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Feb 16 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Americans' satisfaction with "the way things are going in U.S." is near a 40-year low.

Americans' satisfaction with "the way things are going in personal life" is near a 40-year high.

news.gallup.com/poll/389375/sa…
The group with the highest level of personal satisfaction: weekly religious-service attendants.

This group leans Republican.

The group with the lowest level of national satisfaction? Republicans.
interpretations:

1. life is "hate congress, like your congressman" all the way down
2. ppl are resilient, but judgey: so the personal satisfaction line is straight but the nat'l satisfaction line is jagged
3. news is a VR where everything is always bad, even when life is okay
4. for the twitter doomers: maybe ~everybody's actually doing terribly all the time, but it's weird to have a therapy sesh with a pollster, so the straight personal-satisfaction line is largely a figment of toxic stoicism and the jagged line is the truer expression of happiness😢
5. dummy's razor: of course everybody is going to say they're fine to a stranger on the phone, and national evaluations are just a proxy for partisanship + misery index

6. Yes!

"I'm doin' okay, but the country is a mess" seems like an important backdrop to thermostatic public opinion theory, since voters want bold change that actually changes as little as possible.

7. This is a fascinating conclusion from *actual statistical analysis* of the polling data above, not just me scratching my chin to unlock explanations for a random graph I found on the Internet

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More from @DKThomp

Derek Thompson Profile picture
Feb 14
I wrote about why America makes it so hard to become a doctor

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

The U.S. has the world's most expensive medical school education and a deliberate policy to constrict residency spots. No wonder we have fewer physicians/capita than every country in Europe.
A conspiracy to limit the number of primary care physicians in America, maximize their debt, and raise prices for consumers would look practically identical to existing U.S. medical education policy.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
America has one of the longest and most expensive medical education programs in the OECD.

We have fewer primary care physicians per capita than just about every country in Europe.

The world is a policy choice.
Read 4 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Feb 7
One of the most popular modes of commentary is what you could call DGAF Populist.

DGAF Populists—Rogan, Chappelle, Maher—are anti-PC, anti-GOP, anti-left, anti-neurotic, anti-"woke," pro-"do your thing," economically left, culturally libertarian, and linguistically rude (1/x)
You can point to a thousand differences between Rogan, Chapelle, & Maher but just bear with me on this commonality of style.

The popularity of the DGAF Populist style is really important, because of how it intersects with media economics and media coverage. (2/x)
Aggregator economics push firms like Netflix & Spotify to buy exclusive rights to popular content in a world where a lot of culture is political, where politico-culture analysis is popular, and where DFAF-P is often the most popular flavor (3/x)
Read 6 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Feb 4
I wrote about why Denmark is done with COVID

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

This week, Denmark led the world in infections per capita. It also suddenly voted to end all restrictions—no mask mandate, no COVID passports. I talked to researcher and govt adviser @M_B_Petersen about why.
When I say Denmark leads the world in COVID cases per capita, I mean, literally—if you don't count the South Pacific archipelago of Palau—it's number one in cases per million people.

But the relationship between cases and ICU admits has been shattered.
There's no mystery here.

Denmark broke the tether between cases and severe outcomes bc it's one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.

- 81% of adults are doubly vaxxed
- 61% have booster shots

Denmark's booster-shots-per-capita is about 2.5X higher than the U.S.
Read 7 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 31
Every once in a while, an aspiring journalist will ask for writing tips and I make something up on the spot.

So, for today's newsletter, I wrote down all my tips—well, 4 of them; tips are hard!—so I'll always have a cheat sheet if somebody asks again.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
1. Simple is smart.

School rewards people who learn and use big words. But the real superpower is the ability to use simple language to decode important and complicated ideas. Beware the illusion that "complexity = intelligence."
2. Be interesting.

Interesting = novel + important
Read 6 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 25
New pod w/ @morganhousel on crypto's crash and 3 big stock market myths

open.spotify.com/episode/4hYBOf…

1) Bitcoin is digital gold—a hedge against inflation and equities
2) 10% market corrections are rare phenomena
3) COVID was a boon for pandemic darlings like Peloton and Zoom
1) "Think of Bitcoin like digital gold"

This is almost a double-negative myth. Bitcoin has been an awful hedge; it's down more than the Nasdaq, making it more like a tech stock on steroids.

But as @morganhousel says, gold is historically a terrible inflation hedge, too!
So in a way, you could say that Bitcoin really *is* like digital gold—just not for the reasons that its advocates claim.

Both Bitcoin and gold are volatile assets that people claim as a useful hedge even though their long-term histories suggest the opposite.
Read 6 tweets
Derek Thompson Profile picture
Jan 22
Many thanks to @JimPethokoukis for interviewing me about my abundance agenda

fasterplease.substack.com/p/-doomsday-ec…

If you want a 1-paragraph summary of the abundance agenda and how it makes contact with 2022's problems, here's my best shot —>
This is the original abundance agenda article

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The abundance agenda is a public policy platform.

But it's also a mentality—experiments over ideology; inventing over venting—that can extend to the private sector.

Take, for example, the blossoming of science-funding experiments in Silicon Valley—>

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Read 4 tweets

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