I used to travel to the U.S. every year or two for this or that and I always left thinking about just how stressed out I'd be if I had to live there. There's a sense of having to have your "guard up" so much. That someone or something is always out to screw you. That you need gates on your communities. That your kids' school is going to get shot up. That cops might be the enemy. That you'll depend on someone in a moment of vulnerability and you'll be part of the wrong tribe. That you're a medical event away from financial catastrophe. That even when you have medical insurance, they're trying to screw you. That healthcare is tied to employment. That your government really wants to !@#$ you and your civic duty is becoming a full-time job.
I think it's possible that a lot of this is subjective personal bias, and people may tell me it's not actually that bad. But I also wonder if the people who have to live their lives in it long term are just used to it. And if they were to step outside of it for long enough like this blogger, they might detox from the stress.
I think what I do know for sure is that "it's like this everywhere" feels certainly wrong. Everywhere is different and I don't accept that every single form of different is equal. There are better and worse versions of different.
I think that is a cause: if you are gated off in a secure area, you care less about the safety of wider society. You will want to spend less on the police etc.
> That your kids' school is going to get shot up.
its really not that likely. A kid in the US is far more likely to die on the way to school than get shot at school, but the former is a fear people have adjusted to.
The medical insurance tied to your job is weird and scary.
Nearly everything you said is inaccurate for the vast majority of the US, and it's obvious you have projected a lot of vaguely accurate online news reports across the nation as a whole.
Ontario -> DFW a bunch, San Diego, Bay Area, NYC, Boston, Buffalo, Nashville, Orlando, Atlanta, Numerous rural nowheres in Wisconsin (it's a long story), DC. Just what comes to the top of my head that I've visited as an adult for longer than a week.
Admittedly I haven't been in a few years. Maybe things have been getting much better there!
I have had bouts of strong desire to move to the US, but I can't get past the uncomfortable feeling that you need to constantly have your back up. Unless you're super-wealthy, it just seems a hard place to exist.
> Every time I leave the US, I’m always struck by how happy other people seem to be.
Every time I visit a place I get the impression that people are happier, but it's just an impression based on something you notice and experience for a very short amount of time. You'll see happy and desperate people anywhere, I don't think it has to do with the place.
> Actually, I think I say that about everywhere I travel.
I try not to make any judgement about people, their life and other things based on a few days or at most a few weeks of travel in that place. It is tempting to say things based on a very limited experience on a very limited people in a very limited place.
I think the phenomenon you mention is definitely real, but equally it is true that there are simply places where there are higher proportions of happy to sad people, borne variously of climate, socioeconomic context, culture, social fabric, political histories etc. To avoid the truth that some environments yield happier people is to be needlessly defensive and disingenuous IMO. FWIW -- my bias -- I find America to be a sadder place to be, on various subjectives. It is individualistic just as the author alludes to; the normative fabric does not invite communal multi-generational wellbeing nor filial duties or general actionable concern for fellow person. Compared to my experiences in Bangkok, Beijing, Oslo, even London, there is simply a better structure for welfare communally without everything needing to be a capitalistic fever dream. That said, there is _absolutely_ stark contrasts between Austin, Boulder, SF, NY. The US is a gloriously massive place with such diversity, but its economic and political reality does its people and communities a disservice.
I'm living in Thailand, the self-declared Land of Smiles, and ... it's not very smiley.
I visit Japan, which social media seems to say is a terrible place to work and make friends, and it strikes me as much more friendly and outgoing. Same when I'm in the States, where I find it far easier to strike up a random conversation and enjoy the nods on the sidewalk.
Somehow I think the core differences is wherever you spend the most time, the gilding wears off and there's a core discontent underneath everything everywhere if you stay long enough.
I think this was where "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" comes from.
My perpetually-single friend is always complaining that there "aren't any good single women" in his area. When he visits other places, he inevitably reports on how much nicer and prettier the women are there.
I wonder if the author would feel different about a place he was visiting if he stayed there for a few years.
There's also the concept that "familiarity breeds contempt" and there seems to be some evidence to support this.
There is a whole genre of videos on YouTube where Europeans in the U.S. for the World Cup rave about how happy and friendly the locals are. Click on one and your feed fills up with them. These mostly start with saying that this is in rural America, away from the big cities. As a rural American that is my impression too. The people I bump into at the local one-horse town gas station are routinely more open and friendly than the ones in Albuquerque.
The author is comparing the locals to people in Baja California. Based on the above I'll predict that his locals are urban.
If your only experience with other countries are 2-3 week vacations then yes, those people will always be exceedingly kind to you. They are more than happy to be kind to you since A, you will be leaving soon and B, you are paying a good chunk of $$$ to be there.
The fact the author was able to take a multiple day vacation to several top Mexican resorts is exceedingly ironic. The meals he ate and the resorts he stayed at are probably on accessible to 10% of the entire Mexican population. Those around him made around $750 USD per month. A night at any of those resorts probably runs around that amount.
If you visit a small town in the USA and stay in a nice bed and breakfast, you will find the country has the same quaint charm as several places abroad.
About 30% are happy with a Nazi takeover of government with the stated goal of a whiter government and deportation and concentration camps. About 50% are ok with the idea of it if gas and groceries weren't so expensive. 65% if you specifically ask white men.
Many of the rest of us are aware of this and worried we won't be allowed to vote our way out of it. If that ends up being the case millions of us might die.
Of the 50% of us who didn't vote for this the overwhelming majority are cowards who won't do anything.
We aren't good people collectively. We are in a word garbage.
The article doesn’t mention moving to another country, working a local job and enjoying it.
America is absolutely great if you get lucky and want to make a ton of money. I messed up, I didn’t do well on my Amazon or Meta interviews. But say I did 6 or 7 years ago.
Assuming I survived long enough for the 4 year vesting period I’d already have enough to retire. The world is full of safer and cheaper places,
No other country really offers this opportunity. My own career, dropping out of college and coding Unity games until I magically had a 6 figure career , is largely an American dream.
On the flip side, in almost every other developed country people don’t choose between medicine and rent.
Let’s say you have a chronic , but manageable health condition and a great job. You get fired in May, your wife files for divorce in September and you can be homeless by Christmas.
Now you’re in a shelter without the basic medic treatment you need.
Somehow it’s your fault. Tariffs destroyed your employers business, your fault.
If a bank needs a bailout golly gosh no expense shall be spared. A peasant can’t make rent this month, should have worked harder.
Combined with the prosperity gospel and if you suffer on the streets it means you made God angry or something. An infinite all powerful being and he’s upset you ate meat on the wrong day.
To be honest I dream of moving to a country where senseless stupid violence isn’t the norm. Maybe I’d have a kid and tell him that America is basically Disneyland if the rides occasionally derailed.
I disagree to the maximum extent possible. I have lived in 6 countries. Americans to me are by far most friendly and supportive of new ideas.
When you are visiting a place, you see it with rosy eyes. You are not forced to deal with the day to day difficulties of life, the commute, the commitments, the finances, the outrage about politics and so on. So, comparing the harsh reality of 'back home' against an environment where you don't have to deal with those is going to obviously come out different. When you live in a country for a while, only then the so-called 'bitterness' catches up to you.
Completely agree. I've lived - as in truly "lived", having a job, staying at least a full year, and having to do "real life things" - in 3 different countries before coming to the US and Americans are exactly like you said.
I always have to laugh at people who form an opinion on other countries based on their "2 week vacation" there.
It wouldn't, because the vast majority of people whining about how terrible the US is and how great it is elsewhere aren't welcome elsewhere because they aren't a net benefit to their community.
I'm American but moved to Europe years ago where I am definitely happier. I like the superstitious idea that the American continent is cursed from the deaths of 55 million native Americans since the discovery of the western hemisphere. I mean, I do t believe it but it does make a good story.
Sure, horrible things happened. But a big part of those deaths was the new diseases that people had no developed immunity to. It was bound to happen sooner or later.
Well, for one, the world changes around us in ways that necessitate innovation. But even if it didn't, if life can be better, why wouldn't you want that?
I never said it's wrong to want life to be better. Life is life. If someone finds enjoyment in a different way or pace of life, that's fine. The world's gonna do what the world's gonna do - some people want to be at the forefront, while others want to go with the flow or chill out.
It's so interesting how I feel the same way about where I live now... and even more interesting that every time I visit the US, people seem happier there than anywhere I've been before.
We can fix it with leadership and mentoring younger people. I'm trying to do this every single day. I love the spirit of people. I love the United States and what it has given me and my family growing up. You can project positive change and it doesn't have to be such a dark place. Look around you at the beauty. Be the change for the world and ultimately yourself.
> Every time I leave the US, I’m always struck by how happy other people seem to be.
Seems more than a little rose-tinted. I live in the UK and I can certify that there is a lot of misery here. Overloaded NHS, lack of housing, the Byzantine benefits and tax structures, lack of good jobs, etc.
Personally, I like living in the UK, despite all, but I also liked working in the US last time I did in the 1990s. Things have (obviously, Trumpism etc.) changed there, I guess.
I agree with the need for an empirical reality check, but have grown really skeptical about these kinds of cohort-level well-being measures.
I wouldn't say they're meaningless, but there's a lot of studies suggesting they don't really change much over time, and my sense is they don't change in tandem with events that should change well-being, except in extremes like widespread genocidal war.
There's even researchers who have kind of taken them seriously to suggest that people have social cognitive biases about the past, and societal changes. I respect them and think what they're suggesting is reasonable (in the sense that they're taking the measures seriously) but the other way of looking at it is to flip it around and raise the possibility that the aggregation-level measurement isn't tracking what we want it to.
I admit I don't have an alternative, and don't think they're worthless per se, I just feel like (as someone who does vaguely related research) like they're tracking something more akin to perceptual sets or world schemas than psychosocial functioning.
I guess at some level I always have the "everything is fine" dog meme in the back of my mind when I see these kinds of well-being or mood analyses.
As someone who does _very_ related research, I'd push back on your skepticism.
I recommend Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". It very accessibly addresses almost every point you raised.
In particular, people have very bad intuitions about trauma and loss. Humans are shockingly adaptable and bounce back to full functioning and happiness almost all of the time. Provided you don't have a biased sample (such as people seeking care) this is equally apparent when talking to victims of trauma as when doing empirical research.
Well, you went to one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I wouldn't want to leave either.
On a more substantial comment, people seem much more happy in appearance and on specific moments than what they actually are. The grass is always greener on the other side, etc. The solution is and has always been to try to be satisfied (not happy) with what you have wherever you are.
>We don’t care for our children, our elderly, or our communities.
This is truly an issue and imo it has reached unprecedented lows.
Its excuses. American capitalism gives us endless excuses for why our individual excess and waste is justified because someone else does it too. Then we get more excuses to blame the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the foreigners, the Jews, the Muslims, the africans, etc.
At the end of the day, a lot of Americans say they are one person while their actions prove otherwise. This creates a lot of shame, self hatred, confusion, anxiety, etc. The way Americans self describe vs who their actions say they are is vastly different. Then we blame the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the deep state, foreigners, etc.
"I love the environment" as we vote for a oil baron. "I love animals" as we shove more beef and dairy into our mouths and buy a 3rd chihuahua that poos/pees on pee pads cuz someone can't be bothered to let it out. I'd be confused about who I am if I said one thing and did another.
In modern America the individual can do no wrong. It is always someone elses fault. There is always a scapegoat to let us off the hook. DID YOU KNOW OIL COMPANIES MADE MO MONEY? Keep driving that SUV and buying beef watered in the desert.
You can count on Americans to do the right thing, after we've tried everything else and run out of excuses.
Americans are, according to our own logic, the most beautifully gifted society to ever exist while simultaneously being the biggest victims ever.
The sad part? We all know it and refuse to acknowledge or do anything about it. Its just easier to blame someone else, such as datacenters, or be a victim at the mercy of billionaires, while I get my $7 starbucks mocha. I'm sad, I'll get 2 mochas.
Americans live simultaneously under Manifest Destiny and being slaves. It's wild. We are the greatest and the most victimized people to ever exist.
Sebastian Major from the podcast Our Fake History recently said that Americans are masters at branding. That's another way of saying we're masters at lying. To ourselves and others.
*obviously these are generalizations and most people will disagree with me. I'm not wrong. Start to look for it. You'll see it on both sides of the political spectrum in various forms. It's entitlement all around. Look for it when liberals say "give em a break, life is hard" as a person consumes 3x more than is reasonable. Look for it when conservatives say "God blessed this country and the Muslims are invading". They're not much different.
What nonsense. Of course, everything always looks so great when you're on vacation. Living somewhere full time and visiting for a few weeks is not the same.
There are plenty of kind, generous, happy people in the US. Wasn't there a gazillion memes about it during the World Cup?
This reads like twitter-level rage bait seriously.
A far less compelling narrative is to handwave it away as "it's not really the system." The hyper-competition that capitalism breeds (for relatively little benefit) is the moral bane. More specifically, the recent history of touting capitalism while demonizing socialism has caused this shift, as opposed to the era of the New Deal, when social safety nets and public works were promoted as a net good. While there is a bill to pay for some programs (such as Social Security), the broader approach has largely been vindicated. Capitalism has produced severe wealth inequality, benefiting only a select few and breeding blatant corruption.
Not to defend the down votes, but it's not just one thing. The article praises the attitudes of Mexicans and French folk, both of which are also capitalist countries.
It's capitalism to an extent, sure, but it's also the culture of a country.
There are few, if any, countries which have taken capitalism to the same extremes the US has. The concept of a country which is so at the mercy of capitalists that people will beg you not to call an ambulance for them when they’re injured is incredibly foreign to me despite living in the UK, a country renowned for its financial sector.
Which I guess is to say yes, it is the culture of a country, and the culture of the US strikes me as money above all else.
Well, the "fat" part is true, the US is #2 in obesity among developed countries. In many education metrics we are average or below average compared to the OECD countries (despite spending more than others) - let's round it out to "average". The others are less measurable.
OP's shining example of Mexico is essentially as obese[0], and far less educated[1] than Americans on average. It's embarrassing to be this blind to the state of things when you have the resources to check your opinions for accuracy.
I think it's possible that a lot of this is subjective personal bias, and people may tell me it's not actually that bad. But I also wonder if the people who have to live their lives in it long term are just used to it. And if they were to step outside of it for long enough like this blogger, they might detox from the stress.
I think what I do know for sure is that "it's like this everywhere" feels certainly wrong. Everywhere is different and I don't accept that every single form of different is equal. There are better and worse versions of different.
I think that is a cause: if you are gated off in a secure area, you care less about the safety of wider society. You will want to spend less on the police etc.
> That your kids' school is going to get shot up.
its really not that likely. A kid in the US is far more likely to die on the way to school than get shot at school, but the former is a fear people have adjusted to.
The medical insurance tied to your job is weird and scary.
Nearly everything you said is inaccurate for the vast majority of the US, and it's obvious you have projected a lot of vaguely accurate online news reports across the nation as a whole.
Admittedly I haven't been in a few years. Maybe things have been getting much better there!
Every time I visit a place I get the impression that people are happier, but it's just an impression based on something you notice and experience for a very short amount of time. You'll see happy and desperate people anywhere, I don't think it has to do with the place.
> Actually, I think I say that about everywhere I travel.
That's it.
But as an American who has spent decades in Europe (across five different countries), I'm confident that this isn't just a mistaken impression.
I visit Japan, which social media seems to say is a terrible place to work and make friends, and it strikes me as much more friendly and outgoing. Same when I'm in the States, where I find it far easier to strike up a random conversation and enjoy the nods on the sidewalk.
Somehow I think the core differences is wherever you spend the most time, the gilding wears off and there's a core discontent underneath everything everywhere if you stay long enough.
I think this was where "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" comes from.
My perpetually-single friend is always complaining that there "aren't any good single women" in his area. When he visits other places, he inevitably reports on how much nicer and prettier the women are there.
I wonder if the author would feel different about a place he was visiting if he stayed there for a few years.
There's also the concept that "familiarity breeds contempt" and there seems to be some evidence to support this.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-23056-008
The author is comparing the locals to people in Baja California. Based on the above I'll predict that his locals are urban.
"People who live in small towns and rural areas are happier than everyone else, researchers say". -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/17/peopl...
The fact the author was able to take a multiple day vacation to several top Mexican resorts is exceedingly ironic. The meals he ate and the resorts he stayed at are probably on accessible to 10% of the entire Mexican population. Those around him made around $750 USD per month. A night at any of those resorts probably runs around that amount.
If you visit a small town in the USA and stay in a nice bed and breakfast, you will find the country has the same quaint charm as several places abroad.
Many of the rest of us are aware of this and worried we won't be allowed to vote our way out of it. If that ends up being the case millions of us might die.
Of the 50% of us who didn't vote for this the overwhelming majority are cowards who won't do anything.
We aren't good people collectively. We are in a word garbage.
The article doesn’t mention moving to another country, working a local job and enjoying it.
America is absolutely great if you get lucky and want to make a ton of money. I messed up, I didn’t do well on my Amazon or Meta interviews. But say I did 6 or 7 years ago.
Assuming I survived long enough for the 4 year vesting period I’d already have enough to retire. The world is full of safer and cheaper places,
No other country really offers this opportunity. My own career, dropping out of college and coding Unity games until I magically had a 6 figure career , is largely an American dream.
On the flip side, in almost every other developed country people don’t choose between medicine and rent.
Let’s say you have a chronic , but manageable health condition and a great job. You get fired in May, your wife files for divorce in September and you can be homeless by Christmas.
Now you’re in a shelter without the basic medic treatment you need.
Somehow it’s your fault. Tariffs destroyed your employers business, your fault.
If a bank needs a bailout golly gosh no expense shall be spared. A peasant can’t make rent this month, should have worked harder.
Combined with the prosperity gospel and if you suffer on the streets it means you made God angry or something. An infinite all powerful being and he’s upset you ate meat on the wrong day.
To be honest I dream of moving to a country where senseless stupid violence isn’t the norm. Maybe I’d have a kid and tell him that America is basically Disneyland if the rides occasionally derailed.
When you are visiting a place, you see it with rosy eyes. You are not forced to deal with the day to day difficulties of life, the commute, the commitments, the finances, the outrage about politics and so on. So, comparing the harsh reality of 'back home' against an environment where you don't have to deal with those is going to obviously come out different. When you live in a country for a while, only then the so-called 'bitterness' catches up to you.
I always have to laugh at people who form an opinion on other countries based on their "2 week vacation" there.
This to me is the nub of it. Where is our humanity when people lie homeless and lifeless in stupor on the streets as Waymos glide by?
Some countries do better. Many don't. But we should always seek to model off those that put welfare of all people above welfare of one.
We've decided that those people have agency, and are not willing to force them into a facility against their will.
You can disagree with it, but that's the current choice the nation has made and it's not an invalid one.
Also, most people do care for their children, elderly, and communities. The US is not a failed state because not 100% of people or munipalities do.
> But we should always seek to model off those that put welfare of all people above welfare of one.
No thanks.
That's okay. :)
Seems more than a little rose-tinted. I live in the UK and I can certify that there is a lot of misery here. Overloaded NHS, lack of housing, the Byzantine benefits and tax structures, lack of good jobs, etc.
Personally, I like living in the UK, despite all, but I also liked working in the US last time I did in the 1990s. Things have (obviously, Trumpism etc.) changed there, I guess.
https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction
I wouldn't say they're meaningless, but there's a lot of studies suggesting they don't really change much over time, and my sense is they don't change in tandem with events that should change well-being, except in extremes like widespread genocidal war.
There's even researchers who have kind of taken them seriously to suggest that people have social cognitive biases about the past, and societal changes. I respect them and think what they're suggesting is reasonable (in the sense that they're taking the measures seriously) but the other way of looking at it is to flip it around and raise the possibility that the aggregation-level measurement isn't tracking what we want it to.
I admit I don't have an alternative, and don't think they're worthless per se, I just feel like (as someone who does vaguely related research) like they're tracking something more akin to perceptual sets or world schemas than psychosocial functioning.
I guess at some level I always have the "everything is fine" dog meme in the back of my mind when I see these kinds of well-being or mood analyses.
I recommend Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". It very accessibly addresses almost every point you raised.
In particular, people have very bad intuitions about trauma and loss. Humans are shockingly adaptable and bounce back to full functioning and happiness almost all of the time. Provided you don't have a biased sample (such as people seeking care) this is equally apparent when talking to victims of trauma as when doing empirical research.
Because of that, most people see what they feel internally.
Well, you went to one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I wouldn't want to leave either.
On a more substantial comment, people seem much more happy in appearance and on specific moments than what they actually are. The grass is always greener on the other side, etc. The solution is and has always been to try to be satisfied (not happy) with what you have wherever you are.
>We don’t care for our children, our elderly, or our communities.
This is truly an issue and imo it has reached unprecedented lows.
> We don’t care for our children, our elderly, or our communities. It’s all me me me. How do I get mine and fuck the other guy.
Capitalism, I'm looking at you.
At the end of the day, a lot of Americans say they are one person while their actions prove otherwise. This creates a lot of shame, self hatred, confusion, anxiety, etc. The way Americans self describe vs who their actions say they are is vastly different. Then we blame the rich, the poor, the immigrants, the deep state, foreigners, etc.
"I love the environment" as we vote for a oil baron. "I love animals" as we shove more beef and dairy into our mouths and buy a 3rd chihuahua that poos/pees on pee pads cuz someone can't be bothered to let it out. I'd be confused about who I am if I said one thing and did another.
In modern America the individual can do no wrong. It is always someone elses fault. There is always a scapegoat to let us off the hook. DID YOU KNOW OIL COMPANIES MADE MO MONEY? Keep driving that SUV and buying beef watered in the desert.
You can count on Americans to do the right thing, after we've tried everything else and run out of excuses.
Americans are, according to our own logic, the most beautifully gifted society to ever exist while simultaneously being the biggest victims ever.
The sad part? We all know it and refuse to acknowledge or do anything about it. Its just easier to blame someone else, such as datacenters, or be a victim at the mercy of billionaires, while I get my $7 starbucks mocha. I'm sad, I'll get 2 mochas.
Americans live simultaneously under Manifest Destiny and being slaves. It's wild. We are the greatest and the most victimized people to ever exist.
Sebastian Major from the podcast Our Fake History recently said that Americans are masters at branding. That's another way of saying we're masters at lying. To ourselves and others.
*obviously these are generalizations and most people will disagree with me. I'm not wrong. Start to look for it. You'll see it on both sides of the political spectrum in various forms. It's entitlement all around. Look for it when liberals say "give em a break, life is hard" as a person consumes 3x more than is reasonable. Look for it when conservatives say "God blessed this country and the Muslims are invading". They're not much different.
There are plenty of kind, generous, happy people in the US. Wasn't there a gazillion memes about it during the World Cup?
This reads like twitter-level rage bait seriously.
It's capitalism to an extent, sure, but it's also the culture of a country.
Which I guess is to say yes, it is the culture of a country, and the culture of the US strikes me as money above all else.
100% wrong. Didn’t even bother reading after that
The US rank 9th in terms of tertiary education in the world, so no, not "average'. And even average wouldn't translate to "uneducated".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index