•June 14, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

In 1978 my friend Ron Michaelson of Springfield had just finished officiating a double-overtime super-sectional high school basketball game. On his way off the gym floor to the locker room, Ron was attacked by family members of a losing player. They broke his nose and put him in the hospital for several days.

So Ron is a sensitive observer of anger in American, and he says it’s getting worse all the time. Even in youth sports for little tykes, Ron says, he sees coaches venting anger at the refs all the time, and parents doing the same toward coaches who don’t play their kids enough.

Why are so many of us so angry?

According to the National Opinion Research Center, inflation-adjusted per-person income is up three times from what is was in 1950, yet the percentage of us “very happy” has not increased at all since then. Though the wealth gains are not evenly spread, even the poor are much better off than was the case in 1950.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.