It's not just how much money you have, it's whether you still have access to everything of immeasurable value that's destroyed in being monetized.
I've set aside our standard of living in favor of our quality of life because
standard of living is so easily gamed with financial statistics. You know the drill: as life becomes increasingly unaffordable and precarious, we're inundated with statistics purporting to back up the claim that life is getting better, every day, in every way, because Progress is, well, progressing, and AI is soon going to make everything better in ways we can't even imagine.
This narrative is straight out a pulp science-fiction story circa 1956: there will soon be orbiting data centers, a base on the moon, it will be fantastic Progress, with a capital P.
That the quality of our lives is in freefall here on Earth and orbiting data centers and a base on the moon will do nothing to change that trajectory is both obvious and taboo, taboo because it undermines the happy-story narrative that technological Progress of any kind will generate wonderful things for everyone if we just let it run wild.
Meanwhile, a truly astounding number of Americans want to move from the US to somewhere with a higher quality of life: more affordable, safer, less precarious, less manic, less divisive.
Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers
More citizens are replanting overseas, drawn by a quality of life made easily affordable by the US's enviable salaries. (WSJ.com)
Yes, a lot of this is unrealistic fantasy, but there is also a realistic appraisal here, too. There are plenty of stories of expats dreaming of a perfect life abroad who sour on the reality, and plenty of expats who have no desire to return to the US.
What's becoming undeniable is the decay of our quality of life, a decay that doesn't lend itself to easy measures like GDP. Who cares about GDP if the quality of one's daily life is deteriorating? If life is increasingly unaffordable, does GDP rising 3% offset that? The answer is no.
The real-world experiences that make up the quality of life no longer align with the sci-fi narrative that as long as there is some new technology afoot then life will inevitably get easier and better. In the real world, a realistic appraisal of decaying quality of life leads people to vote with their feet, to move domestically or internationally.
There are two ironies here. One is the relative strength of the "doomed to collapse to zero" US dollar in lower-cost nations, and the other is the disruption unleashed by the arrival of relatively wealthy Americans snapping up real estate and driving up prices--negatively impacting the quality of life of locals.
These factors also play out domestically, as Americans made rich by owning real estate in left / right coast metropolitan areas are overwhelming desirable small cities and towns in less populous states, pushing home prices out of reach of locals.
What our elites, public and private-sector, cannot admit because it reflects on the failure of their leadership, is life is getting harder in America except for the wealthy. This is why overseas millionaires are moving to the US: taxes are lower and everything is affordable here if you're rich.
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
A $44,000 Bill Shows the Dysfunction in California's Home-Insurance Market (WSJ.com)
While the top 10% benefiting from credit-asset bubbles are incentivized to promote the sci-fi narrative, everyone else is resorting to gambling as their last best hope of "making it" in America. America's elites can't tell the truth--that essential sectors such as healthcare are broken--because they have no solutions, as real solutions would drain the punchbowl of entrenched, politically powerful interests.
Quality of life isn't a statistic, it's an experience. It's not just how much money you have, it's whether you still have access to everything of immeasurable value that's destroyed in being monetized.
The decay in our quality of life no longer aligns with the narrative, and so the gulf between the happy-story statistics / pulp-science-fiction narrative and the real world widens. In response, people are either gambling or voting with their feet.
My new book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition).
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