Americans Don't Believe in the American Dream

The American Dream is Dead, gone along with the era of good union jobs, comprehensive employer benefits and real upward mobility, and most working people are fully aware of the fact.

That's the takeaway from the latest installment of the American Dream Survey, a study of working Americans' views of the political-economy released in late September.

It paints a picture of an increasingly frustrated working majority who are having a harder time raising their families than the generation before them did, and who believe that things will be even worse for their kids. They have reason to believe it -- a 30-year assault on organized labor, neglected minimum wage increases, fewer educational opportunities and the constant tide of pro-business propaganda being pumped out by right-wing think tanks and business roundtables that enforces the idea that working people are faceless "inputs" -- costs that need to be controlled -- have left Americans with far less social mobility than they had a generation ago. Contrary to common belief, Americans have less opportunity to move up the economic ladder than Canadians and Western Europeans (except for those in the UK).

To some extent the Dream was always a myth, especially for people of color, but in a very real sense we've reached a point in which we're looking at a break in America's implied social contract -- we were supposed to trade security, in the form of the kind of robust safety nets that they have in social democracies, for "dynamism," for supposedly unlimited opportunity. But the fact is that working people are walking a tightrope with little in the way of safety net, and they have less chances of making it big than their counterparts in other advanced economies.

Conservatism killed the American Dream, and most working people understand that on some level. But while they blame the same elite corporatists as progressives have pointed to as the culprits for years, they are also deeply uncomfortable with the idea of class and, after 15 years of Democratic Party "triangulation," aren't sure which political party is responsible for casting them adrift, rudderless, on the currents of the global economy.

The American Dream survey tested working people's views on a range of issues that fit into the frame of what people think of when they contemplate the "American dream." According to the researchers who conducted the survey, that consists of four cornerstone issues: "jobs with pay that can support a family, access to quality health care, chances for your children to succeed, and a secure and dignified retirement." Only full-time, nonmanagerial working adults with a household income of less that $100K were eligible for the study.

When asked about these core issues of economic security, three out of four respondents said it's becoming "harder these days to achieve the American dream"; two thirds said it was harder for them than it was for their parents, and a similar number predicted it would be even more difficult for their kids. Eight of ten said that the economic situation that the next generation will face is likely to be worse than it is for adults working today.

While the Bush administration and others on the right try to paint Americans' growing economic insecurity as some sort of irrational manifestation of the Zeitgeist -- a common claim is that the economy is going gang-busters but people are too down about the mess in Iraq to notice -- the truth is that stagnating wages and rising costs for housing, food, healthcare and gas are driving working America's pessimism. As one participant who hadn't seen a raise in some time put it, "There's no progress. There's no option. No more salary. That's it. We're static there. We all [have a] fear of being dismissed … if you leave there's like ten people in line waiting to get your job."