I partly agree with the argument that American unhappiness cannot be explained purely by economic indicators, and that the “Tragic Twenties” emerged from a combination of pandemic shock, accumulated inflation, declining trust in institutions and other people, increasing isolation, and a negative media environment.

However, I think this explanation is too simplistic in that it tries to compress everything into a single recent event.

From the perspective of an outsider, I believe there is a more fundamental cause. To me, the core issue lies in the structural illusion created by capitalism and meritocracy.

Capitalism, at its core, operates very differently from the moral frameworks that shaped pre-modern societies. In earlier narratives, labor and virtue were tied to value. In capitalism, value is increasingly tied to capital itself — capital generates more capital. In that sense, the subject is no longer the human, but the holder of capital.

The problem is that this creates a legitimacy gap. To justify this system, meritocracy is introduced as a kind of narrative “MSG”:

“Anyone can rise if they have the ability.”

But reality increasingly diverges from that story. Within this framework, people are encouraged to interpret failure not as a structural issue, but as a lack of ability.

Of course, ability matters. But what counts as “ability”? Even on Hacker News, people disagree. Some argue that only low-level programmers are “real” programmers. But I work at a higher level, assembling systems and libraries to provide convenience for others. Does that make me less of a programmer? I don’t think so.

This is where the real problem begins: how ability is defined, and whether that definition actually justifies who gets access to capital and power. In my view, it does not.

From what I can see, those positions are only open to a very small minority who were not born into them. That “opportunity” functions more as a symbolic opening — a narrow door that exists to legitimize the system, rather than to truly enable mobility.

From my perspective as someone from Korea, the U.S. appears deeply unequal. It often feels as though your path is largely determined by which family you are born into, which in turn shapes which university you attend. Beyond that, the only visible escape routes seem to be extreme outliers, like becoming a YouTube star.

If I reflect on my own experience — working outside formal academia and taking contract work from Western and Chinese clients — I see similar patterns. In academia, lineage matters: which professor you studied under. In industry, being part of certain organizations confers authority, which is then passed down and reinforced. What we are seeing now, especially among those born in the 1990s and 2000s, is the first generation fully experiencing the consequences of systems that were solidified during the baby boomer era.

Capital has a gravitational property. Once accumulated, it attracts more of itself. Initial conditions matter more and more over time.

Within this structure, individual effort and ability are not meaningless — but they are no longer decisive.

Yet society continues to maintain the belief that success is determined by merit. This creates a gap between expectation and reality.

People begin to feel:

“It’s not that I failed — it’s that I was placed in a game I could never win.”

At that point, what emerges is not just dissatisfaction, but resentment and cynicism.

And this feeling does not come only from those at the bottom. In fact, it can be even stronger among those who are educated and who believed in the system — those who tried to play by the rules.

This helps explain why unhappiness in the U.S. is not confined to a single class, but appears broadly across society.

The hostility we see on platforms like YouTube or social media — and even the strange satisfaction some people feel at the decline of other groups — can be understood in this context. It is less about simple malice, and more about a reaction to a broken promise.

From this perspective, the pandemic and inflation are not root causes, but triggers. They exposed tensions that were already present.

And this is where meritocracy becomes particularly problematic.

Meritocracy appears fair on the surface, but in practice it reduces failure to individual responsibility. It reframes structural problems as personal shortcomings, leaving people without a language to explain their situation.

What remains are two responses:

self-blame or anger toward the system

And that anger rarely expresses itself in a clean or rational way. It can manifest as political extremism, hostility toward other groups, or deep cynicism.

So the real issue is not simply that “the economy is bad.”

It is that the belief that “this system is fair” has collapsed.

And once that belief collapses, no amount of positive economic data is enough to restore people’s sense of stability.

From this perspective, I also begin to understand why communities like MAGA can become so extreme. As people are pushed to the margins, they lose not only economic stability but also social connections. Without work, it becomes harder to meet others; as people age, their social world narrows. What remains, at the edge, is often religion — one of the last forms of community that still provides meaning and identity.

I do not believe in God. But I can understand why they do — and why they fight to defend that sense of legitimacy.