> I see so many people with depressing faces every day, it's hard to deny that we have widespread psychological sanity issues in our society.

No society in history has ever had so much abundance as the West today. We've really moved up Maslows hierarchy beyond survival and safety towards needing meaning in our lives (more than what comes with doing the labor you need to survive).

I wonder if there's just not enough meaning in the world to go around and that's the cause of our society's malaise.

Maybe abundance itself makes us depressed. In the modern world you have to go way out of your way to experience any sense of sense of danger, adventure, chaos, or self-reliance. Sitting behind a screen while shoving food in your mouth might keep you alive but it kills the soul.

Our culture is going down the tubes. However, since the current systems benefits the .01% at the expense of the 99% its full speed ahead with no course correction.

Our system is highly beneficial to the top quarter roughly.

The median of that group has gotten significantly richer over 20 or 50 years and is better off in the US than they would be anywhere else in terms of wealth and scale (scale as in how many of them can reach that level of wealth and have access to the kind of economic opportunities that the US presents). Europe has nothing remotely like it, outside of small population nations like Norway or Switzerland (and you need to reach the top 10% there to be comparable). Wealth isn't everything? Correct, of course; the US culture is rotting rapidly, and devolving into predictable tribalism, an unavoidable result of government policy choices over the prior many decades.

If you can get into the top quarter in the US, use that position for all its worth. If you can't, it's not going to be a great existence unless you live in a nice college town or the equivalent.

However, the middle class (and the near groupings below or above that) across most of the developed world are facing a severe smashing, which will result in recurring French-like riots and protests in the decades to come. Most of affluent Europe hasn't seen consequential economic growth in two decades or more at this point. It's destroying their welfare systems gradually, weakening their social safety nets and loading their systems up with debt, just as their demographics are breaking. The huge French riots prior to the pandemic were one of the first big warning shots of what's coming. Japan, as another example, has seen a minimum of 1/3 of its standard of living wiped out over the past 20 years, and there's a lot more damage to come; the US and EU are both suffering from variations of Japanification economically (high debt, low dynamism, aged demographics, persistently mediocre productivity growth, low GDP growth, low GDP per capita growth, falling or stagnant standards of living for decades, struggling to allocate enough resources to the welfare state to maintain social promises, and so on).

Or take Germany as an example. They've had a remarkable - supposedly remarkable - economic run for decades now. Riding on an artificially weak currency (for their economy) which they've used to build up a freakishly abnormal export juggernaut. And yet their median net wealth figure is mediocre, below that of the US; their workers are not benefitting as they should be. And at this point Germany has seen net zero per capita economic expansion for coming up on 30 years. How long can that situation continue before something breaks? Not much longer I'd wager.

While the US is seeing many of the same problems, it's absolutely correct that it's better to live in cities in other affluent nations, rather than in the US. US cities are horrific by and large, with few exceptions.

> And at this point Germany has seen net zero per capita economic expansion for coming up on 30 years.

What exactly do you mean by "net zero per capita economic expansion"? According to the World Bank https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locat... , German GDP per capita was $38,294 in 1991 (adjusting for purchasing power and inflation) and $52,931 in 2021, which looks more like 38% expansion to me.

Germany GDP per capita 1992: $26,000

Germany GDP per capita 2022 (IMF estimate): $51,000

BLS inflation adjustment calculator: $26,000 in 1992 = $55,000 in 2022.

Germany has seen a net per capita contraction over 30 years.

Germany's GDP per capita was not $38,000 in 1991. It was $46,000 in 2019 for reference. That 1991 $38k figure is drastically higher than the US figure was at the time. Their GDP per capita hasn't been higher than the US on a sustained basis in the past 40+ years except for a brief period in 1995 (where it was a few thousand dollars higher).

And this scenario isn't unique to Germany, nearly every economic power in Europe has seen the same intense, generational stagnation (that includes Britain, France, Spain, Italy).

Please do not compare 1992 with 2022. The problems of reunification did not become truly apparent until mid/end of the 90s.

Comparing separate European countries individually in general is difficult, wealth and productivity is redistributed within the EU by various means. An hierarchical model that takes all EU countries into account might be the most sensible approach.

It seems like the reason your results differ from the World Bank is that you're taking German GDP per capita figures translated into dollars according to the exchange rate at the time without adjusting for purchasing power, and then you use US consumer inflation to compare them across time.

Whereas the World Bank appears to derive its figures by applying the German inflation rate (which was lower for most of the 30-year period) to make GDP per capita comparable across time, and then translates the values into US dollars while compensating for purchasing power differences.

If you earn income in Germany but spend it in the US, the former scenario would be quite relevant, but under normal conditions I think the World Bank's calculation is more useful.

It's interesting though that the two ways to compare the value of money over time and space lead to such different results.

> such as LSD-trips for your lunch break, I truly wonder how people can be so f-ed up that they consider that a good idea.

What does this mean? Are you against psychedelics, but only if its time for lunch?

I think GP is just confused and meant DMT. edit: for context it is short lasting and known as the “businessman’s trip” because it genuinely fits in a lunch break.

"I see so many people with depressing faces every day"

How much information are you making up based on how a persons face subjectively looks to you? How someone's face looks is a superficial thing and really doesn't give you any solid information.

The human face is literally a communication device.

> LSD-trips for your lunch break,

It should be a very nice job that allows 5 hour lunch breaks.