I know it's unpopular to ever say statistics show this generation is fine, because of course there's always a bunch of other troubling statistics, not to mention always people that are actually struggling.
But honestly, many people that feel hopeless can afford to put a few thousand in an ETF every year. That would likely be millions even adjusting for inflation after many years.
You can really tell from the comments those who didn't read the article and who are taking the headline extremely literally.
He quoted Shakespeare's MacBeth, "It is a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." when talking about he thinks sketch comedy is the greatest form of self expression, even moreso than poetry from people like Shakespeare.
It was forced by the interviewer for a clickbait flair. The headline ought to be "NYT would like to remind you that life is a meaningless farce":
Interviewer: There’s a holistic observation I want to make about our conversation. You talked about how the best times in your life were when your kids were little. Those times are over. You said the art form you love the most, sketch comedy, is a young man’s game. That’s over for you. Life? It’s a farce.
Have to push back on the "people shoved into cities" narrative. It just sounds like the conspiracy theories around "15 minutes cities" all over again.
An example of rewilding on its wikipedia page is "wildlife-friendly overpasses and underpasses". That's literally going the "making areas more friendly to wildlife" route.
When it comes to 15-minute cities there's all these conspiracies, but then you look behind it and it's just about allowing economic liberty to build taller and allow more commercial uses like doctors, daycares, and corner stores in residential neighborhoods, and restrict free government subsidized street parking.
It's good to be viligant, okay? And if any policies come up that are shoving people into cities, feel free to protest. But until then, a lot of the policies are actually exactly the "being more friendly to wildlife" that you're asking for and not shoving people into cities.
We've already had "rewilding" here. It was called the Highland Clearances. Thousands of people kicked off their ancestral land to be replaced by sheep, grouse moors and deer.
We have the misanthropic billionaire Tetrapak heir buying swathes of countryside in the same region and wanting to kick the remaining people off it.
There are plenty of policies pushing people into cities. It is becoming dearer and dearer to run any kind of vehicle in the countryside here, while there is a near lack of public transport in most places.
The trouble with the fifteen minute city idea is that physical facilities are gone in many cases and replaced by online ones. We don't consider doctors to be "commercial usage" here yet.
Unlike Jevons, [Carl] Menger [(1840–1921)] did not believe that goods provide “utils,” or units of utility. Rather, he wrote, goods are valuable because they serve various uses whose importance differs. For example, the first pails of water are used to satisfy the most important uses, and successive pails are used for less and less important purposes.
Menger used this insight to resolve the diamond-water paradox that had baffled Adam Smith (see marginalism). He also used it to refute the labor theory of value. Goods acquire their value, he showed, not because of the amount of labor used in producing them, but because of their ability to satisfy people’s wants. Indeed, Menger turned the labor theory of value on its head. If the value of goods is determined by the importance of the wants they satisfy, then the value of labor and other inputs of production (he called them “goods of a higher order”) derive from their ability to produce these goods. Mainstream economists still accept this theory, which they call the theory of “derived demand.”
Menger used his “subjective theory of value” to arrive at one of the most powerful insights in economics: both sides gain from exchange. People will exchange something they value less for something they value more. Because both trading partners do this, both gain. This insight led him to see that middlemen are highly productive: they facilitate transactions that benefit those they buy from and those they sell to. Without the middlemen, these transactions either would not have taken place or would have been more costly.
Why would you expect technological improvements to only shift supply curves right under perfect competition? I'd also expect it under oligopoly or even monopoly. You also might think there'd be more tech improvement under oligopoly, on Schumpeterian grounds that oligopolists can internalize the benefits of tech research.
A monopolist has no reason to decrease price because there is no competition. As we saw with Bell Labas in the US it is entirely possible for a monopoly to both have world class research and burry it for decades, viz. magnetic storage https://gizmodo.com/how-ma-bell-shelved-the-future-for-60-ye...
Technological improvements don't reduce prices as much in a monopoly, but they still do reduce prices to increase profits. Profit is always maximized at MR=MC, in perfect competition, oligopoly, or monopoly.
Ah yes, shinier trinkets while your material reality dissolves (unaffordable housing, childcare, school, poor jobs, poor benefits)! The neoliberal dream.
By who? The capitalist economists that presided over the 2008 financial crisis and its response? And the response to COVID that has seen inequality rocket?
The problem with your argument is it's whataboutism. Your argument's conclusion should be that even prescription drugs aren't necessarily good.
Really what is wrong is that most prescription drugs do show less tolerance. Yes, prescription drugs have tolerance, but not as fast as recreational drugs taken at recreational doses.
Pretty much although it's less about majority/minority preference and more about utilitarianism and economics.
It's possible a majority of pofeople would have been marginally happier with betamax than vhs. Even in that case, vhs can still win because a minority of people had a strong, stubborn preference for it, even if a majority of people had a weak preference for betamax.
If 1,000,000 people are willing to pay $5 more for video quality but 800,000 people are willing to pay $8 more for longer recording, which wins out?
Not to mention savings on the producer side are relevant too, not just consumer side.
I'm not saying the above is necessarily the case. Just pointing out that markets aren't majoritarian, they're utilitarian.
I agree that this would be a more interesting approach; I think you might need more incentives to create a flock though (aerodynamic benefits, predator protection, etc.)
I know it's unpopular to ever say statistics show this generation is fine, because of course there's always a bunch of other troubling statistics, not to mention always people that are actually struggling.
But honestly, many people that feel hopeless can afford to put a few thousand in an ETF every year. That would likely be millions even adjusting for inflation after many years.