One of the most striking but under-discussed insights from this year’s World Happiness Report was that the marked worsening in young adult mental health over the past decade is primarily, if not exclusively, an Anglosphere phenomenon.
Stress and anger is (self-reportedly) up in the Anglophone countries... but flat everywhere else. What's up?
It’s a similar story for young people’s faith in the ultimate social contract: that if you work hard you’ll be rewarded with security, stability and status. Outside the English-speaking world, confidence in this fundamental tenet of societal fairness is flat across the age spectrum. In the Anglosphere it is high only among the oldest, and in tatters among the young.
Apparently some people thing it's the British and Americans and wokey Canadians/Aussie's proclivity to incessantly talk about mental health that's the self-fulfilling prophecy. OR, it's something else...
In Germany and Spain real house prices have climbed 32 and 44 per cent respectively since 1995. In the US the equivalent figure is 85 per cent, while the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada all come in north of 200 per cent. The result has been a brutal snatching away of the particularly Anglophone dream of home ownership.
Result? Home-ownership rates among the young pluuuu-meeeeet.
English-speaking governments, policymakers and societies more broadly have raised a generation to play the home ownership game. They have then not so much ripped up the rule book as confiscated the board and all the pieces without explanation.
"It reflects a generation’s direct experience of reality."
The Anglosphere has cut a generation adrift. It’s time to reach out a helping hand.
Fuck nimbyism; it was always about housing.
Archived: https://archive.md/aykfD