https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/economy-attitudes-republicans-democrats.html
Saw this today and it resonated - helping to square the circle on why Americans poll SOOOOOO grumpy while the objective economic data isn't bad.
It makes sense if you combine these insights with Putnam's - that a defining characteristic of this modern age is how reduced our social circles have become. Social media, in turn, fuels this unhappiness as the false images that engage doom scrollers are curated to suggest that everyone else is having a fab life (seriously - where are ALL these vanlifers that are able to remotely work in 200K+ vans??!!???)
But then also think about Cal (and we see it in some of the posts that get thorugh self filters) where those that can "donate" 7 figures to the NIL are those in the know and who have juice to determine policy at a public university while the rest of us peons can go to to the games or not go to the games depending on whether we want to or not ;-)
Saw this today and it resonated - helping to square the circle on why Americans poll SOOOOOO grumpy while the objective economic data isn't bad.
It makes sense if you combine these insights with Putnam's - that a defining characteristic of this modern age is how reduced our social circles have become. Social media, in turn, fuels this unhappiness as the false images that engage doom scrollers are curated to suggest that everyone else is having a fab life (seriously - where are ALL these vanlifers that are able to remotely work in 200K+ vans??!!???)
But then also think about Cal (and we see it in some of the posts that get thorugh self filters) where those that can "donate" 7 figures to the NIL are those in the know and who have juice to determine policy at a public university while the rest of us peons can go to to the games or not go to the games depending on whether we want to or not ;-)
Take care of your Chicken
