When America was ‘great,’ according to data

[taiwan_girl]

Interesting article, but no real surprises, but some fun charts to look at.

So, we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person’s birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.

The good old days when America was “great” aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn’t sold out.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/when-america-was-great-according-to-data/ar-BB1mYttE

[Axtremus]

Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.

Yeap, I have suspected something along that line for a long time.

[jon-nyc]

For me it was none of those ages.

It was the 90s. Economy was going gangbusters, the Cold War was over, no real challenges to the world order were present, and Islam hadn’t really reared its foul head yet. Domestic politics were tame. Hell, Dole ran to the left of Clinton on a couple of issues.

Those things seem objectively true and demonstrably superior to what we faced in prior decades and the decades since.