Are We Losing the American Dream?

Is it actually possible that we’ve lost the American Dream? If we haven’t, it may be in danger of collapsing. Understanding the American Dream — its origins, some of the major changes it’s experienced, and its current conditions — may tell us a great deal about whether it will survive or not.

Although the concept of the American Dream is complex, there are some aspects that most people would agree on:

If you ask most people around the world what they mean by the ‘American dream,’ nearly all will respond with some version of upward social mobility, the American success story, or the self-made man (rarely the self-made woman). Perhaps they will invoke the symbolic house with a white picket fence that suggests economic self-sufficiency and security; many will associate the phrase with the land of opportunity for immigrants. No less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary defines the American dream as ‘the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.’

The Dream, however, succumbed to a belief in the mid-20^th century that it was all about prosperity. James Truslow Adams tried to make sense of the Great Depression, and this was one of his key conclusions:

Adams concluded that America had lost its way by prizing material success above all other values: Indeed, it had started to treat money as a value, instead of merely as a means to produce or measure value. [snip] For Adams, worshipping material success was not the definition of the American dream: It was, by contrast, the failure of ‘the American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.’ Adams did not mean ‘richer’ materially, but spiritually; he distinguished the American dream from dreams of prosperity.

But today, the American Dream languishes in the devastated hopes of the young, especially those who bought into the means of getting there. They are learning that not only does college provide a useless degree for a future job, but it’s more than likely to burden them with overwhelming debt. Graduates are choosing to live with their parents due to the cost of renting an apartment or buying a home:

A potentially worrisome trend is emerging among young adults. Instead of landing a job and moving to the big city after graduation, many are moving back into their childhood homes instead. About 1.5 million more adults under 35 live with their parents today than a decade ago. That’s a 6.3% jump, more than double the rate of growth for the young adult population overall. The issue is affordability. Over the past decade, urban rents have climbed about 4% per year, while wages for full-time workers have increased by only .6%. That means it’s harder than ever to live in a big city on the typical salary — especially if you’re a new graduate without much work experience.

Living with one’s parents also means that these people are delaying marriage, along with delaying or deciding not to have children. The dream of the American family is disappearing.

Multiple issues, therefore, have coalesced into eroding the American Dream: the lack of jobs for non-technical degrees; young people continuing to live with their parents, putting off ordinary life challenges; the exaggerated danger of climate change; isolation from prospects for friendships and steady relationships; and the disillusionment that comes with realizing that instead of prospering, young people will have to settle for just getting by. Even the appreciation for capitalism and its benefits has fallen by the wayside. Thus, the lure of socialism and Marxism is dominating our discourse.

If the original tenets of the American Dream are no longer valid, why aspire to earning or achieving more? Why strive for success, opportunities, learning, and growing? This phenomenon of “settling” is not just happening to the Left; even those on the Right are experiencing hardships and disappointments regarding the potential of their futures.

Yet how do we find ways of resurrecting the American Dream? Can we transform it into a belief system of hope, morality, growth, prosperity, and opportunity? Or will we find ourselves bowing to the beliefs of socialism and Marxism?

If the American Dream is not dead, it’s certainly on life support.

[originally published in American Thinker]