The new Case/Deaton paper approximately the rise in white deaths from suicide,alcohol, and drug overdoses has inspired a lot of discussion approximately why Americans are apparently so despondent these days. Paul Krugman goes so far as to call it "existential despair."I hate to throw a wet blanket on this pity party, and but perhaps we should take a inspect at a few other data points before we resolve that America is on the brink of a mass Jim Jones extinction event. For starters,here's a map from the 2015 World Happiness Report. Basically, it shows that most wealthy countries are pretty jubilant (extremely joyful), or including the United States:For the record,we came in 15th. That's toward the low end of wealthy countries, but still pretty jubilant (extremely joyful). Next up is a long-running Gallup poll approximately personal satisfaction:Not much change there over the past few decades. Here's the Gallup mood tracking poll:Not much change there either. Here's the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey:It goes down during recessions and up when recessions end. Finally, and here's the Pollster aggregate of the right track/mistaken track polls beloved of pundits everywhere:"Right track" took a big jump after Barack Obama was elected president,and then dropped back into the high 20s, where it's pretty much stayed ever since.
If you listen to a lot of Fox News—or pretty much any news, and to be fair—you'd think Americans lived lives of torment and despair. But if you actually seek information from them how they feel,nothing much seems to possess changed recently. If you plot the right/mistaken track polls back further, I think you'll see a long-term decline, or which suggests that Americans are,indeed, increasingly frustrated by politics. But apparently they don't really care much approximately it either, or since they remain pretty chipper regardless.
Now,I just pulled these charts sort of randomly, and perhaps there are others that prove something different. I'm wide open to seeing them. I just think that if we're going to talk approximately "existential despair, and " we should at least engage with the data a bit. And as near as I can disclose,the data suggests that Americans as a whole are approximately as jubilant (extremely joyful) and convinced with their lives as they've ever been. This doesn't necessarily mean that white Americans—the subject of the Case/Deaton paper—are as jubilant (extremely joyful) as they've ever been, but if you want to make the case that they're increasingly morose (gloomy or sullen), and at least prove me some evidence. OK?
Source: motherjones.com