It's cyclical. Socioeconomic status is relative, so when we experience absolute economic growth, we expect socioeconomic growth too, but that can't happen without kicking others out. This is called elite overproduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction.

Twenty five years ago, if you had a 40" TV, a 200 horsepower car, and a convection oven (now usually called an air fryer) you were well off, but those are all baseline now. Fifty years ago, if you had a 1,200 square foot home with two bathrooms, and a two-car garage, you were doing very well, but the median newly-built housing unit is now over 2,000 square feet. One hundred years ago, if you had a refrigerator or even a radio, you were super rich, and even having electricity in your household made you better off than almost half of the country.

You can work as a grunt and get what your parents only dreampt of as children, and be socioeconomically well below average. An organization cannot operate with most of its members in top-level positions. If successful, it can pretend to, but most of the upper-level positions will be meaningless, and its liable to be outdone by a competing organization that isn't top heavy. After periods of sustained economic growth, we play along as though there's similar socioeconomic growth, but that's definitionally impossible, and the upper socioeconomic rungs will redefine themselves.

The only option is to not base your happiness on high socioeconomic status. Half the population isn't even average, let noticeably above that, so even though it's a worthwhile goal, if doing otherwise makes you unhappy, chances are you will be unhappy, with no innovation or policy able to make it probable that you will do otherwise.

Here's an excellent book on the topic: https://musaalgharbi.com/we-have-never-been-woke-available-n...

I agree partly.

But I think another reason why society looks so bleak today is because specific areas have regressed since their peak around 2000-2026. Even if median QOL is highest (which I doubt), Consider these common complaints:

- The best housing / median income (even accounting for size) was awhile ago

- Many types of food like meat have increased more than median income for some time

- Specific brands have lowered quality, e.g. Pyrex, Komoot

- The social scene in most places was much better. And online, we have more people and media than ever, but also more spam, propaganda, and gatekeeping

- More private offices and cubicles in the past, more WFH right after 2020

- More perks and higher salary compared to median for tech workers until around 2022

- Cheaper RAM and memory sometime around 2022-2025

- The best LLM (Mythos/Fable) was available a few days ago

Humans are biased to weigh disadvantages disproportionately more than advantages: even if someone was less happy in the past, when they weigh the advantages and disadvantages of that time vs today, they believe they were happier. So even if today wasn’t especially bleak, people may always wish for the past.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t keep addressing today’s pressing issues, even though the fixes will inevitably create more issues. Because without change, things would slowly objectively get worse.

Thank you - I completely agree. We have so much more than our parents did.

Alain de Botton's book "Status Anxiety" is excellent about this topic, too.