{"id":7704,"date":"2022-04-21T18:33:35","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T18:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=7704"},"modified":"2022-04-21T18:33:35","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T18:33:35","slug":"are-americans-unhappy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=7704","title":{"rendered":"Are Americans Unhappy?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\n\n&#8220;The economic fallout from the pandemic and attendant shutdowns and disruptions has widened a divide between&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/research\/the-pandemic-hurt-low-wage-workers-the-most-and-so-far-the-recovery-has-helped-them-the-least\/#:~:text=Many%20low%2Dwage%20jobs%2C%20such,risk%20of%20contracting%20COVID%2D19.\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">low-wage workers<\/a>&nbsp;\u2014 who have been forced to keep working in person, leaving them vulnerable to the virus and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.epi.org\/publication\/swa-2020-employment-report\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">financial troubles<\/a>&nbsp;\u2014 and high-wage workers. Behind all of this,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2021\/09\/02\/1033054816\/our-future-on-a-hotter-planet-means-more-climate-disasters-happening-simultaneou\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">climate change<\/a>&nbsp;has caused more flooding in Gulf Coast states, wildfires in the West and other problems worldwide. Now, Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine feels even more destabilizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So given all of this, how are Americans doing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The answer is, surprisingly, kind of OK. People in general are resilient and optimistic and can find ways to thrive even in the worst of times. But that doesn\u2019t mean that Americans are optimistic about the direction of the country. This was hinted at in a January Gallup poll in which&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/389375\/satisfaction-own-life-five-times-higher.aspx\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a full 85 percent<\/a>&nbsp;of respondents said they were satisfied with their own lives, while only 17 percent were satisfied with the direction of the country. That disconnect, though, isn\u2019t unusual. Since Gallup began asking that question in the 1980s, the share of Americans who say they\u2019re \u201csomewhat\u201d or \u201cvery\u201d satisfied with their personal lives has been fairly stable, ranging anywhere from 73 percent to 90 percent, while satisfaction in the direction of the country has generally been lower and less stable.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-wordpress wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-fivethirtyeight\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"d0qcfnq6hG\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/are-americans-unhappy\/\">Are Americans Unhappy?<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);\" title=\"&#8220;Are Americans Unhappy?&#8221; &#8212; FiveThirtyEight\" src=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/are-americans-unhappy\/embed\/#?secret=EyGfVgA8H3#?secret=d0qcfnq6hG\" data-secret=\"d0qcfnq6hG\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The economic fallout from the pandemic and attendant shutdowns and disruptions has widened a divide between low-wage workers \u2014 who have been forced to keep working in person, leaving them vulnerable to the virus and financial troubles \u2014 and high-wage workers. Behind all of this, climate change has caused more flooding in Gulf Coast states, wildfires in the West and other problems worldwide. Now, Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine feels even more destabilizing.<br \/>\nSo given all of this, how are Americans doing?<\/p>\n<p>The answer is, surprisingly, kind of OK. People in general are resilient and optimistic and can find ways to thrive even in the worst of times. But that doesn\u2019t mean that Americans are optimistic about the direction of the country. This was hinted at in a January Gallup poll in which a full 85 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with their own lives, while only 17 percent were satisfied with the direction of the country. That disconnect, though, isn\u2019t unusual. Since Gallup began asking that question in the 1980s, the share of Americans who say they\u2019re \u201csomewhat\u201d or \u201cvery\u201d satisfied with their personal lives has been fairly stable, ranging anywhere from 73 percent to 90 percent, while satisfaction in the direction of the country has generally been lower and less stable.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[643,1600,619],"class_list":["post-7704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-american","tag-happiness","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7705,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions\/7705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}