When asked to detail what would make a better life in three to five years, 60% of US adults said greater financial security
Americans may seem increasingly divided on beliefs and values, but in a new survey of more than 30,000 adults from across the country spanning generations and economic classes, a majority of Americans agree there’s a significant barrier to achieving a better life: the rising cost of living.
When asked to describe what a better life in three to five years would look like, 60% of Americans said they wanted greater financial security, according to a survey that was conducted by the McKinsey Institute for Economic Mobility and the WK Kellogg Foundation in mid-April.
In interviews that accompanied the survey, respondents often defined financial security as being able to afford basic necessities without worry.
The worst part is that it’s becoming more and more apparent that it’s all by design. Now that we’ve reached the supercharged AI era, they can manipulate society in real time, and before we know it, we’re already in the chute, heading for the incinerator without even being aware of it even happening.
Idk about the whole “without being aware” bit.
But we’ve got a full-court press from national media telling anyone who is still tuned in that prices are going up and quality of life is going down because of those Evil Foreigners and Greedy Lazy Immigrants. So long as it’s not Me And My Friends getting thrown into the incinerators, the sight of people being rounded up and murdered in concentration camps or carpet bombed into a fine powder gets maybe 20-30% of the audience to give a shit.
And if you’re part of that minority cohort, you’re not going to win any elections (or so they tell me) so you need to sit down, shut up, and support the people doing mass arrests / mass murder correctly. Maybe that means only targeting the brown people. Maybe that means only targeting the non-Christian or non-Jewish people. Maybe that means laughing up your sleeve when the police come for the rednecks and the bumpkins, because they asked for this when their state broke 60/40 for team red rather than team blue. Idk. The important thing is that you’re always okay with at least a little bit of industrialized horror inflicted on the right group of people.
And, more importantly, that you’re always more afraid of the Evil Foreigners than you are of the home-grown billionaires and trillionaires. We need those home-grown oligarchs to fight the foreign oligarchs. Otherwise, the news says we’ll all be murdered in our beds by an invading army of North Koreans and Cubans like in that movie Red Dawn.
I’m going to have to put my funeral on a credit card, and my estate is going to be a gamecube.
But not why the costs are rising?
I mean you can uselessly shout “Groceries cost too much!” when you don’t understand “record profits” and government printing money. Nothing’s going to change when “do something!” is clueless.
You’re telling me that not being able to afford the foundational rung of the hierarchy of needs is a detriment to human happiness?
No, they are saying that this is #1 barrier for their happiness. So, not stopping the state-sponsored genocide, or getting rid of masked thugs that erode their basic freedoms, or having a healthcare safety net. They just wished they could afford more stuff.
What a gross and cynical mischaracterization. When people are constantly struggling to afford food and shelter they do not have the luxury of concerning themselves with things that don’t address their immediate needs. That’s the whole point of the heirarchy of needs.
So look, real cool that you’re secure enough in your life to spend time and energy caring about others. That is a good thing. But that also means that you’re living a life of privilege in comparison to so many others. Not saying your life is perfect and without strife… but if you have the time, energy and security to pursue causes outside of meeting your basic needs… that’s privilege.
And you’re using that privilege to punch down at poor people. To cynically mock them for not doing what you think they should be doing; the things that you can afford to do. Instead, you’re misrepresenting them as selfish, gluttonous and greedy.
inshort, plz fuck off with your tankieass “america bad” hottake.
Thank you for phrasing this particular way.
This is what pissed me off about people who abstained from voting, or worse, voted Trump or 3rd party, because of Harris and Israel.
Like, sure, okay, Harris’s position wasn’t perfect. And a genocide on the other side of the world is absolutely a terrible thing. But friends and family are starving and homeless here. They are targeted for assault here. They are dieing of preventable and treatable conditions, here. The air is unfit to breathe and the water is unfit to drink here.
All of this, in a way, is a form of economic/class genocide, which is a totally bigger conversation.
And now, because of them, we are building concentration camps here, for people that are living here.
I get what they feel, and I don’t want to be dismissive of it…but for real, they need to check their privilege.
If we can’t even discuss, let alone fix, these problems locally, seriously, wtf is any politician going to do about fucking Israel?
Like, sure, okay, Harris’s position wasn’t perfect. And a genocide on the other side of the world is absolutely a terrible thing. But friends and family are starving and homeless here. They are targeted for assault here. They are dieing of preventable and treatable conditions, here. The air is unfit to breathe and the water is unfit to drink here.
You say that as if voting for Harris wasn’t the objectively least-bad option for Gaza single-issue voters too.
There is not even a single person who claimed to oppose Harris because of Gaza who wasn’t either a MAGA concern troll or an absolute fucking moron.
And their choice didn’t even help Gaza. It very likely made it worse for them.
Harris might have been giving political non-answers to the topic, but Trump straight up said he wanted to glass (nuke) them.
I think those are all the reasons WHY people voted for Trump.
The whole “America First” thing purports itself to address all of those issues. It was a lie, obviously. Anyone who knew the history and politics of the republicans knew it was a lie. It’s literally the strategy of using populism to further fascism. Easy to see for people who know.
But that’s the problem, right? You have to know.
Remember that the majority of people do not engage in politics at all, half don’t even vote. Going back to hierarchy of needs, it’s hard to care about national politics get involved with activism when you have to pay bills and afford food. The people that can afford to do so, already are living with some manner of privilege.
The remaining privileged minority are, mostly, only casually involved. That is to say, they consume mainstream news, kinda keep up with the times, but they’re not really digging into root causes and systems. Then you mix in echo chambers, bubbles and misinformation, and it’s not good.
People see “America First” and think, “yea, that’s the thing I’m concerned about”. That’s probably the extent of their knowledge about the cause. People hungry and chasing shelter don’t have time to research if they’re being lied to. They have simple problems and then need simple to understand solutions.
OH, and there’s one last category of privileged people. The so privileged they don’t even care about politics. These are the “why does everything have to be political?” types. “Both-sides are the same” type. The most insufferable of people.
Bullshit. 60% of americans responded they want more money. But the reality is a good portion of them voted themselves into this situation and would do it again. And all the disruption and money spent on those other issues are EXACTLY why they are in this mess.
Their basic needs are fucked because THEY CHOSE THIS situation. We are not looking at an individuals situation, we are looking at the big picture. You want to solve this, they have to look at the actual problem. There is nothing wrong with saying that.
So fuck off, America is pretty bad right now.
So look, real cool that you’re secure enough in your life to spend time and energy caring about others.
No it isnt about caring about others, its about how all those bad things hurting others are also hurting themselves.
Edit: And by the way, this is nothing new. It is about the same percentage that say this every time for over a decade. Very unique to Americans, and maybe they should make a change, they are the majority after all. But they don’t. They don’t see the value in caring about others, so they continue to push money to the top, give businesses person hood, hand over thier retirement as a vehicle to fund corporations (401K anyone?), etc.
OP laid out a “think of the people struggling!” argument. But its been the same for a long time, through boom and bust. Maybe something else needs to change.
The reason why everything is so expensive is because of all of that bullshit.
Gonna let you in on a big secret, nobody likes to starve. It’s definitely the number 1 thing that every human wants to avoid
Eh. There are those monks that self embalm.
I don’t think we should strive for society to widely adopt that kind of religious fanaticism. I feel like that would make things worse.
But if we could get it to take off within the evangelical crowd, just imagine.
not sounding better. I imagine you think that they’d be taking themselves out as some sort of problem that corrects itself… but we’ve seen that kind of suicidal religious extremism before, and it’s not good for everyone else.
More so that they’d be still and quiet, spending their days napping and drinking tea. Not inflitrating the government with an agenda to kick off the rapture. But I will behave now.
When has this never been the case.
Biggest barrier to better life: capitalism.
Idk, man. Capitalism has been really good at generating vast surpluses of commodities for consumption. One could argue that it’s too good at making a better life for a subset of socio-economic insiders. It creates a vicious cycle of overconsumption that favors early adoption, such that everyone has an incentive to industrialize without consideration of the long term ecological costs or geopolitical tensions.
There’s a whole book on the subject, in fact. It’s in German, but you can get translations in virtually any language. Check out “Das Kapital”. A bit of a dense read (god help you when you get to the bit about making a coat). But it seems to suggest capitalism is a stage of human development that all societies have to pass through eventually.
The trick is getting through the industrial phase and on to the socialist phase in an orderly manner, rather than getting trapped in a cycle of increasingly fictitious surplus production that inflates exchange value at the expense of use value.
I spend quite a lot of time in the US
I’m there because I have to be
People are on edge. Everyone is only a tiny mishap from absolute ruin, and the kicker is that it’s not just the “poor”
The wealthy, the “successful”, they’re all a broken leg away from losing their job and being saddled with some insane burden that will quite literally ruin them
And that’s the people “on top”
It’s literally impossible for me to imagine what life is like for those who are for the thousands of bigoted, stupid, hateful and profoundly ignorant reasons are cast aside and ignored by the white cunts who don’t realise that they are next to fall, when just being white isn’t enough
I think it’s important for people to understand that (fairly recently) they changed the definition of “inflation”.
It used to be used as shorthand for “money inflation” which is when they supply of money increases which raises the prices of goods. This is what we saw when it would take literal wheelbarrows full of money to buy a single loaf of bread.
That is not what is happening here.
Now they say “inflation” and mean “prices went up”. There’s no increase in circulating money that causes it. All the money is being hoarded by oligarchs, and because no one else can afford to buy as much as they can, the oligarchs raised prices on everything so we had no choice but to spend more and get less.
The reason isn’t “inflation” or any abstract concept, the reason is greedy oligarchs who think we won’t or can’t fight back.
So stop fucking acting like this is a complicated thing that we need to figure out how to stop, we’re being price gouged by every industry and they’ll keep doing it till we make them stop. They’re doing it intentionally, and they’ll keep lying about it.
Because if enough people realize the only reason prices are up is because no one is reigning in corporations…
We might elect someone who is willing to reign in corporations.
You had me until that last sentence. When it comes to politicians, I’ve become very jaded. I’ve yet to see the first politician acting solely for the good of his people. Sure one can point at Bernie or Mamdani, but there is a reason they don’t make it to the very top. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Mamdani as POTUS, but either that will not happen or he becomes corrupted well before that.
The reason politicians with better social policies don’t make it to the top is the Overton window. If more people voted for representatives that supported such policies, then more would rise higher because there would be fewer elected representatives who did not support such policies. This isn’t complicated.
If voting was ineffective, the Republican party would not invest so much time and effort into preventing people from doing it.
Anyone who discourages people from voting is aligned with the goals of voter suppression.
If voting was ineffective, the Republican party would not invest so much time and effort into preventing people from doing it.
Voting is effective, sure, in determining which of them are to be bribed the coming years.
Overton window, sure. Not at all due to people becoming weary of millionaires asking for their vote while claiming to be just like them.
Anyone who discourages people from voting is aligned with the goals of voter suppression.
Anyone who encourages people to vote for millionaires is a class traitor. Look, I can be edgy too.
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Politicans are not born…
They’re elected.
What you’re doing is like an incel bitching about “all women” just because you had bad luck and dated 3 psychos in a row. The problem is never “all ____”, it’s always the ____ you’re choosing.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Mamdani as POTUS,
Congrats, you agree with the head of the DNC, whose said multiple times we need presidential candidates like Mamdani.
Do you understand that? What that means?
That the DNC and progressive voters agree that a progressive candidate has the best shot at winning?
You’re being manipulated by the oligarchs into hurting our best chance in generations to win a battle in the class war.
Because you’re “jaded” which is really the same as “manipulated into being too exhausted to try”
Wake the fuck up, it’s all hands on deck and ignorance isn’t a valid excuse.
Go ahead, name one. That would immediately invalidate my claim.
EDIT: forgot the in- lol
Go ahead, name one
Name one what?
Good dem? Ok, Mamdani.
What the fuck are you even talking about?
the first politician acting solely for the good of his people
at
the very top
who is
willing to reign in corporations
FDR
Fucking easy, but if you didn’t know that and assumed I somehow knew what you were asking for…
I’m not going to accomplish anything trying to help you understand anything
He did it to staunch rising* willingness too support communists.
Interesting answer. I’m not that familiar with pre-nixon presidents, I’ll do some reading on FDR. Thanks for the tip!
Are we great again yet? We had an economy that was the envy of the world toward the end of 2024. What happened since, I wonder?
It started failing in 2023, that’s when the tech layoffs started and jobs being shipped to india
Americans are so fucking stupid.
