What do you think the biggest problem is today?
Just curious what you all think it is? Global warming, Over consumption, more disease?
Trending Content - Off Topic Forum
Career Resources
WSO Free Modeling Series - Now Open Through
June 30, 2026
9 Free Financial Modeling Lessons
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
High Finance Applications
Guaranteed
Get at least one offer GUARANTEED
- 1:1 support
- 92% success rate
- 2,000+ mentor network
- Unlimited Live bootcamps
- AI for resume + LinkedIn
- Networking automation tools
- HireVue simulation tool
- Full course library
- Private Slack community
- 20hrs of mocks
- + much more...
.
why you so pessimistic
hardos in finance
Ha ha ha. good one
Investment Bankers:
Engineers:
.
Aww decided that people may actually like responding to open ended questions.
Religion imo. Still the biggest threat to humanity and constantly divides us.
Yeah that woke religion is by far the greatest threat to humanity since the Soviet Union collapsed.
Grabs popcorn...
My answer is the exact opposite of this, at least in the western world - the declining belief in God and its impacts (e.g. declining participation in the community and a more isolated, lonely existence; the following of different ideologies in its place that are eroding the sociopolitical landscape). While plenty of people throughout history have done evil in the name of religion, without religion, I think most of the atrocities would be committed under a different, non-religious ideology (see Soviet communism, Nazism, Mao's cultural revolution). People can easily be radicalized without religion and justify their actions by other means.
Without belief in a just God and an afterlife, acts have no intrinsic right and wrong. The world would be in far more chaos if there were no religion. Just examine any culture that has advocated state-sponsored atheism. The devaluing of religion clearly leads to the devaluation and weakening of the family unit, the basic building block of society.
Look at Asia. You dont need a God to be civilized and disciplined
Out-fucking-standingly based.
Related:
Communism and Religion Can’t Coexist
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/communism-and-rel…
”The communist hatred of faith is a feature, not a fault. Karl Marx said so himself. Most are familiar with his line that religion is the “opium of the people.” What follows is even more pointed: “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.” Criticism of religion is “the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.” Religion may show man’s longing for a better existence, Marx argued, but it also prevents that dream from becoming reality.”
> Without belief in a just God and an afterlife, acts have no intrinsic right and wrong
That assumes the sole source of moral value is expected risk/reward, which makes no sense
> Just examine any culture that has advocated state-sponsored atheism
Look at any culture that has advocated state-sponsored theism. State-sponsored is the part where you're screwed
I agree with your first paragraph though
I mean yea look at Palestine vs Israel right now.
Is there really a good result that comes out of this? From what I see it seems like it is just going to be bad for a while.
Israel vs. Palestine is an ethnic/nationalist conflict, not a religious one.
Problem is organized religion.
Luke 12:51
"Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!"
- Jesus Christ
Public debate.
Due to echo chambers on (social)media platforms, people shut their eyes for different opinions/points of view. Information is quickly labelled wrong or fake news etc.
In addition, certain problems cannot be discussed anymore because when you address them you are immediately labelled with whatever or even censored from media platforms.
Second this. In addition, the amount of people that are getting their information from sources as Instagram/Youtube/Tik Tok is disturbing. Sure, there are smart people on those platforms but they are outnumbered by people that will say anything to increase their own hype and viewcount.
Social media.
Lmao imagine thinking cancel culture is worse than disease, poverty, slavery, and war.
MS with no response just confirms I'm right lmao
Agreed lol
It doesn’t confirm you’re right; you didn’t even make an argument. You literally posted an opinion with nothing to back it up
Those are timeless problems. It’s understandable that people are answering with issues that are more pronounced in current times. If you are going to mouth off, at least be clever about it.
They're happening as we speak though, its just hard to imagine the entitlement from the perspective of someone non-privileged
The invention of agriculture. It's all been downhill since the hunter-gatherer days.
Found the retard
Corn ... that one really got us and don't even get me started on wheat.
Lol on one hand you have constant struggle for survival but but otherwise no problems.
On the other you have 0 struggle for survival and bunch of made up problems.
Idk man pick your poison.
I'm not sure if anyone has read the book Sapiens (great read), but if I recall correctly, Yuval Noah Harari actually touches on how the change from hunter-gatherer to the agricultural revolution was the worst thing to happen to that date (or something like that). Again, I may have butchered this if I didn't recall correctly, but great read nonetheless!
Based.
RETVRN TO MONKE
Anprim?
Someone's read Sapiens I see
The most existential problem has to be climate change. Besides that, overall distrust in institutions and polarization (in the US specifically) are up there.
Institutions brought that distrust on themselves. Fuck 'em.
Which institutions? The most common one people distrust nowadays is the electoral system and it's just cause they're mad Trump lost.
Agree 100%. Doesn’t mean it’s not a problem
The Springfield Police Department. Can't even dump nuclear waste into the river anymore without a fine.
the biggest problems of any time are always the 7 deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. all bad things can be distilled down to one of those things
EDIT: forgot lust, thanks Monty Burns
I believe Pizz can tell you the one that you forgot to mention
LOL
Sort of ironic to complain about greed in an investment banking forum isn't it?
it'd be ironic if I worked in IB, but since I don't, I don't have that cognitive dissonance. my comments may ruffle some feathers, but the OP asked what I thought the world's biggest problems are, not tell people what they want to hear. if people fling poo, so be it.
I don't view what I do as being greedy. I look at it as working a lot of hours and getting compensated for those hours.
In America, a growing number of people thinking that any shortcoming in an individual's life is due to a flaw in the "system," which the government must step in to fix.
I could not agree more with this. I also find it as bad when people manufacture problems to get street credit. AKA founder of bumble, grew up wealthly, went to a top school, married an oil tycoon and became a billionaire. I get it she is a women, but lets be real this is a very privileged life.
The biggest problem in my life personally is the lack of new, interesting cars with manual transmissions.
The biggest problem overall? Organized religion.
bro the manual transmission thing speaks to me. it's truly sad. part of the reason I love going to europe is I get the thrill of driving stick shift again
I mean you can always buy a nice low-mileage example of a manual transmission car stateside! I've only owned manual transmission cars personally. Started with a 6MT G35 coupe, then got a 6MT Volvo S60R, and now I have a 6MT Audi RS4. My mom actually moved her automatic petrol car when she retired from the USA > Spain because she didn't want a stickshift diesel like they all have.
I just cannot get be behind electric cars for this reason. If someone made a car that actually shifted like a good manual That's something I could get behind.
People bitching about made-up problems and asking other people to fix it for them.
Milton coming in. get ready.
Globally? Access to clean water.
Domestically? The GOP abandoning their commitment to democracy and revealing their autocratic tendencies. If a Democrat wins the Oval in 2024, this group of House Republicans will absolutely not certify the results, and we will have an attempted coup on our hands.
I don't disagree with you, but I have to say that the Democratic party leadership (not democrats in general) also have some responsibility for this. When you have people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Hilary Clinton basically conspiring to steal the nomination from more populist (and straight up popular) candidates like Bernie Sanders can you really be surprised that there is a really negative reaction from the other side with lots of skepticism? Especially when they've got worthless pundits like Tucker Carlson playing in their right ear constantly.
Do you really think Bernie is the considered a populist candidate?
LOL Bernie was not more popular. PopulIST? Yes. PopulAR? No. You're just as bad as the Trumpers who think their election was stolen
The fanaticism with election security seems to be bipartisan as Dems push to get HR-1 passed.
The Dems wish to preserve/expand access to voting, while the GOP is working to curtail/reverse access. And because everything in politics must be "Both Sides", these are somehow equal actions. Sigh..
deleted
Gaslighting and re-writing history at its finest. Breathtaking.
It's an absurd yet incredibly common talking point among the MSM. To your point regarding Congressional objections, I agree to a point however there were some representatives who said they thought the vote was legitimate but still voted not to certify probably to appeal to their constituents. I think that is a potential issue but I'm not certain how to deal with that. Your point regarding legitimate concerns is valid but I feel that in that context January 6 is too late of a date to vote for the certification as the elected president would take office only 2 weeks later. Maybe make a law for states to get results in much closer to election day and have an initial vote sometime early December to give time for any issues brought up to be smoothed out?
What are these compelling arguments you speak of?
Twitter gave a voice and platform to people who have no business opening their mouths in the first palce
What’s even scarier is the realization that these people vote
Even scarier that people have more than one instagram.
What's scarier is that Twitter/Facebook/Insta/YouTube went from giving people platforms to becoming the platforms.
.
Marxist ideology taking hold of the left-leaning parties of Western governments and their mass push for equity leading into a "Great Reset" of capitalism. It's like people completely forget about the mass deaths Leftist movements lead to in China, USSR, North Korea, Cambodia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Cuba during the 20th century. Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party were socialists pushing hard for the regulation of the private sector and and other left-leaning causes like gun control. During the lead up, none of these movements ever said what their ultimate plan was. Every single time they talked about ushering in a new age of equality, empowering the working class, alleviating poverty, and prosecuting a scapegoated demographic group. All while changing the legislatures either gradually through policy or outright military insurrection to demonize anyone who opposed their views, treating them as an extremist to be dealt with accordingly. The next global economic downturn I firmly believe will give way to some very unpleasant leadership unless the USA and Europe change their course.
And you don't think that this happened this go around?
It has certainly laid the groundwork but no, I don't think we've seen things get bad enough yet. If this whole paying people more on unemployment than minimum wage keeps up though and people refuse to go back to work, then I could see things heading the Germany route. Inflation isn't something to mess with and Biden is essentially retarded child playing with a loaded gun in terms of economic policy. What makes this scarier than Germany though is that the USD is the global reserve currency. If that starts to slide everyone is going to suffer big time. Except the ultra elite who already have a ton of assets of course.
Cancel Culture. This country is about free speech. As long as you don't incite violence or harm, you should be able to say and practice whatever you like.
Was waiting for someone to say this (eyeroll). You absolutely always have had the right to say and practice whatever you like. You've never had the right to say and practice whatever you like, free of any consequence by your employer or the free market, or Twitter, or Facebook who have their own terms of service to use their private enterprise.
Now if we want to talk about the government taking action against free speech, how many times did we hear Trump call for boycotts, firings, and banning of private citizens and companies? The Right likes to pretend Cancel Culture is an exclusively Left thing whereas voters of both parties absolutely embrace "Cancel Culture". Liz Cheney was just cancelled because she just had the audacity to say the election wasn't stolen.
Liz Cheney deserves to be cancelled for being a nepotistic neoconservative warmonger.
First off, Twitter and Facebook are not private enterprises like FOX or CNN and have government protection from legal liability (Section 230). Second, corporations cannot just do whatever they want. We have laws against discrimination on the books. If you oust people for holding a certain political viewpoint, and can show a firing based on that, the legality of such a firing becomes questionable. I would also argue that big corporates receiving bailouts and corporate welfare from the federal government (tax payer money) should not be classified as private enterprises. If the government is helping them, they should be held to the standard of the government when protecting free speech.
I think it's also worth noting that the definition of "government" is a bit broader than just getting arrested by state or federal authorities. A good illustration of this is the classic supreme case Tinker vs. De Moines which cited with the students rights to protest the Vietnam war over the school district.
There is some accuracy to this comment, but it's strange given that teddybear never mentioned his political affiliation. I know moderate liberals who are against cancel culture just as I know conservatives who are against it (recall Obama has spoken out against it only to be retorted with "ok boomer!" from the AOC types). I agree with your assessment that it occurs with both parties (and I certainly wasn't thrilled with the Cheney removal), but I think the reason conservatives attack it more is that higher education, major corporates (every industry imaginable), health & medicine almost certainly lean heavily liberal and actively practice cancel culture. This makes it increasingly difficult for an average Joe to be conservative and gain success in these fields.
The problem with cancel culture / censorship / voice suppression is the resulting inability to make informed decisions...
If you look at it from the very narrow scope of making investment decisions...
How can you make good decisions if key information is withheld/ suppressed?
It is effectively saying it is OK to cook the books because the bad quarterly report would make the manager feel bad and hurt his chances of getting a good next job...
I think a big part of the workd is going to see wide spread decrease in quality of living then they are use too and this in turn will lead to social unrest
The US increasingly becoming a clown world, corporate-run police state that promotes destructive, atomizing woke policies at home while indiscriminately bombing other people overseas.
Wokery
All variants of socialism (progressivism, current-style feminism, critical race theory)
Identity and D&I obsession
heart disease, laziness, lack of proper nutritional education in the schools (K-12) and to physicians
The way the internet (social media, specifically) destroyed the way we communicate with each other, along with the neuroses and mental issues it's spawned in people. The obsession over identity politics, though I'd almost say this is a product of the former. The decline of the family unit. I almost wonder if this is because of the decline of religion as another poster mentioned.
Lack of compassion & empathy, also egoism.
premarital sex
Male or female?
men can engage in pre-marital sex but not women
Anonymous users
You’re anonymous
Probably social media. Even the executives and senior engineers that created these platforms have said that it will completely fracture the structure of society and have an insane amount of negative, unintended consequences. Just look at an average individual who doesn't indulge in too much critical-thinking. They are completely brainwashed(especially youth) and the problem is that as these platforms are extremely addictive. They will most likely never become sane, rational, and mentally health individuals who believe in real values like love, family, relationships, altruism, etc. You can already feel the problem and it will only get worse this industry doesn't get heavily regulated
Completely agree with this. Social media (Tiktok, Instagram, etc.) is what allows otherwise fringe / insane ideas to become mainstream overnight and get much more traction than they ever should. Plus, algorithms drive people into their own corners so they are never exposed to any contradictory information. Creates a whole generation of brainwashed adults incapable of forming their own opinion on anything.
It almost feels like Twitter has become a collective internal monologue. I know the NPC meme was a joke but it's feeling eerily accurate these days.
Climate change, polarization, and the lack of genuine discourse
Qui vero officiis quos cum harum aliquid. Optio dolores hic est quis suscipit sint.
Nisi saepe dolor iusto tempora dignissimos est. Perferendis eos praesentium ipsa architecto enim quia. Necessitatibus ratione eum accusamus est laborum.
Voluptatibus consectetur sint consectetur assumenda natus quos tempore quos. Molestiae modi vel magnam labore tempore. Vero nam enim minus. Ut eaque est excepturi et iusto qui labore omnis. Minima consequatur ut praesentium voluptatem asperiores. Repudiandae qui quae nisi adipisci. Voluptatem eum magni ex labore.
Veniam quia sed cum eius fugiat. Id nihil rerum dolorem laborum temporibus velit. Culpa non et dolor dignissimos ut. Sit consectetur eum omnis quasi totam quasi dolores. Aut quia tempora voluptatem voluptatibus vel eius sit non.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Quo molestias repellat laboriosam eligendi dignissimos architecto. Ipsum deserunt odio est doloremque. Velit facilis ut aut alias nobis.
Ut illum sunt dolorem qui. Atque dolorem modi nostrum eos ut eum sint.
Quidem in quas aut. Ex ab ipsum cupiditate et vel id nisi. Consequatur dignissimos est voluptatem exercitationem.
Tempora nulla odio omnis exercitationem. Corporis et enim enim accusamus in iste debitis. Sit incidunt iure tempora tenetur autem occaecati. Occaecati eum expedita laudantium voluptatum minima qui tenetur. Laudantium aut reiciendis explicabo soluta.
Vero quibusdam earum dignissimos delectus nisi doloribus dolore quod. Nesciunt saepe esse quaerat veritatis. Ut est esse aut incidunt repellat.
Nam voluptatem non et ea. Recusandae ut non consectetur repellat sit.
Similique dolor nobis et vero. Voluptatem eligendi ut quod eaque. Iste et eligendi cupiditate maiores quia et odio qui.
Asperiores quae facilis et. Non rem quasi architecto. Facere ipsa sunt doloremque molestias aut animi non. Aut illum voluptatum porro unde quia sit. Temporibus minus est qui corrupti vitae. Minima aut cupiditate nam expedita. Voluptas cumque esse ea.
Nihil hic ea accusamus debitis. Impedit voluptas omnis et quod magnam saepe ullam. Voluptatem itaque odio occaecati aperiam voluptatibus omnis et. Quaerat quod officiis ea animi repudiandae ab in.
Qui sequi omnis harum eveniet et. Fugiat enim quam corporis. Temporibus magnam esse labore quia optio. Soluta cum et inventore ipsum dolorem et laboriosam.
Sint blanditiis qui inventore reprehenderit non accusantium. Vel nobis est sed est iste aut et unde. Culpa et velit necessitatibus. Quia perferendis voluptatem distinctio sint expedita officia.
Aut et atque accusamus officiis id debitis et. Non qui ex quidem ad. Eum sit et dolorem quam. Rem iste numquam qui quidem cum tempora quibusdam dolor.
Et ipsum porro impedit modi. Ipsa necessitatibus dolore aperiam totam porro labore perferendis. Eius nostrum eaque quia quia nisi.
Praesentium consequatur aperiam cupiditate culpa debitis tempore est quisquam. Nobis qui quis et porro ipsa.