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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

Excluding the microplastics thing, I think that your two latter points are actually both derived from the social media changes.

Life today for almost everyone in the West is better than ever before, but people are exposed to a lot of thought on social media that 1. life is worse now, 2. in your lifetime there will be terrible destruction happening, which contributes to a sense of fatalism and doom.

It is super appealing to the human psyche to think things are worse in [current-time period] than in the past. This is why there is an intuitive appeal to things like "Make America Great Again." Social media only amplifies this effect because people are exposed to things that are maximally appealing to their psyche.

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> Life today for almost everyone in the West is better than ever before,

I'm 60. You've just got to be joking.

When minimum wage was $3.30, a one-bedroom apartment cost $285. Now the same apartment is well over $2000.

My university tuition averaged about $1200 a year - that was about 10 35-hour weeks at minimum wage. But I got small scholarships that paid for it. My girlfriend worked in a sub shop two nights a week and had a summer job. No one went into debt.

One working parent could support a stay-at-home parent and pay off a mortgage.

Or you could work part-time and have a modest life and pursue your dream.

People just walked into career jobs right out of university.

Listening to young people today, unless they're in one of a small number of very much in demand fields, the idea of stability, steady advancement, or buying a home seem impossible.

Life today is better if you're already established, i.e. have a well paying job, own a home, etc.

Being young in todays world is exponentially harder than it was, say, 40 years ago. Many young people have given up on the idea of home ownership. I'm 26 and I've had friends laugh in my face when I suggested owning instead of renting. It's simply unattainable unless you're in a lucrative field. I'm in Canada for reference (our home price to income ratio is one of the worst in the world).

I think you are just falling to this same nostalgia bias.

In terms of the material abundance that one experiences today, it is just on a different level from 40 years ago.

Housing ownership is also not the be all end all. And while the prices are higher, the rates are lower so that you will not be paying a greater proportion of your income on housing.

Compare to 40 years ago: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP

To look at housing and say that the high price of homes negates all quality of life improvements in the last 40 years seems wrong to me.

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