Rodolfo, you must be in the older age brackets, I'm assuming? At least not in the younger ones, I suspect. Older folks are happy, younger ones not so much.
This seems to be a global situation:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/revealed-30-year-economic-betrayal-dragging-down-generation-y-income
In seven major economies in North America and Europe the growth in income of the average young couple and families in their 20s has lagged dramatically behind national averages over the past 30 years.
In two of these countries – the US and Italy – disposable incomes for millennials are scarcely higher in real terms than they were 30 years ago, while the rest of the population has experienced handsome gains.
[...]
In the US, under-30s are now poorer than retired people.
An Italian study on Americans:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-happiness-usa-idUSL1550309820070615
"The increase in hours worked by Americans over the last 30 years has heavily affected their happiness because people who are more absorbed by work have less time and energy for relationships," said Bartolini.
"Another important cause is that American society in the last 30 years has experienced a huge increase in competitive pressure compared to Europe. It's easier in the United States, if you belong to the middle class, to become poor than you would in Europe. This creates a state of insecurity."
As I've mentioned before, I started work at Target when I was 16. I also worked a couple of summers in a construction job. My kids couldn't find anything like that until they were out of high school and trying to enter the job market for real (they declined to go to university), and what they found were jobs like I had while I was in high school. In addition, nowadays you practically have to have a degree to be a low-level office worker with any hope of advancement because somehow the government has gotten it into everyone's head that this is important to succeed - which is BS...or should be. I'm having a hard time figuring out why young folk need a classical education that will mostly be wasted anyway, in many job sectors. Education itself is very good - the debt many wrack up for minimal benefit in their lives, not so much. Shall we discuss the people who atually win from this? The financial corps that have loans guaranteed by the government? And this, in and of itself, is a very complicated issue and I haven't done the slightest bit of justice to it here, beyond simply mentioning it.
Then, of course, the Democrats want to raise the minimum wage to force employers like McDonalds, Wal-Mart (Target? I don't know if they're still around) to pay what used to be largely part-time workers (except for management) a good enough wage to live on. Yeah, OK. How does that work in Argentina, I wonder?
Not to mention that Zero Tolerance laws caused my oldest son to be suspended for a week, to go to family court and be sentenced to do community service for 120 freaking hours because he punched a fellow student in the stomach, once, who was bullying him. The only good thing is the bully went with my son. But we had been trying for months to get the school to wake up and do something about the fact that he was being bullied (and it wasn't just one kid, it was a group) and they couldn't because schools have no real discretion at local levels any more. So we encourage our son to fight back, something that really cost him personally but in the old days would have boosted his self-esteem - and when he does, he gets punished in a bad way. The government doesn't allow individuals to think for themselves any more, they are encouraged to follow nationally-mandated guidelines which come out of politicians' rear ends and have little relationship to reality, very often.
A national debt that is rising:
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
To me, that's a very, very scary thing no how many times politicians tell us that we are fully clothed, don't worry about the rising debt, it doesn't mean anything.
In most US industries, a declining share of workers are middle class:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/14/americas-middle-class-is-shrinking-so-whos-leaving-it/ft_15-12-10_incomebyindustr/
I'm not sure if that's good, considering the upper class share grew - but I suspect those are tech jobs which aren't being filled by "lower class" folk even though we are throwing low-cost education at them.
Companies are leaving the US because of complicated business reporting and compliance regulations handed down by the government ostensibly to stop things like Enron, yet we still have what happened in 2008 which was largely blamed on Wall Street, where ties to the government and help from the government are so obvious it hurts.
http://www.industryweek.com/who-is-killing-manufacturing
They are also leaving because the margin between what a company has to deal with in the "free" US is much less rigorous in other parts of the world. But without all the crap the US government loads on top of businesses, it wouldn't stress them as much to stay as it does currently. There will always be those that leave because they have zero scrupples, but those who have a hard time being competitive just because of the weight of government are leaving as well.
Not to mention that the US has the third highest corporate income tax rate in the world (actually one point ahead of Argentina!):
http://taxfoundation.org/article/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-world-2016
Of course, in this next link, they say it's hard to tell exactly what our effective rate is because the code is so complex and it depends on what corporations actually end up paying (which is great for all those big corporations who can both pay someone to figure all that out for them and can afford to take those advantages - let's just forget the small guys like me) and we're actually only the second highest in the free world, behind New Zealand, yet 15th in the world overall (as of 2014).
Sure, things are hunky-dory. We have politicians that continue to do things like implement Obama Care, which has driven a lot of existing customers out of the market for health care as they would prefer to simply pay the fines and manage their own health care (people I know, who are not rich but feel they have no other choice), and that legislation, if it is meant to implement a single-source medical system, surely sucks. If it is meant to make things better for the majority, it simply sucks. If it is meant to make things better for poor people who can't afford insurance, it's great, and everyone else has to pay for it. I am certain there are better ways to approach this issue and the Obama way ain't it.
Let's not even talk about the incessant wars that we seem to be involved in. for god's sake let's quit killing people and telling them how they should live! If we don't agree with what they are doing, we don't do business with them. We have no business being the world's policeman. The loss of human life is tragic, a horrible thing, but it's been happening for millennia and it's not going to stop because we will it to be. We are antagonizing people who now have a nice fix on us as targets, for no real reason other than we are trying to pressure the world to accept our terms on everything, including continuing to allow us to rack up debt as we try to control the entire world's financial system.
Really? Things are so much better? Some things are, I grant you. However, my opinion is they could have gotten much better, and with less downside, if the government wasn't involved as it is today. But that's my personal opinion.
And sorry, this is long and even more disorganized than usual. I almost didn't answer because I'm so busy and this is a complex subject that really deserves more time - are we really better off overall than we were 50,40, 30 years ago? I don't think so but I don't have any more time to argue my case
