I don't know for sure how accurate this is, but it's certainly intriguing:
This comes from David Rozado, who says he used ChatGPT to "automatically label a longitudinal sample of 1.7 million headlines from 12 popular U.S. news media outlets."
If he's right, there was a big surge in pessimistic headlines in the late '60s and again around 2001, all against a backdrop of a steady increase ever since 1950. The two surges coincide with Vietnam and 9/11, but they never faded out. Headlines just reached a new level of pessimism and then kept increasing.
I'll spare you the long monologue, but I'm persistently befuddled about how pessimistic and angry and outraged so many people are these days. The headlines are just a symptom. My view is that anything even close to a clear look at things suggests that we are kicking ass these days. This isn't to say there are no problems—of course there are. There always are. We have climate change, COVID-19, declining life expectancy among the poor, and a war in Ukraine.
But the United States is the most powerful and dynamic country on earth, and it isn't even close. Our future is the brightest on the planet. Here in the US, economic growth is strong; incomes over time are up; poverty is down; social factors of all kinds are positive; democracy is strong despite the best efforts of Donald Trump and the MAGAnauts; fear of social media has almost no foundation in fact; technology is delivering marvels on practically a daily basis; crime is subdued; jobs are plentiful; and entrepreneurship is up.
But you sure wouldn't know it from our political discourse, which features two parties and a willing media that routinely portray every small setback as evidence the end times are nigh. It's maddening.
For printed journalism negativity sells copies
Jesus. That's some serious happy talk outta the OC today. Poverty might be "down" but it's probably the worst in the developed world. Ditto economic inequality. We're likely the very weakest rich country at building transport infrastructure. We have increasingly pernicious housing affordability issues in our most productive cities. Our democratic institutions most certainly aren't "strong" — they're weak and dysfunctional as fuck compared to other high income democracies (Supreme Court anyone? Senate?). We have the most ludicrous gun laws in the world, with no improvement as far as the eye can see. Hell, we're now actively conducting shooting drills in kindergartens. And let's not even get into fentanyl. Oh, almost forgot: world's worst (not even close) response to covid adjusted for wealth. And then there's the lack (still! after decades!) of a universal healthcare system.
It's not all bad in America, obviously. Our economy is fundamentally strong and our corporations often lead the world in their sectors. So if you own biggish chunks of those corporations, you're good to go!
And in the category of “Proving Kevin’s Point,” we have a leader.
And in the category of “Proving Kevin’s Point,” we have a leader.
Communist China now enjoys longer life expectancy than the United States of America. If that factoid doesn't break through to the denialist crowd, nothing will, or can.
(I mean, can you just imagine the reaction of a typical American circa 1968 to that news? I frankly cannot.)
Jasper - spot on.
Things are absolutely worse:
1) Nixon's racist southern strategy, Powell Memo 1971
2) War on Drugs
3) Reagan's trickle up destruction of the middle class
4) Destruction of Unions
5) Overturning Fairness Doctrine (Bork & Scalia)
6) Relaxation of monopoly media ownership (Newt and Rupert)
7) Koch Bros Stand Your Ground laws
8) W/Cheney Iraq War debacle and crash of 2008
9) Citizens United
10) Trump/Comey/Fox/Putin theft of 2016 White House
11) Holder vs Shelby County w/subsequent GOP voter suppression
12) Packing of SCOTUS with right wing Christianist loons
13) Accelerated man-made global warming
Other than that, NO PROBLEM!
This statistic is, uh, I don't know how to even describe it. "Outrage" doesn't even begin to do it justice:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2380763-the-maternal-death-rate-in-the-us-has-more-than-doubled-since-1999/
It's good to be the King! - Mel Brookes
Only little people pay taxes. - Leona Helmsley
adjusted for inflation I’ve continuously made a ton more than my dad did at the same age. but my house is smaller and in a worse place than where I grew up, it took me until age 40 to buy it, my spouse also has to work, we missed our window for having kids cause we couldn’t afford them, we both have student loan debt we’ll never pay off, and we’re not sure we’ll ever retire. but GDP per capita is higher, so it’s all good. jfc, learn the difference between a mean and a median.
and that’s before we get into the world being on fire, kids getting shot at school, and the Republican party going proto-fash.
adjusted for inflation I’ve continuously made a ton more than my dad did at the same age
And your situation is very far indeed from universal. Just ask any blue collar family.
This is a pretty straightforward development from Republicans' style of politics. In the time of Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan Republicans took up the cause of White Christian Supremacy, while continuously trying to reduce the role of government. Granting equal rights to non-whites is a real threat to many people, and they react with the usual irrational group instincts. When the race/tribe/nation/religion is threatened it becomes a life or death matter. Everything the other side does is portrayed as wrong and likely to lead to catastrophe.
Faced with what are now real threats to democracy, liberals also call the alarm.
The US had been united in WW II - nothing unites a country like killing foreigners. Then the external threat was from communism. This unity has been lost as greed, racism and religiosity have taken over. The push for equality brings a reaction, as the push for the end of slavery brought the Civil War. What were the headlines like in the 1850's?
Counterpoint from north of the border; life expectancy and is going down in the US because young and middle aged people are dying from guns, drugs and driving at higher rates than before and much higher than other G7 counties. Economic does not explain everything. Clear and realistic fear of early death is a good reason for people to be pesimistic.
The default requirement for any action in society is to provoke social conservatives, this is why Democrats can't do anything without somehow engaging them, it's why the news media takes the conservative view as privileged; and the default outlook of social conservatives is nihilistic antagonism.
The problem has increased in recent decades because social conservatives are so increasingly isolated and cloistered, and with nothing serious to be antagonistic about their imaginary world has only expanded in every direction.
And the news must keep the pot stirring while their profits waste away.
The opposite problem is how to find reasonably neutral news to get a snapshot of the state of the union. So many headlines are about how we are doomed for one reason or another.
This is really bad in the financial area. There is a ton of crazy headlines trying to change people’s impression of a given stock.
There was a website that kept track of every headline claiming that Apple was doomed. Meanwhile Apple kept chugging along growing and growing.
There are many potential perspectives on this statement:
"Our future is the brightest on the planet. Here in the US, economic growth is strong; incomes over time are up; poverty is down; social factors of all kinds are positive; democracy is strong despite the best efforts of Donald Trump and the MAGAnauts; fear of social media has almost no foundation in fact; technology is delivering marvels on practically a daily basis; crime is subdued; jobs are plentiful; and entrepreneurship is up."
The identitarians of various persuasions will likely state that this is the privileged view afforded only to straight, white, cis-gendered males (or whatever the latest terms may be); the socialists will probably assert that such a rosy assessment is only possible among the economically affluent classes; the religiously inclined will scoff at this secular perspective that ignores the existential crises posed by a loss of faith throughout the land; and whatever nihilists or anarchists aren't already covered in the previous groups will gripe that Kevin is simply trying to whitewash a system that's irredeemably rotten to its core and must be abandoned or destroyed.
And the important point is that ideology trumps objectivity. Every time.
> I'm persistently befuddled
World population has increased from 3 billion in 1960 to 8 billion today and is headed toward 10 billion. Putting huge pressures on resources: over-fishing, water supplies, clean air, climate change, de-forestation. Most of which are not being solved by U.S. wealth nor all our fancy technology.
Within the U.S., we've made some progress on clean air and acid rain. We've made progress on ozone holes. We've made limited progress on carbon emissions. But worldwide?
We like to claim renewables are on an exponential growth path to help solve climate change, but every year is still worse than the year before, and we don't realistically expect technology to win out this time. Especially given the powerful interests that are actively fighting against that outcome.
Where technology has made improvements in crop yields, it also produces monocrops that require high pesticide use, and monopolies control the seed grain.
Real median incomes in the U.S. are up slightly since 1999. And are far below average incomes. Real non-supervisor wages are down since the 1970s peak.
That's the background to the ever-rising pessimism.
Oh, well, ChatGPT, say no more, say no more.
ChatGPT is from Purleigh.