Is Life Today Really So Bad?
Kevin Drum doesn’t believe Life is so bad. Kevin poses a number of reasons why things are actually pretty good. Think about it. We weathered a pandemic. For the first time government stepped in biggly and well beyond what was done in 2008 for people. Biden insured people who had no healthcare insurance pre-pandemic, provided subsidies for people while we stayed home, added additional subsidies for children, permanently expanded subsidies for healthcare, eliminated the healthcare insurance cliff, expanded Medicaid till after the pandemic, etc. What am I missing here? The above was for citizens alone. I did not mention help to business.
I am tired though. I am tired of one person being allowed to flaunt the law with its antics. All because he has the backing of a rogue, politically leaning, flawed SCOTUS and various elected officials. I am tired of his lies, rants, and attempts to take over the nation with the foregoing. He has never had it so good. Thats another story. The rest of this is Kevin Drum telling us we are doing ok if not great! Kevin . . .
~~~~~~~~
Young people are TIRED!
Young people are TIRED.
They’re tired of growing up with forever wars,
with no healthcare, with crumbling
infrastructure. Young people have every right
to demand better from their leaders. It’s their job
to. pic.twitter.com/aCqrVLZESi— Rep. Jamaal Bowman Ed.D.
(@JamaalBowmanNY) May 3, 2024Just stop it. Joe Biden ended the Afghanistan war and cut American drone strikes nearly to zero. The US is not currently fighting any major wars and in 2022, for the first time in decades, reported no civilian deaths due to US combat.
Health insurance coverage has steadily increased among the young for the past decade:
And infrastructure is not “crumbling” by any stretch of rhetoric. Even the always dour American Society of Civil Engineers says as much: its most recent report gives US infrastructure its highest grade in more than a quarter of a century.¹ Spending on infrastructure has increased by a quarter since 2000:
There is a relentless drumbeat of claims on both sides of the aisle that America is falling apart at the seams and _________ has it worse than ever in living memory. But it’s just not true. Wages are high for every demographic group you can name; life satisfaction is steady; unemployment is low; drug abuse overall is down; our educational system is good; poverty is declining; we have more entrepreneurs than any country in the world by a wide margin; democracy is alive and well; our economy is the envy of the world; social welfare spending is generous; and a future of driverless cars, artificial intelligence, medical revolutions, and abundant energy is practically on our doorsteps. Even our demographic problems are about the least bad of any advanced economy—thanks, in part, to our supposed problem of too much illegal immigration.
Everyone has personal problems. Every country has national problems. The fact that we have problems is completely normal. But honestly, our problems right now are about as mild as they’ve been in our entire history.
¹Their 2021 report gave infrastructure a grade of C-. By ACSE standards this is roughly an A+.
Kevin Drum, Stop telling everyone life is horrible, May 4, 2024
The author is detached from reality quite a bit here. Sure, us young peoples are making the most we ever have but everything also costs so much more than it should. Housing costs for one (don’t care that some boomers paid close to 20% interest on their first homes, we don’t live in those times anymore.) Drug abuse has never been worse. My parents don’t have any friends who died from drug OD’s while I have had at least 2. The author mentions poverty declining yet we see more homeless and tent cities than ever before tho I admit this mostly goes back to the drug issue. You need to get out more Bill, or perhaps I need to view your work as fiction opposed to opinion.
“Stevie”
You need to read more carefully. Who is the author?
Bit detached from reality, aeh? Had mushroom risotto for lunch? Build a model airplane? Got a taste of the infamous Alaskan Thunder Frog?
Oh, right, can’t do that, you’re just ones and zeros …
Reality of a pair of mid seventies, old goats:, hunan chicken for lunch, friends’ ailments, prostate exams, exposure to asbestos and what is Alaska thunder frog….?
Life is good, as long as the floor pushes back when you stumble out of bed……
paddy
funny you should mention that. i have an old dog who has a problem with the floor pushing back when she falls out of bed. but she still thinks life is good, so i try to help her.
that’s what being an old goat is good for. it teaches you something that the young goats can’t figure out.
The homeless problem also flows from the high cost of housing. As a boomer, I remember a NYC full of cheap SROs on the Upper West Side and even cheaper flophouses on the Lower East Side. If you didn’t mind living in – gasp- the outer boroughs, there was even cheaper housing available. There were also terrible psychiatric hospitals that kept the seriously mentally ill off the street but in wretched conditions. Instead of improving the hospitals, we just dumped the poor bastards out on the street.
maybe too obvious: we think things are bad because the Republicans are telling us things are bad, and they have the money to keep telling us that things are bad.
things would be worse if we did not pay taxes, but we are sure taxes are theft. and even I think the hard Left is demanding (that’s their word) too much that “the rich” or “the government” should pay for everything.
Trump has done us a service in showing that at least half the country is insane, but he has also empowerd the insane to think it’s okay to be insane in public and demand law of the jungle answers to everything.
Stevie
I have learned that anyone who calls themself “common sense” is a fool unable to learn anything they didn’t learn from someone who was conning them.
please, I don’t mean “fool” as an insult, it is just the word for someone who cannot see the cliff at his feet and is happy about it.
Ted Gioia says there are four kinds of college papers, in increasing order of difficulty: (1) compare and contrast, (2) they were idiots then, (3) deep inner meaning, (4) the old switcheroo. Kevin Drum is a master of the old switcheroo. You thought water ran downhill. Hah. Water really runs uphill, and here’s why. It’s not 100% bogus. There are cases where things are the opposite of what they appear to be. However, in the real world, things most often are exactly as they seem. The old switcheroo is clever. It impresses professors if you can pull it off. It can also be overused.
Kaleberg:
You ar not being clear enough for this think skull. Can you be more specific? WE just got done avoiding a bad pandemic for the most part and a serious economic crash. If you are worried about inflation, fix the supply chain which is being manipulated..
kaleberg
right as to college papers
that’s why i quit the po-lice department and got myself a steady job.
reality is kind to us. that, is things are usually what they seem..or what they seemed the last time.
@Kaleberg,
“Kevin Drum is a master of the old switcheroo.”
Please point out the errors in Kevin’s post. Take all the time you need.