Navigating Life is Tougher Than Ever
February 22, 2024
Life has always been tough. With our increased overall wealth, however, we think it should be easier than for earlier generations. Yet, because of increased responsibilities, even the solid middle class finds navigating life tougher, more stressful than we ever imagined.
According to the report Stress in America 2023, produced by the American Psychological Association, between 2019 and 2023, the highest increase in the rate of mental health diagnoses, from 31 to 45 percent, occurred among adults ages 35 to 44!
A former student of mine, successful and in her mid-30s, and I recently dot-pointed some of the stressers, each of which is arguably more burdensome than in the past:
Three-generation family responsibilities, from child care for working mothers (often at $100 a day) through expensive care for elderly parents;
Skyrocketing housing costs;
Student loan debt;
Lack of pension coverage;
Warp-speed change in technology, which threatens white-collar work;
Mayhem, from school shootings to a world on the brink of war. Turbulence at home and worldwide has always been with us, yet mayhem can now be remote, pushbutton-activated, and the potential is in our faces 24/7, and
Social media saturation, which ignites firestorms in our brains.
And if this basket of worries stresses double-income, salary-earning households, think about the wage-earning, often single-earner families. Many scrimp ’til the next paycheck; credit card debt piles up.
What to do? Government has become the default mechanism, and it does help lower-income families with year-round school meals, and a panoply of safety net help with rent, utilities, and much more. Yet the very need for dependence on government plus the challenges of navigating bureaucratic welfare systems are themselves stressers.
When you tally dependency on all the government programs, from medical care to farm subsidies to traditional welfare and retirement, about half of all American households are significantly dependent on one or more government programs, according to a pre-pandemic report by the Washington Post.
It is hard to know how much government is too much, as in addition to spending on people needs, governments also invest, in education, universities, research, infrastructure.
Yet, we may be near a limit on what governments can do—without squeezing the capital needed for individual and corporate investment in creative, wealth-generating activity. Total government spending continues to creep upward, and by 2028 is projected to represent almost four out of every 10 dollars of Gross Domestic Product (value of all goods and services produced in U.S.), according to Statista, a business information service.
What to do? I think we have about reached the max on what government can support without diminishing our economic growth engine. We need to increase independence of government, if and where we can.
Here are three quirky, big ideas:
A Future of America Commission, led by someone like Mitch Daniels, arguably the best public executive in our nation, as former governor of Indiana, president of Purdue and one-time director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Fill the slate with Nobel prize winners and deep thinkers. America needs an authoritative roadmap to where the devil we should be heading, and of how to get there. Obviously, our dysfunctional Congress is not in a position to do this.
Generate another Great Awakening, similar to the revival fervor that gripped the nation at times in the 18th and 19th Centuries. We need to reforge our nation’s culture (learned behavior), which I sense has been eroding, to include white, brown and black subcultures. Who to lead? Maybe a combination of larger-than-life Oprah Winfrey and a driving force along the lines of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), which had major success in changing American habits.
Meditate. One in seven Americans already meditate, according to a survey by the group Find a Therapist, and the practice has been increasing in popularity. The rest of the nation should try it. Meditation calms and focuses the mind, and is an antidote to the social media brain fire that consumes, confuses and distracts us.
Navigating life may be even tougher today than in the past. We can address the stressers a bit, which will help.
Nowlan is the author or co-author of six university press books about government and politics, including, with Melissa Mouritsen and Ken Redfield, Illinois Politics: A Citizen’s Guide to Power, Politics and Government (University of Illinois Press, August 2024). He is a retired professor of politics and former senior aide to three Illinois governors.
