Having fun is more expensive than ever. It's making people feel worse about the economy.

submitted by RandomCollection from (businessinsider.com)

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[–]ageingrockstar 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Haven't looked at the submitted piece (I avoid that publisher) but I think the argument is spurious.

Having fun doesn't need to cost money and billions of people around the world, who are still much poorer than average Westerners, manage to have fun in very cheap or free ways and feel optimistic about life.

People in the West feel 'worse about the economy' not because they can't still have cheap fun but because they realise they are being financially squeezed and prosecuted by their own governments. I think Business Insider is running a distraction story here (going on the title alone).

[–]RandomCollection[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's a case of inflation going up in many different places, including in leisure and entertainment.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I mostly agree, though I think that to whatever extent this article is true it can be attributed more to the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption exacerbated by social media. I saw articles and at least one scholarly paper about this long before now, and before COVID. Thorstein Veblen should be more widely read.

[–]ageingrockstar 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, if you're used to having fun by going to $200 ticket price stadium concerts, rather than learning an instrument and forming a band or joining a choir, then it might be quite the 'hedonic adjustment' to realise you can't pay for such entertainment anymore. Part of a growing affluent middle class is that they could do more of the expensive fun things, as we saw through the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, and that's fine, but you don't need to do these things to feel good about life, unless you've become habituated to them and are now experiencing 'entitlement loss' by having them recede out of financial reach. But actually, I think most people are much more legitimately concerned about housing, healthcare, education and food costs than they are about 'fun' costs.

[–]RandomCollection[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

https://archive.ph/EE0MY

I think that a substantial percentage of the US population is now too broke to be able to have fun.

A lot of this is due to Greedflation