There's been a 20x increase in diabetes over the past 70 years. Suicide rates are the highest since WWII, and on par with Great Depression rates. Let's not mention climate change and inequality because that's cliche.
These are things that we do measure. What about the percentage of one's time spent in a car? Spent sitting down? Spent in anxiety? Every thing you point out is a justification for an overscaled system IMO.
> I waited tables in a country club, worked in a cafe for a few years, and I worked at a terrible rental car company for awhile. I once saw my assistant manager throw someone through a plate glass window while shouting a slur I wouldn't type.
Then you should know that if you worked those jobs forever, you'd feel pretty shitty. Both you and the beggar could be staring at the same logos all day, seeing the same people, even be living on the same street, all while worrying that you might be next. Like I said - perhaps we can practice reading this time - it's not worse, it's just better by a much smaller amount than the typical SV techbro probably imagines.
If you think that then you've never had any serious interactions with the working poor, the homeless, or the addicted. It's miles better. No one is saying things are perfect, but Americans have a much higher material quality of life on average than at any point in the past.
I get it, you're some high and mighty doomer who wants to talk down to everyone and spew some over wrought jeremiad, good for you.
However, this assertion is the dumbest shit I've ever read.
> Both you and the beggar could be staring at the same logos all day, seeing the same people, even be living on the same street, all while worrying that you might be next. Like I said - perhaps we can practice reading this time - it's not worse, it's just better by a much smaller amount than the typical SV techbro probably imagines.
I can't imagine thinking that homelessness in the US vs low income work also in the US aren't wolds apart in life quality. You can look at any metric of disease, rates of violent crime victimization, life expectancy, and on and on and see that just being homeless makes you life demonstrably far worse than any alternative. Your position is totally divorced from data and clearly from any person insight.
Lmao there you go again. You can look at at anywhere but outside. You can cite anything but experience. Yes, my position is divorced from data, because fuck the data, it's not telling the whole story. I find it interesting for example that you're on the hype train when it comes to median income and whatever, but mentions of obesity and suicide rates are doomerism. You literally choose which statistics to interpret.
Here's what's happening. You think that once you're not homeless, you're suddenly not dealing with the same issues that you once were. If you stop and think about what these issues are, it's pretty clear that low SES people and homeless people share a lot in common. Here they are:
Mental health
Physical health
Physical safety (lesser)
Food security (lesser)
General unpleasantness (potentially lesser)
Spiritual health (potentially greater)
It's not crazy to think - again, unless you've made it and the only contact you have with the trenches is through metrics - that people with shitty jobs can have shitty lives. And personally, I'm not interested in quantifying how much shittier because that's inhumane. If someone is living a shit life, you have no right to tell them they're living better than someone else and wave their problems away while you have none. It's basic empathy really.