Gallup has been asking Americans for more than four decades, “Are you satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. right now?”
The average percent of Americans answering “no” since 1969 is 63%.
What’s interesting is that Gallup asks a follow-up question: “Are you satisfied with the way things are going in your own life right now?”
There, the average “no” response is just 15.8%.
People tend to be optimistic about themselves but pessimistic about others. Social media probably supercharges that. Benedict Evans says, “The more the Internet exposes people to new points of view, the angrier people get that different views exist.”
Such a great factoid. It puts a lot of what we see on social media in perspective.
(H/T: Morgan Housel’s blog and his seemingly never ending reservoir of great stories)
