Do you think that things have gotten better or worse in the past decade? Where do you think was the better place to live, the America of 2013 or 2023?

34 comments

  1. No. It’s far worse. Can’t wait to move to any other stable country.

  2. I don’t have very strong memories of 2013, but I definitely think we’ve gone downhill since at least COVID.

  3. >Do you think that things have gotten better or worse in the past decade? Where do you think was the better place to live, the America of 2013 or 2023?

    I have the same family, friends, pets, job, house, and up until a few weeks ago, the same car as I had in 2013. I have the same hobbies. I go to the same places for vacation. My income has doubled but my expenses haven’t, so I have a lot more money in the bank. My daily life is pretty much unchanged.

    You have a lot more negativity in your face 24/7 from TV and especially internet than you did in 2013, but there’s not more actual negativity in the world than there was in 2013. It creates an incorrect perception for a lot of people. I solved that by no longer reading or watching it.

  5. Not significantly.

    I guess the “culture war” bullshit has gotten worse.

  6. In my area in 2013 a well appointed 2500 sqft house was affordable. Like 250-280k… Now, pffft.. 450k easy

  7. Over all 2013 definitely but there are big nuances to that. Some things are better, some are worse

  9. Way too vague of a question. What “things”? What factors make these “things” “better” or ‘worse”?

  10. Way worse, today. Felt more hopeful in the early 2010s.

    Social media made things worse….not because of random people talking or sharing images with one another so much as it is certain people who get into entertainment/media or politics are the types of personalities that consumes the highly populist elements of social media and have their worldviews shaped by it.

    That’s why everything feels like it has an overt agenda attached to it nowadays rather than demonstrating certain realities or raising questions and letting us decide for ourselves.

    Looking back at news reports back in the 60s? It was factual reporting…”Today, Xyz happened, Zyx was quoted as saying “etc, etc”, however, ABC disputes these claims by saying “123, 123″….

    Of course, if you look at how they reported about the Soviets, it was exactly the kind of sensationalist reporting that goes on today…except today, it isn’t aimed at an enemy but at ourselves. Now, Soviets, yeah, it makes sense that we may drum up against them since they behaved awfully but your fellow American?

    Well, might as well re-ignite the tensions of the Cold War….of which, I argue that is what this modern day Culture War is….a Culture Cold War.

  11. I miss when technology was less invasive in day to day life. Where the internet was mostly limited to desktop computing and you weren’t expected to be connected to everything everywhere all the time. Even if you decide to put the phone down and go back to the lifestyle, most people around you won’t and some will treat socializing with you without a social media account as a liability.

    Also, a significant portion of young adults are irony poisoned beyond help and it’s very grating to deal with. Sincere interests and not being a black hole of cynicism to everyone around me? Pfft, so yesteryear

  12. Sadly, for a large part, no.

    The political fractures that we were seeing definitely happen during that time have turned into a full-on schism.

    We’re in the the golden age of misinformation.

    Sooner or later, something’s gotta give, but for now, we’re seeing the end result of almost 40 years of drift.

  13. Depends heavily on the color of your skin, what state you live and a few other factors.

    I’d imagine for a lot of the posters on this subreddit in particular, not much has changed.

  15. Yes, we have been continually improving for centuries. There may be some back and forth on the scale of a decade. That said it is better now than any time in history one a grand scale.

    But anyone saying no please please please describe what is worse now and more importantly how that bad thing didn’t exist 10 years ago.

  16. Better. There are more protections on some civil liberties(gay marriage being the big one) and greater awareness of the need to protect others(I’d say privacy is the biggest one in terms of awareness gained). The economy has grown every year save 2020, and the 2021 rebound ensured that that downturn wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. From my perspective as a pro-lifer things have improved tremendously in terms of protecting the lives of the unborn, although none of this necessarily moves us any closer to the ultimate goal-the legal recognition of life as beginning at conception, since the idea of when life begins didn’t actually come up all that much in the Supreme Court’s decision. And speaking of the Supreme Court, I’d say that what everyone sees as signs of how bad things have gotten are instead signs of how resilient our systems, culture and people are. An incumbent president declared his refusal to recognize his own defeat, but then got shamed into it a month later, reduced to empty words and dead-end lawsuits about how he’d totally won u guise. Multiple prominent members of Congress are demanding that the Supreme Court be ~~expanded~~ packed, yet their efforts are stagnated by the reality of just how hard that is to do if you’re not willing to just ignore the law like Andrew Jackson.

    And this is all ignoring our affairs with other countries. We’ve ceased nearly all trade with Russia and are taking more and more steps towards cutting out China from the economy. It’s finally becoming unacceptable to have good trade relations with murderous autocracies. In time, that can hopefully be expanded to cover our “allies” as well as our enemies.

  17. My life has gotten better, but overall I think the country was better 10 years ago. We were less divided and the economy was better.

  21. Factually? Yes, the US is significantly better off than 2013 across nearly every metric. Emotionally, probably not, no. Everyone’s politicized everything, and everyone is at everyone else’s throat.

  22. Social media has made all of our lives worse. This definitely includes reddit. All of it has become worse and worse over the years.

  25. Internet… all around, home speeds are better, offered in more areas and wifi is easier to find. I used to feel like the US was behind other countries when it came to the internet and now it seems more equal.

  26. Living standards are significantly higher across the board, which is both a good and bad thing for people.

  27. I think it is better in some ways and worse in others. Ten years ago we were still fighting for gay marriage, and it was in doubt whether we would get it any time soon. Public opinion was not great towards the LGBT community. Now people are trying to take away LGBT rights and people who aren’t part of the community are fighting back and thinking that it’s wrong. Not everybody, sure, but way more people than we could have really conceptualized ten years ago. Using ‘gay’ as an insult is much more likely to be seen as a crude, unworthy thing to say these days. I see how many young people are comfortable coming out, where before it felt like a huge risk even if nobody was particularly homophobic around you. They even seem to have forgotten that older queer people exist and don’t really understand how bad things were before. I don’t really hold that against them, everybody is young and thinks they’re right at some point. But it shows how starkly different the environment is. They just don’t understand how things used to be, because they never had to deal with it.

    There are things that are worse, too – rent is out of control (I don’t even have to pay it and I know that), politicians on the right seem to be getting more extremist all the time, we’ve had a rise in people emboldened by powerful assholes deciding to ratchet up the racism.

    But I have to hope that things will get better. Lots of people have lived through scary, unpredictable times, throughout history. I think it is just unfortunately our turn. In some way everything will be fine eventually. Even the fall of Rome wasn’t the end of humanity living their lives, you know?

  29. Definitely not. I’d argue that things have been going downhill since about the 2008 recession.

  30. Life was way better 10-15 yrs ago. We are declining fast. It is super sad because I am a patriotic American. I live in the EU, and I left the US when America was not that bad. Now I see it falling and then what makes it worse there is this anti America sentiment mostly from Americans themselves, all symptoms of the decline of our culture 🙁

  31. People are basically as satisfied with their lives now as they were then.

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/470888/americans-largely-satisfied-personal-life.aspx

    The economic situation is substantially better. Disposable income is up, unemployment is down, inequality has actually declined in the last few years (though is still very high).

    The climate outlook is better now than it was then. Not great, but better.

    A large majority of states have expanded Medicaid since then.

    That all seems good to me.

  32. Nope — The Republican Party The **G**reed **O**ver **P**eople party has turned into the Christian Taliban and wants to create Giliad!

  33. These threads are always silly.

    By virtually every metric things are better today.

  34. Much worse. De industrialization was a stupid idea. We should have aggressively used tariffs to protect manufacturing jobs.

    Corruption is getting worse by both parties.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like