65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and They Outperform

Re:65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and The... by lbrito on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @04:03PM (#46518699)

I'd like to challenge that. Historical comparisons aside, looking just at today, if you're saying that social mobility is very good in the USA compared to most of the world, what are you basing that claim on?

I would think something like Gini combined with HDI and GDP per capita, on which the US only fares well on the latter. I found out there is something called Global Social Mobility Index, done by the WEF, and it places the US in 27th.

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Re:65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and The... by tjwebbnorfolk on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @04:35PM (#46519159)

I'm basing on my assumption vast majority of the world's people would love to be 27th.

And this is borne out in emigration patterns and visa applications...

It feels like we expect to be #1 in every category and we're unable to recognize that the US has it pretty damn good in a lot of important ways. Envy is the thief of happiness.

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Re:65% of Hacker News Posts Have Negative Sentiment, and The... by tjwebbnorfolk on Tuesday January 06, 2026 @04:42PM (#46519264)

Also looking a bit more at the GSMI: a lot of those criteria are based on current social welfare benefits received by the population. Many of which programs are not sustainable in the long run.

Of course the US has less of a social safety net than Norway, a petrostate with trillions of dollars in a national oil endowment, and ~half of their GDP is from fossil fuels. I don't know that I'd want to move to Norway for the kind of "social mobility" that I'm after.

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