The “American Dream” is the most important of our national myths. It’s the idea that, with hard work and determination, anyone in this country can achieve middle-class security, own a home, start a family, and provide the children they raise with a better life than they had.
Is that still true?
On the one hand, our economy is the envy of the world. We are the richest country, leading the pack when it comes to innovation. And more people choose to move here for economic opportunity than to any other nation.
And yet, everywhere you look in this country, there is a growing sense of pessimism. A sense that you can work hard, play by the rules, even go to college, and still end up saddled with debt and unable to afford the basics, like a home.
Americans were told that higher education would be their ticket to the good life. Now, there’s more than $1.7 trillion dollars in student loan debt hanging over a generation. Americans were told that free trade would make everyone prosper. But try telling that to the 4.5 million people who lost their manufacturing jobs since NAFTA took effect.
Perhaps all of this is why a July Wall Street Journal poll found that only 9% of Americans say they believe that financial security is a realistic goal. And only 8% believe that a comfortable retirement is possible for them.
Now, do those numbers reflect reality? Or just negative vibes?
Last week, we convened four expert debaters in Washington, D.C. to hash out the question: Is the American Dream alive and well?
Not to make everything political .... ahhh, screw it, everything IS political.
I feel like there's a vast philosophical difference between the Left and the Right these days {insert captain obvious}. Sure, it's based within political ideologies. But, when you're talking about the "American Dream" there's also an emotional/psychological component at play here, too, as I've always somewhat equated the American Dream with some semblance of present-day "happiness".
And man ... the Left is just NOT happy.
Everyone I know who deeply associates with the Left, they're constantly talking about their struggles with depression. Or, how they're "mad" at this and that, or "offended" {well .... I mean .... they're literally always offended}, so there's that. And yes, this is all purely anecdotal, but I just can't help but feel like these two different philosophical viewpoints (Left vs Right) doesn't also play a massive role in one's feeling whether or not the American Dream is still alive. And, what their place is along the journey of either discovering it - or aspiring to. After all, you can still "believe" in the American Dream, even if you haven't yet seen its wink.
For me, there's just something so flawed in the idea of government playing a major role in my life - i.e. - making me happy, or providing for me, or doing really anything for me of "meaning" outside of the few things we all agree government should focus on (like the military).
Whereas the Left ... I just don't think they see things that way. To them, the government is one of the end-all/be-all factors of their life. It's a tangible entity they not only see and interact with regularly, in some cases it's a majority portion of their experience. There's this "aspirational" component to government that the Left carries with them - one that I just don't think computes with the human condition. And certainly not folks on the Right.
Is the American Dream still alive? Depends on who you ask.
But, I'd bet money if you asked folks *first* if they're "happy" (regardless of their current success or social standing along the American Dream spectrum), the answer to the former would correlate with the ladder fairy well...
Sometime around 2010-2014 I realized that the US had always been a flat society where the vast majority thought of themselves as "middle class", but was heading into a new era. The US was still sorting people upward and downward based on merit, but after time when a society does that patterns start to emerge. With less immigration (at the time), there were fewer stories of those immigrants climbing to the top. With NAFTA entrenched and China well-established in global trade, we were shedding jobs at the low end in return for cheaper goods for all. So, clearly, the more well off and less well off were being established.
In the end, I think the American Dream is there for those in a certain class or those with talent and ambition. But we've also reached the point closer to a well-established society with classes with less movement. We're nowhere near as entrenched as say, British society of the 1800's, but we're no longer immune from those lines forming. America now has a large and growing upper class that still thinks it's middle class and has absolutely zero idea how to effectively work with its fellow members of society in a constructive way.
I recall this hitting me most deeply during the pandemic when, engaged with the staff of the Governor of our state, I realized something about those in power. The guy in charge of much of the health planning was an incredibly competent and smart guy who happened to be in an ethnic minority - not a DEI hire at all, incredibly capable. He had gone to an absolute top school and was smart and capable. And he had absolutely zero idea how regular people of his ethnic group lived or were suffering in the pandemic. When he talked, it was clear that he thought everyone in the world lived and reacted to situations exactly like he and his college friends did and would - the people of his class. The whole of our upper class college educated population thinks this way, and they can't put themselves in others' shoes at all. The guy didn't even get that the people he supposedly "represented" by his ethnicity lived in multigenerational housing situations that put them in a higher risk class for COVID. Instead of coming to them with solutions for their situations, he was looking for ways to bring them to his level of understanding. It was eye opening, for sure.
I suppose it's optimistic to think that everyone has the potential to be a college professor, that manufacturing line operators can simply walk upstairs and draw up new manufacturing line designs on a computer, that police will start to make split second decisions the same way a college professor would decide when watching it in slo-mo on his computer, etc. But we should probably realize that the upper classes need to start thinking of the world as one where they work with and for the broader population that at the same time works for them, not demanding compliance from them but negotiating for mutual success, meeting them where they are.