Modern life is just too complicated. No wonder there is a mental health crisis.

They also had a life expectation of 35 years or so.

All that education and still as stupid as the stone age people. Life expectancy at birth as used by you is skewed by infant mortality. People could get to 70 even then

Yup, teenagers were not middle aged, you tended to either die as a baby or live to old age. There were rare instances of people in ancient Greece that were recorded as living to 100. Even if life expectancy was 35, it wasn't super common for people to drop dead at 35

Given your Qanon username, I'm not surprised that you are baffled by relatively simple concepts like insurance and retirement savings accounts.

You live in the best time to be alive in the history of the world. Romanticizing the past is great for tv and movies but isn’t reality.

Good day, Jamin.

If only someone, or another nation, had developed a system where most of these coverages and pensions were collectively funded? It might reduce the stresses that people feel and also be less costly than having to purchase such things from for profit corporations that will fight you if you ever need to use the services that you paid for.

And now you know why the Nordics consistently rank as the happiest countries in the world, even with their very long and dark winters. Everything on the OP's list is handled by social welfare programs run by the government. And that is all just for starters. There is free college, free child care, paid family leave for parents, 5 weeks paid vacation for everyone, clean, efficient and affordable public transportation and housing assistance.

What the Nordics do not have that we have is huge disparities in income. In the Nordics, people do not worry about not having a fancy car, a big house, etc. because no one has that stuff. Instead of spending all their time chasing material things and fearing financial ruin, people in the Nordics spend their time enjoying being with friends, going hiking, skiing, exercising, etc.

PJ O’Rourke, with a hint of multiple ways things can be “complicated”:

”We Americans are an unprincipled nation, when you come down to it. Not that we’re bad or anything.

It’s just that it’s hard for us to pay attention to abstract matters when we have so many concrete matters — cellular phones, ski boats, salad shooters, trail bikes, StairMasters, snow boards, pasta-making machines, four-door sport utility vehicles … — to occupy us

No wonder all the great intellectual concepts such as monotheism and using the zero in arithmetic come from pastoral societies where herdsmen sit around all night with nothing to do except think things up. (Though it is a wonder more cosmologies aren't founded on sc***ing sheep.)”

Of course, he wrote that before the interwebs changed human attention and communication even more..

They would kick out ugly potatoes, though. You have to speak all of their languages and probably be handsome enough to apply for citizenship and probably take 7 years of exams

You don't really 'need' all of that. You can ignore half of those things and your life will be pretty much the same. It's your choice, you can live as simply as you want. Stick to just a 401(k), just have your car/home/health insurance. Call it a day, and save other money in general rather than putting it in some of these specific accounts. You can save a little bit in taxes by being strategic, but maybe it's not worth it to you and that's fine.

Partial truth to this. If you were fortunate enough to be among the 50-60% that made it to your 15th birthday, on average you would live to the ripe age of 45-55.

en.m.wikipedia.org

Life expectancy

Human life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the average remaining years of life at a given age. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth (LEB, or in demographic notation e0, where ex de...

Open link

Too complicated

Too expensive

Too competitive

Too exploitative

Too partisan

Too many people

Nowadays a graduate has to go through long application processes only to get rejected for a low paying job.

Good OP.

I also think this explains why birth rates are near record lows and still falling especially in developed countries.

Pundits and policymakers are looking for some specific causal variable to explain the birth rate issue, but I think it really just boils down to people feeling overwhelmed by life already, and knowing adding kids will only make like more overwhelming.

And they're probably right. Even though kids are awesome, raising them properly in the modern world demands more attention, energy and savvy than ever before. You really need to put a lot of work into raising a successful adult now. Not to mention money. It's like another job.

TL;DR = You'll own nothing and LIKE IT!!!

Yea, it's why more and more people are deciding just to drop out of society

Even Trump is on board with people not basing their happiness on how much stuff they have. Of course, Trump is doing that so he can use tariffs to replace income taxes on the 1%. But he accidentally made a really good point. A society built on consumerism isn't really a society that is healthy and happy. A society that is built on strong social welfare programs where no one goes bankrupt when they get sick, everyone can afford child care, housing and college, and people can retire at a reasonable age and get a pension that lets you live out your days with economic security, is a society where people are healthy and happy and not popping pills to keep from having panic attacks over whether they will be homeless if their company goes out of business due to Trump's tariffs.

cnbc.com

Trump says U.S. girls 'could be very happy' with lots fewer dolls under new tariffs

https://www.facebook.com/CNBC

Trump is downplaying the economic impact on U.S. consumers from his new, high tariffs on imports from China.

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I agree, life is pretty good though. I do enjoy modern medicine and everything.

That being said everything you listed has an industry sucking profit from it (insurance, healthcare, finance and retirement). Eventually I think there will be a collapse where there is no more profit to suck from the system. The everyday person simply will not have any more or resources to spend.

Many are there now but I am think more feudal system where you are literally just a worker. Give it 20-30 years.

Prepare your children for the revolution

I actually personally agree with what you've written, but I do subscribe to the notion that we need the ability to improve our situation to remain forward thinking and motivated. I believe that true happiness is predicated on the ability to improve your lot in life. Don't kid yourself, there are plenty of people in Norway, Sweden, Denmark who are popping pills, drinking too much, and generally escaping their misery.

I don't think about this politically, so I don't care what Trump says about it. Personally, I am happy with the HUGE MONSTER PRIVILEGE of running every day, a good meal, and friends and family close by. I don't need much more, myself. Maybe some cold beers now and then.

Truthfully, AI systems will soon be more capable and intelligent the the median American worker at most economically valuable skills. At that point, businesses will start replacing employees with AI en masse.

It will take a few years to fully integrate this into the economy, but once it starts it's going to be quick. By then, AI models will likely be superintelligent and doing things we can't even really understand. There's no reason to believe this won't happen by 2030.

Even if we don't get to AI cyberpunk utopia/dystopia by then, it's so obvious that AI is going to massively dislodge a large percentage of workers and there won't be new jobs to replace them. You don't need 100% employment to start a revolution. 20% should do the trick.