The year isn’t quite over yet, but regardless, I think it’s safe to say 2025 has been a difficult, scary year for many Americans. From the longest government shutdown in US history to Trump deploying the National Guard in several cities across the U.S., the last 11 months have felt more and more dystopian with each passing day.
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Recently, u/AnyAskPost asked folks in r/AskReddit what they think the “biggest concern” is for most Americans right now. While there’s undeniably a seemingly infinite list of issues to be addressed, are 13 of the most popular things Americans shared:
1. “Affordability. I have a well-paying job, live frugally, and can barely make ends meet. It’s so fucking expensive to do anything but sit at home and breathe.”
“I legit can’t figure out how people afford to just…eat. I don’t understand how the restaurant industry is surviving. A typical dinner bill for a family of four is probably over $100 these days, even at national chains. That would take a good chunk out of the average person’s daily wages.”
2. “I have no health insurance for the first time in my life. It’s scary.”
“I’m one paycheck away from being homeless, and I’m terrified that my health issues will advance because I don’t have access to medical care. I guess dying young is almost a better eventuality than the uncertainty of aging in this country.”
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3. “That you can lose your job without warning. No notice period where you can get paid while looking for something else, just getting thrown out of a workplace you’ve been at for years with your belongings. And that this can lead to losing your right to proper health care because of insurance…”
4. “Getting a job. Everyone says they’re hiring, but nobody actually hires. Their requirements are completely unrealistic. Nobody with decades of experience is going to choose to work at a Jersey Mike’s.”
“A looooot of ghost jobs getting posted.”
5. “My government (ICE) kidnapping me.”
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6. “The economy. It’s like pre-French Revolution: the rich keep getting richer, and they flaunt it more. Double standards are getting worse. The poor are suffering. The middle class is destroyed. The bosses perpetuate this system as well. People are pissed. I hope more get angry as well.”
7. “Billionaires in the <1% controlling and ruining everyone else’s lives, and the idiots that idolize them.”
“The world would be so much better if people would really embrace the fact that they’re closer to being homeless than being a billionaire and viewed things/worked for changes with that thinking in mind. I know someone who believes, ‘I don’t actually want the rich to be taxed. If I ever get lucky enough to win the lottery or something, I don’t want to have to give that money up.’ She and multiple people in her family have experienced unexpected tragedies and traumas that left them in very bad situations, and they had to depend on food stamps and the like to get by. And yet, she cares about billionaires being allowed to hoard their wealth over all the good that could be done if they were properly taxed.”
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8. “The authoritarian takeover of our government.”
9. “We all have different algorithms and we’re no longer being pulled together with shared values and experiences like we were as late as the mid-2000s (TV shows that the collective watched, allowed us to agree on a shared set of cultural values and now everyone watches different things because of streaming).”
“Essentially, we’ve got a situation where:
We are living in completely different realities, so it’s very difficult to agree even on what’s real, let alone on the cause of a problem, if it’s even a problem at all, or what the correct next step is for solving a problem.
Many of us were never taught basic fact-checking skills, so we’re being propagandized at large. This happens on all sides of the political spectrum, the algorithms encourage it, and even folks who do know how to fact-check get lazy and sometimes share misinformation. People are too attached to their egos to publicly admit when they accidentally shared propaganda, so even when people figure it out, they aren’t usually interested in helping the community at large by correcting the information
As silly as it may sound, we really do need common cultural experiences and media again. Without any type of media that really connects us, we can’t agree on what our values are (and also, we’re just so much more disconnected). The last two times I can remember us having shared media experiences were Tiger King and, before that, Game of Thrones. Both of those were quite a while ago, and they certainly didn’t raise our cultural values, but most people watched them specifically to feel included and like part of something.
We used to have so much shared music, movies, and television in the ’90s and early 2000s, and, as silly as it may seem, it brought us together; we got to connect over that media, and it helped cement a more cohesive value system among the population.
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10. “Being able to live and pay bills. We’re reaching a point where basic housing and food absorb all of our income. If this isn’t resolved within a few years, heads will actually roll. American capitalism is propped up as long as the general population gets to have their ‘treats. As soon as that goes away, things will crumble.”‘
11. “The enshittification of everything (shrinkflation, quality of everything getting worse, everything trying to drain your money). For example, YouTube having ads and requiring a premium subscription to be remotely usable nowadays. Politics and retirement, too. The 2020s kinda suck.”
12. “The amount Americans work with no real holiday time. People always talk about how Americans don’t travel or don’t have passports, or haven’t seen the world. How the heck are they going to travel when they don’t get any paid vacation? In the best scenario, they would get two weeks off. If they’re married and have kids, they’re going to spend one week with their paternal parents and their second week with their maternal parents. This will be the case, year after year. One week here, the second week there, and no real vacation.”
—u/clippy_69696969 and u/RepFilms
13. And finally, “For me, it’s the decay in accountability and ethics displayed in American leadership across a wide spectrum: business, politics, ecumenical, legal, sports, military, and law enforcement. The principles leaders follow to govern themselves set the cultural tone for the people they serve, and we see FAR too many examples of poor, corrupt, and dishonorable leadership behaviors in this country today.”
“If people in these positions of relative power won’t do right, our country will continue to decline and so will the health and wealth of Americans.”
Want to join the conversation? Tell us your take in the comments below.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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