Everybody Knows Everything and Barely Understands Anything
“The United States was a reasonably happy country for a long time. It is not happy now.”
That sentence comes from Sam Peltzman, an economist at the University of Chicago, in a 2026 paper about the collapse in American happiness after 2020.
A brutally direct statement and a useful one.
After years of using the Gulf South Index to talk about backyard optimism – people often feel better the closer you get to their own home, family and community – this feels like the best description of the moment.
“It is not happy now” captures today’s fight between facts and feeling. Better yet, feelings BECOMING facts.
“Stock markets are booming (24 new record highs so-far in 2026), and 62% of U.S. households own stocks. Home values have never been higher, with the home-ownership rate at 65%. We haven’t faced a real recession in 17 years, and the unemployment sits at a mere 4.3%. U.S. life expectancy hit a record high, crime a record low. Optimism should be through the roof,” says Bruce Mehlman.
But! In May, the University of Michigan’s benchmark consumer sentiment survey hit the lowest point in its 49-year history. To be fair, it was up slightly in June, but still down 12 points from June 2025 and still an absolute bummer.
The facts seem to say we are doing fine. We feel worse. Feeling worse long enough becomes a fact.
The U.S. now ranks 23rd in the world in happiness, according to the latest World Happiness Report. More importantly, the report shows that the decline is especially sharp among young people in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – countries that share a primary language (yes, English). Speculation about why this grouping of English-speaking countries all trending in the wrong happiness direction are 1) increased isolation, 2) the increase in diagnosis and medication related to anxiety and related mental health challenges, and 3) the increasingly negative bent of the news media worldwide.
The first draft of this column was going to be about why we are all so sad…still. What I’m learning is whether people have the emotional bandwidth to trust, listen, understand and stay engaged.
An isolated person sits in a room with their own thoughts and the constant hammering of algorithms built to amplify those thoughts. An anxious person does not hear a message the same way a calm person does. A confused person does not give institutions, businesses, leaders or neighbors the benefit of the doubt. Isolation and anxiety can turn into outrage, especially when it is constantly fed to us. In the case of the people of the Gulf South, we spend multiple hours a day on social media and on our phones.
If you’ve been a faithful reader of the old GSI, you know that people already have more information than ever. We talk about it…a lot.
Here’s the thing. People are not calmer, more confident or more trusting.
Too much information creates confusion, not clarity. Confusion creates distrust. Distrust leads to withdrawal. Aaaaannnnnnddddddd, here we are. A public that is harder to reach, harder to reassure and much quicker to assume the worst.
Our brains are remarkable. They are also not magic.
A common estimate says the conscious mind can process roughly 50 bits of information per second. That is about the equivalent of reading one short sentence every second.
At the same time, our senses are taking in something closer to 11 million bits of information per second.
In other words, the world is throwing War and Peace at us twice a second, and our conscious mind is trying to keep up with a sentence.
So much information melts our brains and leaves us confused, not clear. Confused people become suspicious.
The World Happiness Report gives us more clarity.
Internet activities tied to communication, news, learning and content creation were associated with higher life satisfaction. Social media, gaming and browsing for fun were associated with lower life evaluations. Platform design matters too. Platforms built to facilitate social connection showed a clearer positive relationship with happiness. Platforms driven by algorithmic content tended to show a more negative relationship at high levels of use.
When the feed rewards fear, speed, certainty, anger and comparison, we should expect people to become more anxious, more suspicious and less trusting.
People are not standing in a quiet room waiting for our carefully worded message to arrive.
They are being chased constantly by a firehose.
News alerts. Text messages. Bills. Group chats. Cable news. TikTok. Facebook. YouTube. Podcasts. Search results. AI answers. Reviews. Rumors. Screenshots. Headlines. Hashtags. Comment sections. Someone’s cousin. Someone’s expert. Someone’s angry uncle. Someone’s wellness influencer wearing a microphone in a kitchen.
All of it arrives at once.
People do not trust what they don’t understand.
If I don’t understand why prices are still high, I assume someone is taking advantage of me.
If I don’t understand why a company changed its policy or how they talked to me, I assume it is hiding something.
If I don’t understand why government leaders say one thing and my life feels like another, I assume the whole thing is rigged.
If I don’t understand what is true online, I assume everyone is selling me something, or worse, trying to lie to me.
Confusion becomes suspicion.
Suspicion becomes distrust.
Distrust becomes withdrawal.
The loudest people are not always the biggest problem. The angry commenters are not always the biggest problem. The person yelling at the meeting is at least still in the room.
The bigger problem may be the people who stop listening, stop showing up, stop opening the email, stop believing the institution, stop reading the explanation, stop answering the survey, stop giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.
They do what I do at most cocktail parties and fundraisers. They just leave and they definitely don’t say goodbye.
In the last Gulf South Index annual report, we wrote that the thrill is gone.
People are tired, but not giving up. Skeptical, but not hopeless. Worried about the future, but still anchored to family, work, community and their own sense of what is right.
That tension is where we live now and it’s unending.
We are drowning in information and still looking for something solid.
That is where the newest national values research and the Gulf South Index meet each other.
Americans are overwhelmed, but not empty.
We are skeptical, but not unreachable.
We still have anchors.
Just this week, the Public Religion Research Institute’s American identity survey found broad agreement around several traits people consider important to being truly American: individual freedoms at 93%, the Constitution at 91%, accepting people from diverse backgrounds at 89%, the Declaration of Independence at 88%, and respecting political institutions and laws at 88%.
The American Enterprise Institute’s America at 250 survey, also released in the last week, found similar civic instincts. Eighty-two percent said equal opportunity regardless of race, religion or gender is absolutely essential. Seventy-two percent said, with hard work, giving people a chance to move up and prosper is absolutely essential. Sixty-six percent said people being able to protest or criticize the government without fear of punishment is absolutely essential.
The Gulf South Index finds the same kind of anchors closer to home.
Family, hard work and money were all ranked as very important by more than 90% of respondents in the Gulf South Index. Community and patriotism were rising as personal priorities. The bottom line we found is that in times of uncertainty, people retreat to what feels solid.
Americans still have values. People in the Gulf South still hold tightly to personal values.
What we are losing is the shared understanding that helps us recognize those values in each other. The gap is getting to understanding.
A company, institution or leader can be right on the facts and still fail if people do not understand what those facts mean for their lives. Remember, people trust people first, then facts second. If I don’t trust you, it doesn’t matter how factual you are. More dangerously, if I trust you, then you have more room to give me false information and I’ll believe it because you said it and I trust you.
The work is to connect what we need to say with what people already care about.
Those are not talking points. These concepts anchor us to what we believe when the noise is stripped away.
When people feel overloaded, anchors matter.
The first win is “I understand.”
This is where we need to get sharper.
The job is to help people understand.
Understanding requires discipline. It requires almost ruthless simplicity without arrogance. It requires knowing what not to say. It requires us taking in that the person on the other side of the message has a job, a family, a phone full of alerts, a bill to pay, a kid to pick up, an aging parent to help and about 700 other things competing for attention.
Maybe it requires shorter issues of the Gulf South Index? Nah. We’re good.
People are not sitting around waiting for our messages.If we want to reach them, we have to stop confusing volume with communication.
Sent is not understood. Posted is not believed. Seen is not trusted. Opened is not enough.
The first win is not “they saw it.”
The first win is “I understand.” I understand:
What changed.
Why this matters.
What you are asking me to do.
What this means for my family and me.
Why I should believe you.
It is a higher standard than most of us use. It is also a better one.
When people understand, they:
May not always agree. But they are less likely to assume the worst.
Are less likely to withdraw and more likely to stay in the conversation.
Right now, keeping people in the conversation is no small thing.
So, what do we do?
Local voices still carry weight. Familiar stories still have power. Common experience still matters.
Listen. Simplify ruthlessly. Connect with the values that matter most. Choose messengers who are close enough to be trusted. Tell stories that are accurate and human.
We stop trying to win by volume. We win with “I understand.”
“The United States was a reasonably happy country for a long time. It is not happy now.”
That sentence comes from Sam Peltzman, an economist at the University of Chicago, in a 2026 paper about the collapse in American happiness after 2020.
A brutally direct statement and a useful one.
After years of using the Gulf South Index to talk about backyard optimism – people often feel better the closer you get to their own home, family and community – this feels like the best description of the moment.
“It is not happy now” captures today’s fight between facts and feeling. Better yet, feelings BECOMING facts.
“Stock markets are booming (24 new record highs so-far in 2026), and 62% of U.S. households own stocks. Home values have never been higher, with the home-ownership rate at 65%. We haven’t faced a real recession in 17 years, and the unemployment sits at a mere 4.3%. U.S. life expectancy hit a record high, crime a record low. Optimism should be through the roof,” says Bruce Mehlman.
But! In May, the University of Michigan’s benchmark consumer sentiment survey hit the lowest point in its 49-year history. To be fair, it was up slightly in June, but still down 12 points from June 2025 and still an absolute bummer.
The facts seem to say we are doing fine. We feel worse. Feeling worse long enough becomes a fact.
The U.S. now ranks 23rd in the world in happiness, according to the latest World Happiness Report. More importantly, the report shows that the decline is especially sharp among young people in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – countries that share a primary language (yes, English). Speculation about why this grouping of English-speaking countries all trending in the wrong happiness direction are 1) increased isolation, 2) the increase in diagnosis and medication related to anxiety and related mental health challenges, and 3) the increasingly negative bent of the news media worldwide.
The first draft of this column was going to be about why we are all so sad…still. What I’m learning is whether people have the emotional bandwidth to trust, listen, understand and stay engaged.
An isolated person sits in a room with their own thoughts and the constant hammering of algorithms built to amplify those thoughts. An anxious person does not hear a message the same way a calm person does. A confused person does not give institutions, businesses, leaders or neighbors the benefit of the doubt. Isolation and anxiety can turn into outrage, especially when it is constantly fed to us. In the case of the people of the Gulf South, we spend multiple hours a day on social media and on our phones.
If you’ve been a faithful reader of the old GSI, you know that people already have more information than ever. We talk about it…a lot.
Here’s the thing. People are not calmer, more confident or more trusting.
Too much information creates confusion, not clarity. Confusion creates distrust. Distrust leads to withdrawal. Aaaaannnnnnddddddd, here we are. A public that is harder to reach, harder to reassure and much quicker to assume the worst.
Our brains are remarkable. They are also not magic.
A common estimate says the conscious mind can process roughly 50 bits of information per second. That is about the equivalent of reading one short sentence every second.
At the same time, our senses are taking in something closer to 11 million bits of information per second.
In other words, the world is throwing War and Peace at us twice a second, and our conscious mind is trying to keep up with a sentence.
So much information melts our brains and leaves us confused, not clear. Confused people become suspicious.
The World Happiness Report gives us more clarity.
Internet activities tied to communication, news, learning and content creation were associated with higher life satisfaction. Social media, gaming and browsing for fun were associated with lower life evaluations. Platform design matters too. Platforms built to facilitate social connection showed a clearer positive relationship with happiness. Platforms driven by algorithmic content tended to show a more negative relationship at high levels of use.
When the feed rewards fear, speed, certainty, anger and comparison, we should expect people to become more anxious, more suspicious and less trusting.
People are not standing in a quiet room waiting for our carefully worded message to arrive.
They are being chased constantly by a firehose.
News alerts. Text messages. Bills. Group chats. Cable news. TikTok. Facebook. YouTube. Podcasts. Search results. AI answers. Reviews. Rumors. Screenshots. Headlines. Hashtags. Comment sections. Someone’s cousin. Someone’s expert. Someone’s angry uncle. Someone’s wellness influencer wearing a microphone in a kitchen.
All of it arrives at once.
People do not trust what they don’t understand.
If I don’t understand why prices are still high, I assume someone is taking advantage of me.
If I don’t understand why a company changed its policy or how they talked to me, I assume it is hiding something.
If I don’t understand why government leaders say one thing and my life feels like another, I assume the whole thing is rigged.
If I don’t understand what is true online, I assume everyone is selling me something, or worse, trying to lie to me.
Confusion becomes suspicion.
Suspicion becomes distrust.
Distrust becomes withdrawal.
The loudest people are not always the biggest problem. The angry commenters are not always the biggest problem. The person yelling at the meeting is at least still in the room.
The bigger problem may be the people who stop listening, stop showing up, stop opening the email, stop believing the institution, stop reading the explanation, stop answering the survey, stop giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.
They do what I do at most cocktail parties and fundraisers. They just leave and they definitely don’t say goodbye.
In the last Gulf South Index annual report, we wrote that the thrill is gone.
People are tired, but not giving up. Skeptical, but not hopeless. Worried about the future, but still anchored to family, work, community and their own sense of what is right.
That tension is where we live now and it’s unending.
We are drowning in information and still looking for something solid.
That is where the newest national values research and the Gulf South Index meet each other.
Americans are overwhelmed, but not empty.
We are skeptical, but not unreachable.
We still have anchors.
Just this week, the Public Religion Research Institute’s American identity survey found broad agreement around several traits people consider important to being truly American: individual freedoms at 93%, the Constitution at 91%, accepting people from diverse backgrounds at 89%, the Declaration of Independence at 88%, and respecting political institutions and laws at 88%.
The American Enterprise Institute’s America at 250 survey, also released in the last week, found similar civic instincts. Eighty-two percent said equal opportunity regardless of race, religion or gender is absolutely essential. Seventy-two percent said, with hard work, giving people a chance to move up and prosper is absolutely essential. Sixty-six percent said people being able to protest or criticize the government without fear of punishment is absolutely essential.
The Gulf South Index finds the same kind of anchors closer to home.
Family, hard work and money were all ranked as very important by more than 90% of respondents in the Gulf South Index. Community and patriotism were rising as personal priorities. The bottom line we found is that in times of uncertainty, people retreat to what feels solid.
Americans still have values. People in the Gulf South still hold tightly to personal values.
What we are losing is the shared understanding that helps us recognize those values in each other. The gap is getting to understanding.
A company, institution or leader can be right on the facts and still fail if people do not understand what those facts mean for their lives. Remember, people trust people first, then facts second. If I don’t trust you, it doesn’t matter how factual you are. More dangerously, if I trust you, then you have more room to give me false information and I’ll believe it because you said it and I trust you.
The work is to connect what we need to say with what people already care about.
Those are not talking points. These concepts anchor us to what we believe when the noise is stripped away.
When people feel overloaded, anchors matter.
The first win is “I understand.”
This is where we need to get sharper.
The job is to help people understand.
Understanding requires discipline. It requires almost ruthless simplicity without arrogance. It requires knowing what not to say. It requires us taking in that the person on the other side of the message has a job, a family, a phone full of alerts, a bill to pay, a kid to pick up, an aging parent to help and about 700 other things competing for attention.
Maybe it requires shorter issues of the Gulf South Index? Nah. We’re good.
People are not sitting around waiting for our messages.If we want to reach them, we have to stop confusing volume with communication.
Sent is not understood. Posted is not believed. Seen is not trusted. Opened is not enough.
The first win is not “they saw it.”
The first win is “I understand.” I understand:
It is a higher standard than most of us use. It is also a better one.
When people understand, they:
Right now, keeping people in the conversation is no small thing.
So, what do we do?
Local voices still carry weight. Familiar stories still have power. Common experience still matters.
Listen. Simplify ruthlessly. Connect with the values that matter most. Choose messengers who are close enough to be trusted. Tell stories that are accurate and human.
We stop trying to win by volume. We win with “I understand.”
Marc Ehrhardt
President
The Ehrhardt Group