Are things worse today?

That was a cool read, shooting range in the hall? I think the access to multi forms of media makes the appearance of gloom and doom more accessible but all in all I think things are better overall than when I was a kid in the early 70's late 60's. I do however think that some things have gone by the wayside in our busy overcrowded society, respect is diminishing at a rapid rate, selflessness is disappearing, heck the only selflessness I see anymore is here on THP. Ebbs and flows in global stability have and always be there but there has been an increase lately in that arena, I do not feel stable with Russia and China getting so cozy and I do worry about them especially Putin pushing the button. Mostly the same with more people and the quality of golf equipment and courses is phenominal compared to yesteryear lol.

Everybody likes to think the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, hit the truth is crime is way down in the country. In just about every major category including murder, rape, robbery violent crime in general, as well as property crimes. Just about all of these categories peaked in the early 90s and are at their lowest in over 40 years.

Well one thing that's not subjective is this is the first generation in the US that on a whole is less wealthy than their parents... And I think that contributes to some of the negativity. Just alot less hope imo

Martsy said:

Well one thing that's not subjective is this is the first generation in the US that on a whole is less wealthy than their parents... And I think that contributes to some of the negativity. Just alot less hope imo

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Ding Ding Ding.
Crime is certainly a great thing being down.
However economically, there are some things that are without a shadow of a doubt, worse than before.

My wife and I talked about this a bit yesterday. My parents income was similar to ours at this stage of our life but they were able to live off only one of the salaries and put the other into savings. That is not something that we are currently able to do.

things were worse then hands down.

JB said:

Ding Ding Ding.
Crime is certainly a great thing being down.
However economically, there are some things that are without a shadow of a doubt, worse than before.

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100% agreement here on the economy. My kids will have less opportunity and pay more in taxes and fees than my wife and I did if they want to support the current size of the Federal Government. The government has grown to an unsustainable size and in the next decade we will find out which direction Americans want to go - much higher taxes for the middle class like Europe or a return to a smaller, less intrusive government. Most Americans don't realize it but the middle class here pays a much smaller portion(about 50% less) of overall Federal taxes than in Europe. It's hard to believe from the main stream media but the US has one of the most progressive tax systems on the planet. The taxes on the top 5% have already been raised here to almost 50% so we can't balance the budget by taxing them more - there simply aren't enough of them. I predict Americans won't want to go down the socialist democracy model of Europe. We will find out in the next 20 years.

Life is better, but maybe the bar has been raised too high for the next generation because of all the outsourcing of high paying tech jobs.

Technology and the amount of access to different forms of media and reporting can give an overwhelmingly bad view on how things are. Then throw in the politics of everything and some use doom and gloom as a way to prop themselves/party up or attack the other side. In reality there are things that are better and things that are worse.

Society has changed for the worse in my opinion. We are lacking in education compared to the past in this country and are 25th in world today. This imo has to do with the decline in two parent homes, the abundance of outside influences in both parents and kids lives. We have lost respect for authority to include teachers, law enforcement and parents. the way kids talk to some parents or even adults nowadays was unacceptable when I grew up. There is a lack of personal responsibility for failures and decisions. We put the blame anywhere it can and for some reason have accepted that govt is the solution to everything. Financially we are worse off than ever, per person debt responsibility has increased and at the rate we are going generations to come will be saddled with triple digit debt to the govt.

Low crime has been trending down for decades which is a good thing.

More so than current crime statistics or economical outlook, it's about the moral decay of society. Eventually it will catch up with us.