In the United States in the years after the Great Recession, pessimists had a lot of material to work with. Economic doomsayers looked at the stubbornly elevated unemployment rate and discerned a depressing new normal, in which technological and social change had rendered many Americans simply unemployable, and stagnation and sclerosis loomed ahead. Social pessimists looked at the disarray in working-class culture, the retreat from marriage and child rearing and civic and religious life, the spread of loneliness and depression and addiction, and saw a society where ordinary forms of flourishing were slipping out of reach.
Five years ago it was easy to tell a story where these two problems were straightforwardly conjoined, with economic disappointment driving social dysfunction and vice versa.
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