Americans No Longer Believe in the American Dream
Most no longer believe it's possible to get ahead through hard work.
WSJ (“Voters See American Dream Slipping Out of Reach, WSJ/NORC Poll Shows“):
The American dream—the proposition that anyone who works hard can get ahead, regardless of their background—has slipped out of reach in the minds of many Americans.
Only 36% of voters in a new Wall Street Journal/NORC survey said the American dream still holds true, substantially fewer than the 53% who said so in 2012 and 48% in 2016 in similar surveys of adults by another pollster. When a Wall Street Journal poll last year asked whether people who work hard were likely to get ahead in this country, some 68% said yes—nearly twice the share as in the new poll.
Now, it’s worth noting at the outside that comparing the answers to somewhat related questions in different polls is fraught. Still, the overall finding is interesting.
The survey offers the latest evidence that Americans across the political spectrum are feeling economically fragile and uncertain that the ladder to higher living standards remains sturdy, even amid many signs of economic and social progress.
Half of voters in the new poll said that life in America is worse than it was 50 years ago, compared with 30% who said it had gotten better. Asked if they believed that the economic and political system are “stacked against people like me,” half agreed with the statement, while 39% disagreed.
That there is no meaningful way that life hasn’t improved—even for straight, white, middle-class men, much less more historically disadvantaged demographics—seems not to factor into this. Which is especially baffling considering how much smaller that demographic is today. One might think that women, racial minorities, the LGBTQ community, etc. would immediately recognize their improved status, no?
The American dream seemed most remote to young adults and women in the survey. Some 46% of men but only 28% of women said the ideal of advancement for hard work still holds true, as did 48% of voters age 65 or older but only about 28% of those under age 50.
People in both political parties reported a sense of precariousness and disaffection.
This is, of course, interspersed with anecdotal quotations that may be wildly unrepresentative but are supposed to explain the results:
Oakley Graham, a stay-at-home father in Greenwood, Mo., outside Kansas City, said that by some measures he was living the American dream. And yet, he feels insecure.
We have a nice house in the suburbs, and we have a two-car garage,” said Graham, who is 30 years old and whose wife is an electrical engineer. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that money was tight.” For him and most of his neighbors, “no matter how good it looks on the outside, I feel we are all a couple of paychecks away from being on the street.”
Graham, who leans Democratic in his politics and voted for President Biden, said life is “objectively worse” than 50 years ago, in part because labor unions are no longer as strong and capable of helping as many workers. He said his grandfather, a maintenance crew worker for railroads, retired on a union pension, something that most people don’t have now.
Of course, Graham’s grandfather would have been socially ostracized for being a stay-at-home dad. And a 1972 woman would have been considered some sort of trailblazer for being an electrical engineer—a job that almost certainly wouldn’t have been unionized.
On the other hand, yes, money is “tight” these days if you choose to have only one earner in the household—something that was the norm fifty years ago—but live our modern life of conspicuous consumption. (One imagines both their garages have cars parked in them, unless they’re filled with so much excess crap that the cars have to remain outside.)
John Lasher, a Donald Trump supporter in Springfield, Mo., feels the American dream “is past tense.” In prior decades, “if you showed up for work and you did your job well and you tried to help out, you were rewarded,” said Lasher, 78, a retired electrical inspector for aircraft carriers and submarines. Now, he said, it isn’t as uniformly true as in the past.
Lasher blames Democratic policies for the change. Rising prices, which he blames on the Biden administration, are robbing people of the American dream, he said. “With inflation, you’re working hard just to make ends meet, and then any extra work that you put in is just trying to get so you’re not in the hole,” he said.
I have no way of comparing 1973 and 2023 in terms of vague metrics like the degree to which workers were rewarded for trying to help out but suspect very little has changed in that regard. For that matter, I’m not sure why a 78-year-old retiree would have any particular insight into that.
The new survey adds to signs of pessimism found in other recent polls. An NBC News survey released this month found that 19% felt confident that life for their children’s generation would be better than for the current one—a record low in the group’s surveys dating to 1990.
While those and other questions tend to ask Americans about broad changes over time, one finding from the Journal/NORC poll found a decline in pessimism about the current economy. Some 35% of voters said they rated the economy as excellent or good, an improvement from the 20% who said so in March and 17% in May of last year. The share rating the economy as “not so good” or poor fell to 65%, compared with 80% or more in the prior two surveys.
Of course, this is still a pessimistic group. We still have nearly double holding negative versus positive views.
Diana Walker, 62, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur and leans Democratic, thinks the American dream has faded. Now retired, she was satisfied with her career with a major delivery-service company.
“But to listen to my kids talk, how hard they have to work for what they need in life, how they feel that they have not been rewarded or they’re just a number, that they can be replaced at any time—I don’t know,” she said, adding: “It was better for me.” One of her grown children manages a fast-food restaurant; one works in maintenance and a third works for a large communications company.
Again, I’m not sure that it was ever the case that folks working in relatively low-level jobs in the service economy were financially secure, much less enjoyed considerable job satisfaction and social prestige. It may simply be that younger generations have higher expectations for those things.
Walker also believes the economic and political systems aren’t set up for her family to succeed. “I’m African-American, and the odds are always against Black people,” she said. Minority groups, she said, have a hard time getting mortgages and often don’t get fair market value for their homes.
Large shares of other Black respondents in the Journal survey, which was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, said that the nation’s economic and political systems were rigged against them—some 68% said so, compared with about half of Latino and white voters.
This finding, on the other hand, is consistent with reality. But, again, Blacks almost surely have it easier socially and economically in 2023 than they did in 1973.
Among all respondents, 18% said the American dream never held true, a far larger share than the single-digit shares recorded in similar past surveys by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute.
The PRRI polls were conducted by telephone, while the Journal-NORC poll surveys people who belong to NORC’s random-sample panel. But the diminished faith in the American dream recorded in the new survey is so large that the differing polling methods can’t account for the change, said Juan Carlos Donoso, a NORC researcher who worked on the new poll.
Given that the results seem to cross partisan and demographic barriers, I don’t think this is a function of the Fox News effect. But it may be a result of the larger phenomenon of our political and information polarization. We’ve been in what I refer to as the “permanent campaign” for roughly 30 years now. The nature of that it to constantly emphasize the negative. While they do it very differently, Democratic and Republican leaders alike intentionally cultivate dissatisfaction with our political and economic institutions, casting them as unfair. It’s not surprising that people believe them.
Two points:
Nightmares are dreams too.
Things feel worst when they are beginning to get better. Not always, but that’s the norm.
This post is dripping with privilege and an American-only perspective.
The fact is that in Europe, everyone – including racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and the poor are treated better than they are in the United States. They have access to health care (including mental health), better workplace rules and working conditions, better governance over the media, better and less-violent policing, better parks, better social relationships, and a more unified history and shared common purpose.
The United States is great for people with money and status and church memberships and two-car garages. But that’s about it.
American’s are only now coming the realization that Horatio Alger is a myth? The decline started ~40 years ago and the tipping point was reached 20 years ago.
@Tony W: Neither the survey nor the post are about comparing the United States and its European counterparts, but rather the United States of 2023 and 1973. And there’s really no metric by which the latter is better, despite the survey responses.
Two big things that are worse now are
* The prospect of losing our democracy to authoritarianism
* Being able to pay for health care
These are things that many of us face every day. It drags us down and makes us pessimistic. It is especially difficult for younger people, who see a difficult life ahead. Housing costs are an additional factor that hit them particularly hard.
The costs of health care are at ridiculous highs so that health care executives can take home enormous salaries. Compound that with the uncertainties 0f insurance coverage. Transitioning into Medicare from the insurance system made an enormous difference to my peace of mind. Now that insurance companies have managed to take over a large part of the Medicare market with the so-called Medicare Advantage, people are finding that it can be just as bad as other commercial insurance coverage.
And then there is the authoritarian threat. How many days this month have you thought about it? For those of us extremely online (all this commentariat), every single one. Think about what we could do if the Republican Party would give up its authoritarian ambitions. Congress would work, and we would hear much less about its dysfunction. Additionally, it might get to work on some of our national problems.
Yes, a great many measurables have improved since 1973. But it’s not surprising it doesn’t feel that way.
This is good news, now maybe a percentage of the apathetic non-voting population will overcome their laziness and participate in the process to restore the AD, Doubtful, but not possible if the fantasy continues to exist.
A few thoughts:
Unions bring up all wages, whether one is union or not. Too see this most directly look at the recent raises handed out at non-union* plants for Honda, Toyota, and… I don’t recall the 3rd. All the people in the towns and cities where these plants are located do better as well.
I can and you are correct.
Welcome to corporate America. Every job I ever had I was replaceable. If I was unable to do the job up to their standards, I was gone. All they had to do was look at the “out of work” list from the union. Any “reward” I ever received was contractually obligated.
I am sure they do recognize that things are better for them… But that does not mean things are equal for them.
I have to think that most of this dissatisfaction is born of unmet expectations. For some people deservedly so. Blacks would love to be able to walk down the street w/o worrying about getting randomly shot, whether by a cop or a gang banger. They would also like to register and vote as easily as any white person. Never mind the gerrymandering. LGBTQ+ people would love to live their lives freely and openly without being denied their basic humanity by the homophobes among us. Women would love to make their own medical decisions without every Republican from coast to coast telling them what they can and can not do. They would probably enjoy getting paid the same as men for the same work too. But this is America.
*need to point out they gave those raises in hopes of fending off any attempts at unionizing those plants.
eta: And we all would like to not have to worry about mass shootings, even if they aren’t the source of most gun violence.
After –‘The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950’ (1952), Frederick Allen Lewis– there was a couple decades of post-war coasting for which everyone seems nostalgic. Of course, for the 1960s, a lot of young men were sucked out of the workforce never to return except in body bags. And women weren’t in the workforce competing for jobs as they started to be around 1972. Fewer workers, higher pay for those that remain, more workers, less pay for each. It’s not like the 1970s were a period of economic growth in the US.
Then throw in the advent of the “King’s Forests”, i.e., the EPA. Good to an extent, but increasing environmental compliance eats into productivity, which eats into available wages.
And for manufacturing jobs, a double whammy happened around 1970. First the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) invented in 1969 was taking over production lines removing the need for many electricians who in the past reworked the relay control systems that ran assembly lines prior. And the US foreign policy was toward global trade, which meant those production workers in the US were now competing with cheaper labor in Japan, then China, etc. So the factories move offshore.
And let’s not ignore that it was around 1972 that was the last year a college degree was a guarantee to a good job regardless of major. By the end of the decade, that was no longer true. But in the ’80s and ’90s, a person with an English or History degree could instead of becoming a carpenter, learn to code and do quite well.
And expenses deemed essential were far less in 1972. In 1972, you had the mortgage, the power bill, the water bill and property taxes. You bought a Coke occasionally, not a daily $5 latte. Gasoline was cheaper, but still you stayed close to home mostly. And your kid played in the yard, not at Away tournaments.
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’ve been reading exposes of how aggressively these plans deny coverage, plus there is the in-network/out-of-network hassle. I have had enough experience with insurance before retiring to stick to traditional Medicare with a supplemental policy, so I never pay anything but the annual deductible, and see anyone I want.
@JKB:
I remember how awful the air was in Los Angeles back in the 1960’s and 1970’s when I lived there – I used to get headaches because of all the carbon monoxide in the air. People don’t remember. The particulates impact health, lifespan – and the lead from leaded gas has health impacts also.
I will also add that Fox News is not the only voice in the wilderness bemoaning the looming apocalypse. Local TV news and Radio are equally as loud and persistent. They, in fact, confirm FNN. But, the oldies that watch local TV and listens to talk radio, but turns to CNN has feasted on a lot of doom and gloom to be down on America about
@JKB: I am actually going to agree (only in part) with this comment. Specifically, I do think that there is a lot of nostalgia for a mythic 1950s which was marked by the post-WWII victory glow and an expansion of US manufacturing during an era in which we had very little competition. There is a weird belief, which Trump exploits, that that can be recaptured if we are just tough enough or protectionist enough.
But, of course, let’s not forget that the 50s weren’t great for Blacks, women, and LBGTQ+ folks, etc.
Good Lord, this is so stupid and cliched.
@charontwo: I lived in SoCal from 1983-1990. My parent’s house had a view of the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance. We usually couldn’t see them. Indeed, the far closer local peak, Saddleback, often was cloaked as well.
When I return to visit now, the air is much better due to a number of pollution controls that the evil state government (and feds) put into place. The horror!
@Steven L. Taylor: Let me note, for those who might not catch this fact, that the conditions that created the economic scenario of 1950s America were unique and ain’t coming back.
I would also note that it was an era of significant government infrastructure projects, so it wasn’t just about free-wheeling capitalism.
Sometimes I think I can glimpse a grand unified theory of US politics, with some similar aspects in other countries. It all feels like it comes down to three things: supremacy of shareholder value, competitiveness, and money in politics,
The first leads to any and all measures to keep stock prices high, which largely means screwing over employees and customers as much as possible. The second reinforces the first, as the goal isn’t to have a high value for stocks, but the highest value.
And the third leads to plutocrats and would-be-oligarchs to influence policy through donations. And this reinforces the two above.
My guess is that a substantial amount of this pessimism is a product of Covid and inflation along with social media.
Ronald Reagan was unrelentingly, some say mindlessly, cheery. Trump is angry, always angry. Anger is the emotion of our times, and to me it bears as much relation to an objective assessment of our situation as variation in skirt length to the Dow Jones. It is difficult to argue people out of their emotions. The fact is that we’re all going to have to muddle through life without some single idea solution to all problems. The world is run by people who have a very shallow understanding of the situation, and that includes me.
When I was young, I noticed that whenever I went to the airport older people were grim and sullen. I vowed not to do that. I walk through airports with a smile and say “thank you” a lot. This is my contribution to the world.
Birth control pills and Roe v. Wade – post Dobbs, the red states will continue along their path of falling behind. OTB has IIRC already posted about the red state “brain drain.”
@Kathy:..Things feel worst when they are beginning to get better.
The United States lost the plot. This has been a concern to me for a long time. What is the United States now? What is our story, our national direction? No more frontier, no more expansion, it’s been quite a while since we ‘saved the world,’ we aren’t resisting the Communist horde, we aren’t landing on the moon for the first time.
We are no longer the freest nation on earth, or the richest, we’re just the most powerful. We always saw ourselves as a nation built on ideas, as a special place forever marching boldly into a future of ever-expanding freedom and happiness.
The Civil Rights movement forced us to look in the mirror, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Vietnam gave us a hair shirt to wear. We lost, and we lost badly, with internal division and lasting bitterness. JFK, RFK and MLK, all murdered. Watergate. Decades under the threat of nuclear war. By 1973 we were just starting to metabolize all the change, all the conflict, most people thought the 1960’s were a phase we’d move past easily. We didn’t. To this day, all these years later, you still see the hardhats vs. hippies division.
Then you have the deep pessimism of the environmental movement, the re-imagining of the family as women went to work, industrial decline, the Iran hostage debacle. The abortion fight. A lot of unhappy shit that seems, at least to me, to have started with Civil Rights and Vietnam. A protracted period of discontent. Is it objectively worse than, say, the Great Depression? No, obviously. But it’s easier to get past a rough patch if you have a goal. If you have a purpose. Some collective vision of the future.
We got old. It’s been almost 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. Our institutions don’t work very well, we’re dwelling too much in the past and have no real notion of the future, we’re hyper aware of our aches and pains, our mass murders, our police brutality, our persistent inequalities, and we’re looking at climate change that is likely to make things worse for much of the world. We no longer enthusiastically welcome new things, we fear them. We don’t know who we are or what we’re doing. For the first time in US history we endured a coup attempt by a corrupt, defeated politician.
No longer special, we’re just another weary old country, dominated by weary old people, with a pessimistic younger generation that spends its days doom-scrolling social media. It my be enough for Denmark or Spain to be just another country, but it’s not enough for people raised on American exceptionalism. We need a direction. We need a narrative. Or we need to heave a heavy sigh and realize that we are just about the day-to-day, with no greater purpose.
You know, when I was in my 40s I kind of felt that I had not matched what my parents had managed by their 40’s. It was frustrating, and mostly driven by high housing prices in Silicon Valley.
Eventually my shiip came in, and I’m doing better than my parents ever did, though not in a way that is day-t0-day meaningful.
So maybe that’s the difference between then and now. Now when prosperity comes, it comes in a big chunk. As oppose d to the nice growth. And I should be mindful that they hit age 40 in 1959, which as Steven says above means they leveraged conditions that are not easily replicated.
Still, I’d like to see personal economic growth be less dependent on “hitting it big”, which seems farther and farther away.
@JKB: @Steven L. Taylor: While I do agree that we are, for a whole variety of reasons, more consumerist now than we were 50 years ago, it’s worth noting that the “$5 latte” of 2023 is equivalent to a 76 cent purchase in 1973.
@Tony W: Sounds like you should move to Europe, you’d be happier there.
Two things…
First, the media harangues about how bad inflation is, and yada yada yada, and then that becomes baked into the polls. No great surprise…propaganda works.
Second, and far more real, 50 years of trickle down economics has done serious harm to the lower and middle classes, and in turn, the American Dream. The wealthy have gotten far wealthier, which inequity stats clearly show, but the promised trickle has never appeared.
Biden has started to counter that; finally investing in real infrastructure, our seniors, and the lower and middle classes. It’s going to take time to have an effect. But look at the lucrative union contracts struck recently, and the ripple effect to non-union competitors and the rest of the economy.
Now if we can only keep the voodoo economists in their place…the scrap-heap of history.
Calculated Risk has 5 economic reasons to be thankful. Inflation is a concern, but it’s almost back to baseline. Most other general news is good. OTOH, I think it more likely that people dont do as well economically as their parents but the difference wont be huge. I also think we have lots more billionaires. I think these two things are linked. Productivity gains have to go somewhere. We have decided they should go to the wealthy.
Steve
@Steven L. Taylor:
I have never purchased a latte…$5 or otherwise!!!
@Steven L. Taylor: “My parent’s house had a view of the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance. We usually couldn’t see them. Indeed, the far closer local peak, Saddleback, often was cloaked as well.”
When a friend of mine moved to LA to go to college in 1980, he was a reporter for the school paper. He was reporting on the murder of an unidentified young woman, but while the cops had no idea who she was, they knew almost exactly how many weeks she’d been in Southern California. When my friend asked how, the cop explained that they only had to look at the lungs in the autopsy…
“There is a weird belief, which Trump exploits, that that can be recaptured if we are just tough enough or protectionist enough.”
I think a serious comment would be far more nuanced. There is much more than nostalgia for a bygone era. Consumers have chosen to buy foreign at lowest cost, and marginal quality. This despite professing to want to buy American and get quality. Corporations know this, and so locate offshore out of self preservation. The consumer rules. American workers are harmed in sympathy with this trend. Overarching this is trade policy, which Trump accurately assesses. There is no “free trade.” There is managed trade; mercantilism. China has exploited this and any number of US politicians have found it in their self interest (or their sons, heh) to exploit this. Environmentalists have chased the extractive industries off shore. Not to the benefit of the earth; dirtier extractive and manufacturing processes dominate in the new locales; only to the benefit of the idealogues. And American workers suffer. Trump accurately assesses this.
The real question is why Americans don’t buy American, or pay up. The answer is pretty straightforward. First, American business didn’t transition from those salad days you cite, and got caught with their pants down on quality and price. Some of it still exists: buy a German car, or an American car. EZ choice. Second, poor American wage growth has forced many consumers towards lowest price consumption decisions. But thats a circular issue. Third, American politicians benefit from the trend. A pox on them.
Trump understands all this. And he’d like to stop it. Hence, he must be destroyed by the power elite. He is an existential threat to their gravy train. The common people get it.
Hope, optimism, sanguinity, idealism… these are rather unfashionable in recent times. Indeed, in some respects, it is downright shameful to experience, much less, project such thoughts, emotions, and worldview. On net, I don’t thing this is good or healthy.
Note, I am not saying or implying that all is peachy. Nor that barriers to “the good life” are evenly distributed.
Rather, it seems to me that, on average, people are much more self-conscious (tragically so) about their blessings, successes, hopes, dreams, and ambitions these days.
More aware of injustices in the US? Yes, I think so.
And also less aware of (and/or attentive to) successes, progress, and good things to come — in some cases, downright dismissive of these.
Some clichés pack a wallop of wisdom: Pay attention to what you pay attention to. Take some time to hunt the good stuff. Our thoughts (and emotions) are downstream from what we consume — and this becomes a feedback loop.
I think this sense of pessimism in the population really gets to the problems democrats are having in connecting to voters. The dems have branded themselves as the party of hope and optimism but when Biden says “I’ve never been more optimistic about our country’s future” I bet he comes across as hopelessly out of touch to a lot of voters.
@Daryl:
Important to note that this growth in inequality is not benign. What we point to today as inflation is largely, though not entirely, comprised of record corporate profits; corporations that are controlled by the wealthy who have also been, almost exclusively, benefiting from tax cuts for 50 years.
There is a graphic floating around (2017) that shows how almost everything we eat and drink and consume daily is controlled by a handful of corporations; they all are reaping record profits and paying little in taxes.
This doesn’t even include the fossil fuel industry which is recording the highest profits they’ve ever made in history, and pay almost nothing in taxes for it.
Populist politicians love to talk about those mythical good ‘ol days, but do not want to talk about the tax rates that helped make them that way.
Today the entire system is rigged against the American Dream.
https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-control-everything-we-buy-2017-8
Where are the “low-skilled” manufacturing jobs that pay a living wage? Gone, and so these are the jobs that people have.
But let’s look at the cited jobs:
We have a manager who oversees the work of others, a guy in maintenance, and someone with a likely white collar job for AT&T or equivalent (blind guess on this, but most of the jobs at these companies are white collar).
Maintenance Dude used to be a career. It really still is a career, but it’s a career that people will scrape by in and which people like you denigrate as an “entry level” job, and which no longer has union benefits or pension.
The manager and the AT&T likely require a degree to get hired, even if the job doesn’t actually use it. These days, that’s starting life with a giant millstone of debt. (Manager might be a far more modest millstone with an associates)
Meanwhile health insurance is far more expensive for the worker, as costs have been pushed onto them over the years. And housing prices are approaching a crisis point in much of the country.
Shit ain’t good.
Shit’s so bad that when a charismatic strong-man wannabe comes along and promises to fix it, a lot of people stand up and take notice. I do not understand how people do not see he is a blithering man-child who doesn’t know what he is talking about, but I am not his target audience.
Remember his “American Carnage” speech at his inauguration? He gets it. Or he can vaguely parrot someone who gets it and meander around that space.
We joke about how the racists voted for him because they were “economically anxious”, and that the fine people at Charlottesville were “economically anxious,” but that’s because we are generally upper-middle-class, well-edumacated folks here at OTB that don’t feel nearly as much economic anxiety and immediately see that he offers no real solutions.
(Also, he directly appeals to racists as well.)
I wish we had Sherrod Brown or John Tester as our Presidential Candidate (or at least the Sherrod Brown or John Tester of my dreams). Someone who knows how to communicate to working class Americans, and show that he understands.
I really need to do the research but how much of the job precarity is due to consolidation? I’ve worked in Corporate America since graduation and my first job, I ended up having to move cities since my company had recently sold off one line of business and then mine and I couldn’t afford to be out of work for the market to even out, my next companies was regularly laying off people, and I’ve already moved again. That’s three different cities in a little over 20 years because I’m in a specialized career field. I count myself fortunate that I’ve been able to move.
Do we have metrics of the odds of finding a similar job in the same geographic area? It would also be great to look at median salaries (or pick some other quartile) and median cost of housing and how that’s distributed. Can people find jobs and housing in the neighborhoods they grew up in? Has the job market salaries in their neighborhood kept up with the housing costs?
I’d suspect too that the cost of raising a child, to position them to be competitive for better educational and job prospects are a lot higher than before too. How much are parents spending in terms of money and car shuttling time for extra tutoring and extracurricular activities to give their child a leg up in an increasingly competitive world?
Will also add that part of the unspoken part (free labor) of raising a child, or caring for our aging parents, is actually living near our relatives for backup babysitting if the kid is sick (particularly if both parents are working) and as a backstop with older age illnesses. With people moving around so much or geographically dispersed, that familial network is no longer available.
@Jack:
Trump gives not a single wet fart for policy of any kind. He mouthed off to China to get elected, then rolled over and did nothing. It’s Biden, the professional politician who implemented actual change. Trump promised a wall financed by Mexico: nope. He thought he was best buddies with Kim. Nope. He thought he could trust Putin. Nope. He promised to cut the deficit and added over a trillion to it. He said he’d get the best people. . . uh huh, and now they’re witnesses for the prosecution.
Trump understands nothing and cares even less. He’s a criminal, a psychopath, literally incapable of caring about anyone or anything but himself. Trump only cares about Trump. He’s never, at any point in his life, cared about anything else. Now he’s trying to foment violence, to get his idiot culties to go to prison, or die, in a desperate effort to save his own fat ass.
Destroyed by the power elite. Jesus Fucking Christ. He’s a crook. A fraud. A pathological liar. A two-bit conman who feeds on the stupidity of the people.
@Jack: Serious question… what reason does Trump have to destroy the status quo. A system he obviously has been successful in exploiting—on behalf of people that have nothing to offer him?
Now, it entirely feasible he want to been the system in further service of himself. But there is NOTHING that Trump has done or will do that common people benefit from.
Name one thing. And saying mean things about people the common people don’t like doesn’t count. One thing that wasn’t beneficial to the Trump family that benefited the Common man.
@Jack:
Can you name any specific policies from his first term or that he is running on now that would address the issues you just laid out?
Beyond rhetoric, what does he offer?
If he was inspecting carriers and boats under construction that sounds like Newport News Shipyard, where he had a cushy union job created by Democrats.
The internet has done a lot of things, one of which is to make the world much, much smaller.
We can now readily see how other countries handle things like education and healthcare, and maybe that doesn’t put us in the greatest light–let alone things like workplace equality and rights.
The American Dream still IS alive and well, it’s just that it’s held aloft as a light by those we (as a nation) are working hard to keep out. Immigrants still believe this is a land of opportunity. Maybe we can start an exchange program?
We have been cutting taxes since the Reagen administration, ditto middle-class tax exemptions such as credit card debt, and other things around the edges (and record corporate profits are doing anything but trickling down). States have been cutting support for Higher Ed to the point where they aren’t even the largest single donor to these institutions. While unions seem to be making a bit of a comeback they still haven’t made significant inroads in the industries that employ the most people. The threadbare social safety net that was a part of the post-war era has not only been reduced but Republicans in Congress are actively trying to cut what’s left of it under the banner of reducing the debt that they are largely responsible for. Meanwhile, you have chuckleheads still trying to tell people that “we don’t have a revenue problem” which, is on the face of it. nonsense.
And we wonder why people are feeling insecure about their future while they walk into voting booths and still pull the lever for Republicans while desperately casting around for reasons why that seems to look like a good idea (Hillary’s emails, Biden being too old, too corrupt, we have open borders … blah blah blah).
BTW, hard work was never at any point in time a guarantee of the good life, that was always a fairy tale. Almost everyone who works, works hard. They worked hard in the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s and 90’s and the aughts, and guess what? Some succeeded, most just plateaued, and some now live in tents beside the freeway. I worked a hell of a lot harder as a waiter than I do as a writer, and when I was a waiter we drove rusted out Dodge Darts and Plymouth Valiants held together with Bondo, and now, for muuuuch less effort, I have the keychain of a douche: a Merc and a BMW*. I earn roughly 1000 dollars a page. Type type type for five minutes sitting on my balcony in sweatpants and sucking on a cigar, I earn more than I did for a week of double shifts. I mean, I work hard for a writer, but that’s not hard.
Hard work is often a necessary, but seldom a sufficient condition for success. There’s way more luck involved than Puritanical Americans are comfortable with. This whole trope amounts to blaming the losers for being losers. You didn’t hard enough, work harder, harder!
*In order to reach Platinum level douchebaggery I need to add a Porsche. A reminder that you can find plans for a guillotine on-line.
@charontwo:
@wr:
Road&Track magazine was based in the L.A. area years ago. They bitched and fought as hard as they could against pollution controls. If you remember the early regulated cars they were pretty bad. In my Olds Omega (long story) you pushed the throttle down and you could almost hear the cylinders voting on whether of not to accelerate. But a few year later one of their editors was in downtown L.A. and realized he could see the Hollywood sign. They did a long mea culpa apologizing for having opposed what had become obviously a good thing.
@ James
This is a bit of a head scratcher. In 1973, I was a teenager. My family lived in a beautiful five-bedroom, semi-custom hillside home in Marin County. Decks, oak trees & views. It was a wonderful place to live.
Adjusted for inflation, the monthly mortgage payment was about $1830 a month in today’s dollars. Now this was a pretty high-end home, & my dad was an attorney who made a very good living.
That being said, homes were affordable. You did not have to have a white-collar income to own a decent home, there were plenty of affordable houses in the flats that were perfectly nice. Almost all of them go for over a million now, so, good luck to the working folks about there.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh, would that were the problem.
Adolph cares not even about himself, only about how he thinks others see him. That’s why he’s so hung up about how things might look, and why he adores any kind of adulation and ass-kissing, in both directions. When he flatters Mad Vlad, he’s letting his master know he thinks master looks good, or strong, or whatever.
If he cared about himself, he wouldn’t be as self-destructive. He’s like a violent, strident version of Peter Keating.
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s not entirely true. He did implement sweeping tariffs that by most economist’s analysis have helped create some of the current economic issues. See for example:
https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/trumps-tariffs-did-in-fact-hurt-u-s-importers/
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tariffs-trump-trade-war/#:~:text=Key%20Findings,increases%20in%20decades.
Unfortunately the Biden Administration has yet to role them back:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/trumps-global-tariff-idea-obviously-terrible-biden-helped-make-it-possible
I found some good news: https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2023/11/five-economic-reasons-to-be-thankful.html
All is not yet lost.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s a commonplace that we boomed in the 50s because we emerged whole from WWII. But our competitors, who did not, also experienced a similar boom, what Piketty refers to as Les Trente Glorieuses and the Germans as the Wirtschaftswunder” and the Japanese, in English, rthe Japanese Economic Miracle. The war, and the preceding Great Depression, and the preceding war, destroyed a lot of capital. Piketty’s thesis is that concentration of wealth “causes social and economic instability” -WIKI. Wealth has concentrated mightily since a low point after WWII and we are seeing the resultant instability. We can’t recreate the destruction of capital. OK, we could, but it would require something every painful. Piketty proposes a global wealth tax. Heck of a good idea, if hard to implement. I’d settle for a return to 1950s U. S. income tax rates. What could be more conservative?
I’m a leading edge Boomer. For my formative years I saw life get better both for myself and the rest of the country. That ended in the 80s. And one can point to the Republican, and centrist Dem, policies that ended it. I and my wife did way better economically than our parents. Our son and daughter in law are not on course to do better than we have. I believe this is pretty common.
@James Joyner:
Purchasing power of a dollar? That’s a metric. And it is a good bit lower than it was 50 years ago. The key part here: it isn’t just due to a post-pandemic spike in inflation. That metric has been declining since the 40s, save for it leveling out (the decline was much slower) during the 50s and early 60s. (source.)
Moreover, with a few exceptions, most large studies have demonstrated that social mobility has declined in the US since 1980. An NBER study (NYT writeup) published in 2014, counters that with a finding that it had not changed in the previous 20 years.
So at best, even if we accept that mobility didn’t decline appreciably from the early-90s to the mid-2010s, the trend that started in 1980 merely slowed to a crawl without reversing. And what is the concept of the American Dream if it isn’t about economic mobility?
James, you know better than to make broad claims like that.
@mattbernius: The tariffs are a fascinating bit of policy. In the historical flow, it has been Republicans who resisted tariffs and protectionism far more than Democrats. So, I can understand Biden not making rollback a priority.
It’s quite a lot like the cap on the SALT deduction for income tax. Traditional Republicans would have screamed bloody murder about this, but instead rolled over since the revenue gain for this was pushed back into corporate profits.
I kind of think a cap on SALT is probably good, but then, I’m a liberal. I’m pretty sure that the several seats in CA districts that the Rs lost in 2018 are a direct result of this policy. If the Republicans can’t be counted on to keep one’s taxes low, what good are they – so might think a SoCal Republican.
When a conservative friend complains that Trump isn’t a conservative, I nod and ask why they vote for someone who isn’t a conservative. It’s usually some form of “Biden is worse!!!1!”
I could write a dissertation about the flaws in the survey, which typify the farce which the public opinion survey/media complex has become in America. But I don’t have the energy. Let’s just say that faced with this question:
In general, would you say life in America today is better, worse, or about the same as it was fifty years ago for people like you?
the vast majority of respondents should have answered “How the hell would I know?” And that’s without examining how vacuous the question itself is. Yet everyone surveyed had an opinion.
The endless torrent of surveys like this seem to be designed for one purpose only: to provide material pundits can use to pontificate about the implications for today’s politics.
@Jen:
You remind me of a joke going around in early 2017, about the peaceful transfer of power. More or less it explained it thus:
Yesterday Barack Obama was the leader of the free world. Today it’s Angela Merkel.
@charontwo:
Cleaning the air and ground has value, but it also is a cost. Compliance comes at a cost which means it cuts into the revenue where the wages come from. Instead of more pay for the worker on the production line, money goest to the compliance VP or whatever. That slows wage growth, at least until prices can rise to compensate.
On the other hand, today the EPA issues citation for grandfathered rainwater systems that require the business to pay their lawyer to get the EPA to rescind or to use funds to have the system rebuilt to the new rules. And that takes away the revenue available to pay higher wages.
In 1973 when I managed a local gas station in Southern Illinois, Leaded Regular averaged 35.9¢/gal. ($2.39 today adjusted for inflation.) Minimum wage in Illinois was $1.40/hr. ($9.55 today adjusted for inflation.) The 1973 numbers meant that it took me about 15 minutes to earn the money to pay for a gallon of gas. The consumer not only got the gallon of gas they also got me pumping it (no self service in Illinois in 1973) checking your oil and cleaning the bug carcasses off your windshield.
Today the minimum wage in Illinois is $13/hour. Average price of Unleaded Regular in town is $3.259. With these numbers the minimum wage earner works about the same 15 minutes to pay for a gallon of gas. Pump it yourself.
My part time job is not paid on an hourly wage. I get $50 for about 2 hours of work. Yesterday I was in a town just 12 miles east of here and paid $2.949/gal for self service Unleaded Regular. First time that I have paid under $3/gal in a while. There have been times when gas was cheaper here than in one county over. Don’t know when that will happen again.
If I could predict the future I make book on the 2024 elections.
@Mister Bluster:
When the folks who manufacture the gas squeezed the independent operators out, the “service” went out of service station.
Goodbye service, hello maximized profits.
@anjin-san:
The modern corporation summed up in one sentence.
I don’t know if this has been mentioned before, but the only reason I’m where I’m at is because of generational wealth. I’m 7 years older than my younger sister and 14 years older than my youngest sister. I was able to pay for undergrad and law school because my grandparents were able to mortgage their house to help out my dad’s business. Without them literally paying me to go to school I wouldn’t have made it. I’d be a truck mechanic. My younger sister got some of that benefit, my youngest sister got nothing. The family blew up before she got any advantage. I’m a lawyer, she doesn’t have a degree.
My partner and and work out asses off just to stay on the upper middle class treadmill. We’re good, we’re not Daddy Reynolds good. Because I’m primarily a real estate attorney I’m dying right now. I can see that that the overall economy isn’t too bad, but holy shit does it feel bad. If it wasn’t for that generational wealth, I’d be screwed.
It’s definitely a mixed bag. Honestly, I have much more problems being a woman than queer. However, my Boomer father in law INSISTS that being LGBT wasn’t an issue in the 50s-90s. It was all sunshine and puppies. I was like, I can show you the dead bodies. He told me I wasn’t there and was lying.
@anjin-san:..
Wides Oil Company was truly a family operation. The story that I heard was that Uncle Julius Wides was a rag picker. During the Depression he went up and down the alleys of Murphysboro, Illinois rummaging through trash cans and taking what material that he could clean up and sell to any business that needed clean rags. It is said that this is how he got the money to start his oil company. When I worked for them Uncle Julius was retired to Florida soaking up the sunshine. The company had its own bulk plant in Murphysboro, two tanker trucks and 20(?) gas stations in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky. Nephew Louis Wides and two of his sons Jack and Bob ran the operation. One of the promotions we ran to get the college students to buy Wides gasoline was to give out a free pack of rolling papers with a fill up. We had Zig-Zags and a few others. Not many college students then had the $7 together at one time that it cost to fill the 20 gallon tanks of the old beaters that they drove so I gave them the rolling papers just for the asking.
@Beth:
Tell your Boomer in law that while you weren’t there, he wasn’t LGBTQ.
@Tony W: Funny how BoBo intello Left Americans idealise Europe… without actually having actual experience (making the snide evocation of priviledge rather ever more ironic). Of course as the title is about American dream it well should be American focused comment.
@Lounsbury:
I lived in Europe for three years, does that qualify as experience? My husband still has family and friends who live in the UK (he’s British by birth, moved here when he was a child). Does that qualify as experience? Many of those “Bobo intello Left Americans” have spent time abroad in college or for work, or, most likely, they work for international corporations and see how their coworkers in Europe are required to be treated by the same organization they are employed by with none of those additional protections.
As I said in my earlier comment, the world is a LOT smaller. Your comment is a form of gaslighting, telling people that just because they don’t live there, they aren’t seeing what they know they are seeing.
@James Joyner: Indeed. I almost looked up that number. Although I guess a Coke was still quite a bit cheaper.
Regardless, I was mostly reacting to the “people don’t have any money these days because they waste it on lattes” trope.
How much did the average American man spend on booze & cigarettes in 1970? Probably more than latte money…
You know what I was 50 years ago – a child. I had a child’s view of the world and a comfortable childhood. Most people view their childhoods as halcyon days compared to the point in their life when they had to take the reins. Asking people my age if they were better off 50 years ago is a fool’s question and generates a fool’s answer.
@Joe: The actual question they asked was even sillier: “In general, would you say life in America today is better, worse, or about the same as it was fifty years ago for people like you?”
How would anyone know with any accuracy what life was like 50 years ago for “people like them”? What does the expression even mean – “women”? Working women? Working Black women? Working Black women with children? Working Black single women with children? Working Black single women with children and breast cancer? There was nobody literally “like me” 50 years ago, so the question forces respondents to interpret it subjectively. Consequently the data will consist of responses to multiple different versions of the question. Indeed your comment, and many others, are responses to questions that were not really the one that was asked.
@Lounsbury: I have done a fair bit of travel over the years, but one of the great joys of virtually networking in a private way is that one can see the television shows – and more importantly the commercials – that air in other parts of the world. Katy Perry’s MenuLog commercials are worth the cost of admission alone.
There’s a reason, far beyond advertising revenue, that American network television doesn’t show, say, the Australian masterpiece “RPA“. The fastest way to get people dissatisfied with the crumbs corporate America throws at us in between shifts is to let the people see how others live in actual first-world countries.
Even with my limited travel experience, having strolled the streets and museums of Paris, consumed a pint or two in Manchester and Scotland, dined on truly great food in Munich and Nuremberg, and spent a few weeks in Japan as a younger man, I can guarantee that the average American has no idea what they are missing and that the American Dream is just a Horatio Alger bullshit story designed to keep us entertained with bread and circuses.