words, THEM, since they see government as their creature. Yet their main activity seems to be objecting very strongly if anyone does that to them.
Don’t agree. Before no fault divorce, oral contraception and striving for equal rights, women were not happier. A cow like existence of raising children and housework is pretty uninspiring unless you have no ambition to be a person in your own right and are happy being a subset of your husband and children’s group. I’m surprised that old blokes think they know “what’s best” for the little woman.
I can only go by what the social scientists who study such things say. They say women were happier based on surveys conducted at the time.
Which is why the girls in Afghanistan, are so much happier, now that the Taliban has ended, all but their most basic education? You draw a specious connection, between "rights," "independence," and "unhappiness," or misery. It only makes sense, that someone who believes their life has great potential, has more sources for potential disappointment. For someone who expects nothing but drudgery, from their life, I suppose there might be more reason to be "satisfied," that they are getting that, from their life. But this is hardly a rationale for attempting to lower women's hopes. Even for someone who accepted that defective argument-- as a practical matter, it is irrelevant, because once you give a prisoner of circumstance, a taste of freedom, that genie will not go back (at least with ignorant bliss) into that bottle. This is why-- if you can pull yourself from the admiring of your own thoughts, to take a look at the world, outside-- Iranian women are leading the fight back against the repressive, stereotype-enforcing theocracy, in Iran. Why wouldn't, if your proposed theory were correct, these women not be far happier than American women? Though this question may be overly presumptuous of me: perhaps your data shows that Iranian women are happier, than women in the West?
May be confined to the US. “DUBNER: You know, happiness in the U.S. has fallen over time for both women and men, although it’s fallen more for women. And COVID brought what the authors call “a particularly sharp fall, unseen in 50 years.” There is a slight silver lining here. The authors write, “Women’s wellbeing is much more volatile than men’s, which has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Although it does seem to have,” they write, “greater resilience.” In other words, women bounced lower, but then recovered. DUCKWORTH: But then they rebounded. DUBNER: They rebounded more than men, but they didn’t rebound so high that their happiness level is higher than men’s.” https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-women-really-less-happy-than-men/
This one seems to be the primary study on the subject https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.1.2.190
Men tend to be more stoic than women. So that can explain a discrepancy. Also something I've observed with women in general is they tend to place a high value on status. Men only seem to because that's what women want and men want women. Trying to keep up with the Joneses is not a recipe for happiness. In fact when you stop caring about status it tends to make you happier. I'm betting fewer men use social media compared to women. Men are probably perfectly happy with an apartment instead of a house, an old Toyota instead of a BMW. Men don't need or want coach handbags. So being leveraged in debt to try and maintain an image might be part of it. I don't think it's really just one thing. I think part of it is emphasis on education and achievement and most men just don't really place that much value in that when looking for partners. It would be interesting to see happiness levels in relation to education. Women who are more educated have a higher likelihood of initiating divorce. So there might be something to this.
It's something that was studied going back to 2009 and likely further back than that. I don't think it's the overturning of roe v Wade. I would wager women who aborted their babies are likely less happy and all we have to do is look at the councilors that are hired by planned Parenthood to help women through their decision. If it wasn't traumatic they wouldn't need that.
That's quite possible but without any studies or evidence we can't really do anything but speculate. Perhaps it's the contempt for this meaningful and important endeavor that is causing less happiness. Raising children is the single most important job any human being will ever have. I consider this contempt for it suggesting that people that do it are little more than barn yard animals is not just misogynistic but misanthropic. It's possible many of them are very happily married to well adjusted women who raised our are raising a living family. It seems you sneer with contempt for that out of anything but happiness.