What Does a Good Life in America Look Like?

People used to say that the American dream was a house with a picket fence and 2 kids. In other words, the dream wasn’t to be a Rockefeller or Carnegie living in a mansion, it was for a man and his family to live an idyllic, comfortable, safe suburban lifestyle. Here’s a video making the rounds on X that in a roundabout way, also invites people to opine on what they believe a “good” life in America looks like:

So, what do we see here? We see what appears to be an affluent man, in a pretty nice house. It’s not a mansion, but if you look at the shower, kitchen, and closet in the video, you can tell it’s a stylish, probably fairly spacious home in a nice neighborhood.

His work schedule also seems to be anything but taxing. Basically, it seems to be a 7-to-4 with a two-hour lunch. The food he eats appears to be pure slop from not particularly good chain restaurants, but it’s probably tasty and he obviously has the money to buy it.

The vibe of the whole thing seems to be sad, perhaps because he doesn’t give the impression that his work is fulfilling and there’s no family, friends, or significant other in the picture.

This brings us to the central question: Is this a good life for an American today?

Although there were plenty of mixed opinions, the general consensus on X seemed to be that it was not. Given that we’re not talking about “lifestyles of the rich and famous,” just the life an ordinary person could expect to lead, the fact that so many people don’t find this appealing is something worth digging into.

First of all, by the standards of history, the man in that video is doing extraordinarily well financially. Most human beings that have existed were hunter-gatherers or sustenance farmers. So, they were not quite at zero, but they didn’t have much. Much of the world’s population today is only doing marginally better:

As to accumulating wealth, despite the endless complaints you hear,  America is doing pretty well at $69,185 (GDP per Capita). On the other hand, roughly 2/3 of the world’s nations have a GDP per capita of less than 10,000 American dollars. In fact, some of the world’s most prominent nations (China $12,347 and Russia $12,259) are just above that. Nearly half of the world’s countries are at $5,000 GDP per capita or less per year.

Even this level of wealth is a fairly recent development as well. For example, in 1960, the US GDP per capita in today’s dollars was only $19,135. In other words, recorded human history goes back about 5,000 years, but a large portion of the wealth creation in America and for that matter, the world, has occurred in the last 60 years. 

Put another way, the fellow above with the nice house and seven-hour workday is almost certainly in the top 1% of people that have ever lived in per capita income and he also appears to be in the current global 1% of income earners:

If you earn $60,000 a year after tax and you don’t have kids, you’re in the richest 1 percent of the world’s population.

If you have a household income of $130,000 after tax and you’ve got a partner and one kid, you’re also in the richest 1 percent.

Is he in the top 1% of American income earners? No, but he’s probably well above the average:

For 2022, the average wage for working Americans was $61,136.

The average wages of those in the top 1 percent of wage earners were $785,968 that year.

In the rarefied top 0.1 percent, the average earnings were more than $2.8 million in 2022.

What all this comes down to is that the average American is one of the most financially successful people on the planet, but it doesn’t FEEL LIKE THAT. After all, it’s just average here and to top it off, if you see a tiny percentage of people online spending more money than you’ll make in a lifetime on a yacht or a house, it’s very easy to conclude that you’re doing badly, even though you certainly aren’t. Think about it. $60,000 a year for 40 years of work comes to 2.4 million dollars before taxes. Granted, it’s not that simple, but an awful lot of us are doing better financially than we realize.

Still, we have to ask, does that equate to a good life? Certainly not on its own. However, let’s just say that ideally, you want to have at least enough money to not feel financially pressured. You don’t want to feel like, “Gee, if my car has transmission problems or my roof goes bad, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it.” If you’re frugal enough and don’t live in a particularly expensive part of the US, you can reach that amount well below the average salary. On the other hand, if you live in the most expensive places in the US or spend like a rap star, you can make over $100k per year and struggle.

In any case, our guy in the original video definitely seems to make enough money to potentially feel like he has a good life. At least for now, the same goes for the average American, although that may not continue to be the case long term if inflation is allowed to run wild.

The guy in the video also seems healthy. Many of us don’t put a lot of thought into it, but it’s hard to have a good life if you’re perpetually just not well. Almost everyone would love to have a billion dollars, but if the trade-off was, “You get a billion dollars, BUT you also are going to be confined to a bed, in a lot of pain for the rest of your life,” how many people would take that trade? Probably not many of us. None of us have perfect control over health, but there’s a lot we can do on that front. Again, most of us can do better, but most of us also probably feel well enough to be having a “good life.”

We also can’t forget the fact human beings need a purpose. No matter how much money you make, no matter how perfect your life may seem from the outside, if you don’t have a reason for existing, whether it’s to serve God, look out for your family, create something, build something, serve others, do important work, make the world better in some way, or have some other form of purpose, chances are you’re not going to be happy long-term. Human beings are meant to move toward a goal of some sort and if they don’t do that, their life will eventually start to feel stagnant, suffocating, and meaningless.

Last but not least, having friends, family, and people you care about is vitally important. It’s oxygen for the soul. If you had the nicest mansion on the planet and a billion dollars, but no one to share your success with, what good would it be? Having a sense of connection with other human beings matters more than most of us realize and in our modern society, where everyone seems to have lots of “friends” online, we actually seem to have fewer close friends and family than ever:

Almost 90% of the world’s population now live in countries with falling marriage rates. In the U.S., marriage has declined by 60% since the 1970s, while the median age for first marriages has increased for both men and women.

If you want to know why the man in that video appears to have a sad life to so many people, it’s because he doesn’t seem to have a purpose and although he did have a work picnic and visited his mother, he didn’t consider those things important enough to show. He chose to show a life that seemingly has no connection and no purpose. That always looks sad from the outside.

By definition, only a tiny sliver of the population can excel at everything. If that’s your standard, it’s going to be very difficult to meet it. However, if you’re thinking about what constitutes a good life for the average person in America, it’s still within reach for most people whether they realize it or not.

If you’re making even the AVERAGE salary in America, have your health, have a reason for getting out of bed in the morning, a significant other, and a handful of close friends and family that you care about and that care about you, you’re doing pretty good. Even if you’re not where you want to be, if that describes you, you have a pretty good life.

Furthermore, the good news is if you’re not where you need to be in any of those areas, there’s no time like the present to work on rectifying that. After all, a lot of us fall short in parts of our lives at one point or another, but if you lay the groundwork and hit your goals, even if it takes a while, didn’t you still succeed?

There’s nothing wrong with striving to be exceptional or getting the most that you can out of life. In fact, ideally, everyone should do that. However, if you’re an American, you’re one of the most privileged people on the planet and you should never take all the opportunities we have to create a good life here for granted.

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