Huh, did anything happen in 2020? I'm wracking my brains trying to think of anything.

As the article touches on, it's not just about what happened in 2020, but why it hasn't rebounded. It's been long enough we can't use 2020 as an excuse.

Similarly, I roll my eyes when people still blame Ronald Reagan for the current homeless situation in California. There's been plenty of time to correct that mistake and well???

But honestly, IMO America has become a joyless, directionless dystopia of soma and bread and circuses in the middle of a geopolitical knife fight to define the 21st century and maybe even hit the singularity. I'm not happy with the current management, but it was the same unhappy bunch talked about here that decided by voting or opting not to vote that gave it a second shot. Kinda deserve this, no? If no, I'm all ears for your one weird trick to fix America, go for it!

Yeah I know, downvotes incoming for such heresy. If you don't pick a side, then what are you even doing?

It's the housing prices and the affordability of life in general. We are all debt slaves now. I am 100% using 2020 as an excuse because it broke the market and sent housing prices up 50%+ in 6 months.

The fact that we are entertaining 50 year mortgages as a "solution" further adds insult to injury.

Nobody talks about how the "cure" was worse than the disease in 2020. Happiness matters and is worth dying for.

On the contrary, 2020 permanently changed the nature of many of my relationships and the same is true of everybody I know

Pretty much. Lots of people who really were violently supportive of those measures will never admit to themselves what a horrible, entirely predictable mistake it all was.

It absolutely destroyed a ton of very good things, perhaps forever.