Category: home

$$$$$$ ***** America’s ‘Marriage Material’ Shortage

“Social isolation is rising alongside romantic isolation, as the economic and cultural trajectories of men and women move in opposite directions,” @DKThomp writes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/america-marriage-decline/681518/?gift=yGKGqaI9BMfIDuch_TrGYdz2WmENaCyIFjSV51Ovqig&utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

$$$$$$ ****** How Progressives Froze the American Dream

Americans were once the most mobile people on the planet. Now they’re stuck in place. @YAppelbaum reports on why Americans stopped moving to new homes in new places—and why that’s a big problem:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/03/american-geographic-social-mobility/681439/?gift=yGKGqaI9BMfIDuch_TrGYbip2g73G0lTEBdPUwqspOQ&utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

These three principles—consistency, tolerance, and abundance—can help restore American mobility. Federal guidelines can make the environment more amenable, but the solutions by and large cannot come from central planning; states and cities and towns will need to reform their rules and processes to allow the housing supply to grow where people want to build. The goal of policy makers, in any case, shouldn’t be to move Americans to any particular place, or to any particular style of living. They should instead aim to make it easier for Americans to move wherever they would like—to make it equally easy to build wherever Americans’ hopes and desires alight.

 

***** The Anti-Social Century

Americans are now spending more time alone than ever, @DKThomp writes. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/?gift=yGKGqaI9BMfIDuch_TrGYfn7xn0QEyjCrk1rxmJRq8U&utm_source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social

“I have a view that is uncommon among social scientists, which is that moral revolutions are real and they change our culture,” Robert Putnam told me. In the early 20th century, a group of liberal Christians, including the pastor Walter Rauschenbusch, urged other Christians to expand their faith from a narrow concern for personal salvation to a public concern for justice. Their movement, which became known as the Social Gospel, was instrumental in passing major political reforms, such as the abolition of child labor. It also encouraged a more communitarian approach to American life, which manifested in an array of entirely secular congregations that met in union halls and community centers and dining rooms. All of this came out of a particular alchemy of writing and thinking and organizing. No one can say precisely how to change a nation’s moral-emotional atmosphere, but what’s certain is that atmospheres do change. Our smallest actions create norms. Our norms create values. Our values drive behavior. And our behaviors cascade.