[andrewmutz]

> Point is, this isn't necessarily indicative of life becoming worse

It probably isn't indicative of life becoming worse. These articles are about economics, and the nice thing about macroeconomics is that its reasonably well measured. We can just look at the numbers to see in aggregate what the conditions are like.

To choose just the most dramatic example from the graph: sentiment was generally been more negative from 1975-2020 than it was during the great depression in the 1930s. Things aren't perfect, but no one would claim that economic conditions in the US have been worse than the great depression for the last 50 years.

I suspect that this trend holds outside of economics as well, but of course I have no data to back this up. Specifically, I suspect news-based sentiment of the world conditions have been declining while conditions in the world have not been declining.