Neil Freiman

It dovetails with some other Niels numbers that I had over the course of the year, because this was a distinct theme, right?

Americans are doing pretty well economically.

They are not doing well in terms of the happiness.

And there was the world happiness report that came out.

The United States in 2012 was 11th.

And now we've slid in the most recent report

to 24th in the global rankings.

Finland, for the eighth straight year, was the number one most happy country.

And then there was this Wall Street Journal poll that asked about the American dream, and they found that the share of people who say that they have a good chance of improving their standard of living fell to just 25%, which was a record low in surveys dating back to 1987.

Nearly 70% of people said they believe that the American dream, which is if you work hard, you will get ahead,

no longer holds true or never did, which was the highest level in nearly 15 years of surveys.

So reviewing Neil's numbers this year, it seemed like there was a distinct theme that Americans are reporting record low levels of satisfaction, even as they're doing OK economically.

It also could be this K-shaped recovery we're talking about and the fact that America is highly unequal.

There's a stat that was thrown around a lot for Moody's Analytics this year that showed that the top 10% of earners in the US accounted for nearly 50% of spending in the second quarter.

You heard it from a lot of retailers.

in the most recent earnings season ahead of the holiday shopping season was that the wealthy are doing okay.

They are maybe trading down to cheaper goods, but the people on the lower income spectrum are doing worse, and they're pulling back even more than the people on top who are powering ahead with spending.

This is going to continue to be a theme going into the next year with the midterm elections.

AI was everywhere this year, and it's starting to change how we speak in our daily lives.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute found that since the release of ChatGPT, people have tweaked their vocabulary to favor words that are more frequently used by the chatbot.