8 ms·

Americans think the American dream is dying

48 points by elsewhen 3y ago

tcbawo 3y ago
There is no direct and certain pathway to prosperity but the right amount of hard work, hustle, creativity, and luck still produces success stories. It has never been a given. What has worked for the previous generation will not work for the next generation. America will remain the land of opportunity even if it is not the market of opportunity because of its capitalistic government with strong protection of property rights. Parents have always tried to give their children every unfair advantage. It will be successful for many, but many will also squander their inheritance. Edit: I’d love to hear from the downvoters what is controversial or misleading about my previous statement.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  Really? Because I can draw up a pretty simple and direct plan for any kid coming out of high school to make six figures in six years, provided the kid didn’t screw around in high school. The American Dream is alive and well as long as you avoid the traps of smoking, gambling, alcohol, and sex workers. And dumb debt too, I guess.
  - whoknowsidont 3y ago
    You cannot, because your plan is idealistic and naive. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Explanations%20for%20the%20relatively%20low,and%20low%20rate%20of%20unionization%2C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_... The American dream only exists in dreams.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      The existence of a path forward doesn't mean everybody is going to take it. This is especially true because the path to long-term success is often the path that's not particularly pleasant in the short-term. Obesity is a reasonable comparison. Nobody wants to obese, but we're headed towards a world where the majority of Americans are. It's because many, and it's looking like the majority now, are more inclined to succumb to short-term pleasures, instead of exercising the discipline/restraint necessary for long-term pleasure.
      - mensetmanusman 3y ago
        Now we solved it with a pill though!!
      - whoknowsidont 3y ago
        >The existence of a path forward doesn't mean everybody is going to take it. Which is not something anyone is even implying? >This is especially true because the path to long-term success is often the path that's not particularly pleasant in the short-term. This is just motivational fallacies sprinkled with moral posturing, while somehow ignoring an abundance of mammalian behavioral science. You may not realize it, but you're already arguing for a caste system. If you took someone who is "successful" and removed their support structures they would, as has been proven time and time again, fair far worse than their hardened peers in the same position. Inheritors of wealth or people who profit from social networks rarely have the skills and adaptive "augments" necessary to survive in the workplace let alone climb it. Look at The Vanderbilts as an example. Generations of the family profiteering off workers for literally no constructive purpose, and they lost of all it. And this happens day in and day out. People cannot climb the social ladder because it is not set up to do so, so a few benefit, even for hundreds of years, while squandering resources. Many people's productive hours and efforts simply go toward enriching some other people, who are not capable of using those acquired resources correctly for many different reasons. > instead of exercising the discipline/restraint necessary for long-term pleasure. What's silly about this statement if you took it at face value, and for the sake of argument assumed it was true, the upper echelon of people we are talking about have made this so. They profit from it. And they will continue to push it.
        somenameforme 3y ago
        It's not clear to me what you're trying to argue, as your claims and evidence seem to contradict each other. Of course I agree that even individuals born into the greatest of wealth can certainly squander it all with bad decisions, as has happened countlessly throughout history. But this rather precludes anything like a caste system where those born into the elite can never full from such; nor can those ever born as an untouchable rise from such.
    - whynotminot 3y ago
      We probably need a better definition of the "American Dream" though, because I think GP is largely right. For a couple decades now there has been a very simple plan to execute that will result in probably 90% of successful adherents ending up with a 6 figure job: (1) Don't screw up high-school too badly. (2) Go to a college at least a few people have heard of and study STEM. (3) Graduate and go into Tech as soon as possible. That's literally it. Follow this plan and you are now a professional making 6 figures. Most people wallowing in student debt wondering what happened to the American Dream didn't really consider the marketability of their planned education. With that said, I think going forward this is all more complicated. I wouldn't really know what to recommend to a current middle schooler, for instance, in a world where most white collar work will probably be done better by ChatGPT 8 in a handful of years. But for the past few decades before this point in time, this has all been way simpler than people think, provided they were willing to gut out the level of effort required for a STEM degree.
      - wincy 3y ago
        Heck, I managed to screw up pretty much all of those things you listed and am making six figures in tech. A little ambition can get you a long way in this field.
        whoknowsidont 3y ago
        And what about everyone who did not end up in your position. Are you going to claim the moral and ethical victory, or is it more logical to apply the survivorship bias? Do you truly believe that across entire societies there is limited mobility because of a lack of talent and drive, or is it more likely those societies are not setup with effective merit channels and proper reward mechanisms?
        whynotminot 3y ago
        > And what about everyone who did not end up in your position. Are you going to claim the moral and ethical victory, or is it more logical to apply the survivorship bias? Tech is overflowing with people who literally just did a few things right. And it's also renowned for welcoming in people with non-traditional backgrounds: people who don't have degrees but showed talent, people who have the wrong degrees but then went to bootcamps, Product Managers and designers with no technical background, etc. Survivorship bias implies a "most don't make it" result. I would argue that most who execute a reasonable plan do in fact make it fine in tech. There really aren't very many tech failure stories (outside of startup founders). If you "fail" at one place you'll probably get hired at another. Even if you're not good at it, there is no shortage of bad engineers who still have high-paying jobs. Now, not everyone wants to do tech. Not everyone enjoys that kind of work, or wants to put in the amount of effort required to get a STEM degree or go to a bootcamp. But then this is a different question--the question then is no longer "Is there still a reasonable path to the American Dream" and more "why won't the thing I've chosen to do irrespective of market conditions give me lots of money." I do think it's valid to ask why there aren't more routes to attaining success. Because I think in the past it felt like you could do a pretty vast array of things and still have a middle class lifestyle. But to say it doesn't exist is to ignore the very obvious routes to success that are still attainable.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    You can draw up that plan for one lucky kid but as soon as you scale it to all kids, it doesn't work.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      It could, because wealth creation is not zero sum. But the likelihood is small. No system has entirely figured this out.
      - wvenable 3y ago
        There's also supply and demand; if supply is increased beyond the demand then what was a successful plan will stop being successful.
    - jimbob45 3y ago
      Trade schools, the armed forces, and jobs with educational assistance work for those who can’t swing student loans. There’s also not a single state whose state school isn’t worth the money.
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    Only if you no-true-scotsman the set of "any kid" down to the subset of any kid who 'wants it bad enough', 'is motivated', 'is a self-starter', etc etc. Of course you can just conveniently define that subset as "any kid for whom my plan works".
andrewstuart 3y ago
The Australian dream of owning a house is dead in Australia. Only rich people and corporations can afford to buy houses.
- fader 3y ago
  Indeed, see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/25/generational-wealth-gap-study-monash-old-to-young-debt-repayments-savings-rates https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/25/generatio...
- tjpnz 3y ago
  Same in New Zealand actually. As a longterm resident of Japan it would be cheaper to buy a brand new apartment in the middle of Tokyo than it would some damp hovel in Auckland.
  - bushbaba 3y ago
    Could be good news for Japan if they allow for easier immigration.
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      Every country that does has this housing problem.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - robocat 3y ago
      Auckland is expensive partially due to immigration. Auckland region[1]: The proportion of people born overseas was 41.0%, compared with 27.1% nationally. When over 1/3 of the population is immigrants that causes housing demand. Fabulous "Upzoning New Zealand" article on NZ housing policy: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/upzoning-new-zealand/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/upzoning-new-zealand/ which mentions Auckland increased housing supply by 4% from 2016 to 2021. It also mentions large house supply growth in Christchurch and how house prices have been going up in Christchurch despite that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Region
dataflow 3y ago
How in the world can anyone believe that a country that adds O($trillion) in debts every year will leave its future generations better off than previous ones?
- pharrington 3y ago
  Our national debt goes almost entirely towards paying Americans. edit: Also, almost all modern money is debt. Printed currency is a tiny amount of the money in circulation. Nobody gets paid without debt. (at first I said "literally all" instead of "almost all")
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    *some Americans
- golergka 3y ago
  That’s government, not country. And most of this debt is held by other branches of said government.
  - dataflow 3y ago
    Edit: Do you feel your comment explains how/why this implies the debt is fine? I sure don't...
    - golergka 3y ago
      Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
pierat 3y ago
It's been dead for 30 years. TV has been a mirror of general society. And what did that look like? A shoe salesman could have a wife and 2 children in a 2 story house in the suburbs (Married with Children). Or, the Simpsons had similar. Again, single worker household paying for 2.5 children and 2 story house. It goes on and on. But yeah, the 'American Dream' of prosperity was uncovered, viewed, and all wealth extracted from that. And it left bones in their wake. Those bones are minimum wage staying the same since 2005 or so. Or home ownership blocked for most. Or student loans keeping generations in poverty. We all are collectively getting poorer, and some billionaire fucks are getting richer on the rest of us one cut at a time. We used to have it good. Those days have been done for a while now.
- ip26 3y ago
  I don't think your thesis is borne out. "Friends" was widely mocked during its run for how unrealistic the living arrangement was.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    That was New York, now it's everywhere.
    - pierat 3y ago
      Rents 10y ago (here) were around $450/no for a decent 1br apartment in my city. They're now bordering up to $2000/mo . In fact, there's people who moved here from NYC, and are moving back because it's easier to work decent jobs and pay rent in NYC. And you can pay rent on time $1000/mo for 10 years, and it's absolutely no proof that you can pay a $1000/mo mortgage. The boomers didn't have to deal with "credit" but we do now. Again, all these systems are stacked against you and everyone else. It's all one big massive scam. It's the American psychosis, that hard work gets you somewhere. And for many, hard work is low pay, a torn up body, and you die.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      Well, rather importantly, not everywhere. Yes, pretty much every metropolitan area that has any level of desirability as a place to live is like that now. But that still leaves large areas of the country in a very different situation. That doesn't describe the lives of many people, because these tend to be low population density areas. But they exist, and their "exceptionalism" might end up providing an arrow into the future just as unaffordable metros did in the 1980s.
whoknowsidont 3y ago
[flagged]
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Solved it several times over IIRC
TulliusCicero 3y ago
The biggest problem is the cost of housing, and it's entirely a self-own. There's nothing inherent to America that means the cost of housing has to price into the stratosphere anywhere that has good jobs, we just constantly screw ourselves by not building enough housing. Whether it's private developers or public, we just constantly refuse to do anything beyond quarter-assing the problem, prioritizing having enough free street parking for cars over affordable housing for families. American productivity, our GDP per capita is still doing quite well, but it doesn't help the average person if all that money has to go into their rent or mortgage. And benefitting from property values rising from scarce housing is just a generational ponzi scheme.
- dnsco 3y ago
  The faircloth amendment prohibits an increase in public housing stock. Granted amendments can be repealed, but “refusal” is a bit of an oversimplification in the public housing case, it’s literally banned.
  - viknesh 3y ago
    Is public housing the main driver of lower housing prices in comparable economies? I would have guessed that the HUD being unable to build more housing isn't helping us, but isn't the main reason that prices are skyrocketing in urban areas.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      Public housing is important, mostly because private housing growth contracts during economic slowdowns, and the delay in constructing new ones means an eventual crunch when the economy starts needing housing again. If the public housing pipeline is robust it can generate a more even supply.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      > Is public housing the main driver of lower housing prices in comparable economies? Most other Western countries seem to be suffering similar issues, with prices rising and various regulations making it hard to increase the supply of housing. Vienna seems to be doing better as far as capital cities go, and it has a large amount of social/public housing. That said, rents in Seoul and Tokyo are fairly reasonable given their size and national importance, and this seems to be because it's just a lot easier to make more housing.
bruce511 3y ago
I think there are two issues the article, and perhaps the wsj poll highlight. Firstly the "hard work leads to success" myth. In truth hard-working (by itself) means nothing. Johnny's hard work studying doesn't lead to an A. Answering the questions correctly leads to an A. Just working hard isn't enough, you have to work effectively on the correct material. So in the sense that "if you work hard, you will succeed", that American Dream has best be described as "incomplete specification." Hard work matters. An athlete works hard Monday to Friday in the gym, and on the training ground, so they can perform well on Saturday. Do they always win? Does the one who worked the hardest always win? No. Hard work, on the right thing, in the right way, stacks the odds. But luck plays a part. Sometimes a huge part. You still need the work to exploit the luck, but its helpful if its there. Secondly I think the "inequality" gap is not as significant as the "general standard of living". I know, I know, im supposed to care if you have a billion, and I only have a million, but I don't. For me, enough is enough, and good luck to you. Put another way, if you "have enough", then be content - you have achieved the American Dream. BUT that's not to say that I think we gave achieved that. The problem either the "inequality" reported is not the top end, but the bottom. At the moment the bottom are losing. Their standard of living us too low. I know it's controversial, but for me it's better to look at the problem as "how to raise the bottom", not "how to squash the top". Decent environment, housing, food, transport and health care would be enough. I don't need fancy yachts or private planed. Sure we can "hate billionaires", because they got rich exploiting labor (think amazon), but if they were all just millionaires, that wouldn't help much. (But yay, less inequality.) On the other hand raising the bottom likely makes the inequality gap bigger, not smller, but also makes it irrelevant. I'm aware that raising the bottom is not easy, it's a multi-faceted problem with many moving parts. There are no quick fixes. But I think its helpful to frame the problem this way. (Squashing the top is "easier" but less usefull overall).
nine_zeros 3y ago
Realistically, it is just housing. Fix housing, fix a lot of problems. And practically, just bam corporations from owning non-multifamily homes. I just don't understand why investment funds should compete for the same house as average Joe. It's not like the fund management will go homeless if they don't secure a house, but the average Joe will be. And this is why homelessness is on the rise. Corporate ownership has priced out real people.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
It is for children of broken family structures, but those with both parents are still flourishing (although this population is collapsing fast).
shrubble 3y ago
My parents had it rough, being born in 1929, they didn't really have a "good year" until 1946, the first year after the war. Then, there was a small recession caused by the war ending which didn't clear until about 1949. But, the house they lived in when they first married could be rented for $10 USD (in 1951 I think). The 50s allowed them to get a mortgage and get in a house of their own, and start the savings treadmill... Minimum wage was $0.75 per hour ; so in terms of hourly work, the house could be rented for 13 hours of labor (excluding taxes). If you figure $1200/month for typical rent (this is low) that means the equivalent of earning $90-100 per hour in wages, or $180k-200K per year. Quite a difference!
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > But, the house they lived in when they first married could be rented for $10 USD (in 1951 I think). The 50s allowed them to get a mortgage and get in a house of their own, and start the savings treadmill... > Minimum wage was $0.75 per hour The general federal minimum wage didn't exist yet, that $0.75 cent minimum wage was for a limited subset of workers (basically, those either directly engaged in interstate commerce in the narrow sense or in manufacturing for it). When a broader minimum wage was introduced, it was at a lower rate than the then-current rate for that subset, as was also the case when the general minimum wage was introduced a fee years after that. So. its misleading to compare the general federal minimum eage that exists today with the narrow one in 1951 as if they were equivalent in setting the floor for all labor.
  - shrubble 3y ago
    I don't the know the number of hours in 1951 that make up a year's worth of work (today we use 2000 as the usual number of hours), but 1951 US Census data seems to approximately bear out what I wrote: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1952/demo/p60-010.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1952/demo/p60-01... : "The average person's income was up by 10 percent between 1950 and 1951, according to estimates released today by Roy V. Peel, Director, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce. For all persons 14 years old and over receiving any money income, the average (median) income was estimated at $2,200 in 1951 as compared with $2,000 in 1950. The median income of men, which has been rising steadily since the end of World War II, showed a record postwar gain in 1951. The 1951 median of $3,000 was about $400 above the 1950 estimate, and the proportion of men receiving incomes or $5,000 or more rose to 14 percent from 11 percent during the year."
TMWNN 3y ago
And bear in mind that the US economy is better off than pretty much the entire rest of the developed world outside maybe Switzerland. Americans who think housing is expensive shut up the moment they look north of the 49th parallel, for example. So just how much worse off is everyone else? (And if your answer is that somehow "free[1] health care" and "vacation days" are enough to compensate for non-Americans, boy have you missed the point.) [1] No, Virginia, the NHS and Canadian Medicare's approaches are not the norm for the developed world
- pierat 3y ago
  The "economy" is just a measure of how much money the ultra-rich have. When the DOW or NYSE or whatever drops a bucket of points, that's still not me. It's the uber-rich. When a grocery cart of groceries goes from $40 to $200 for the same damned things, that's definitely on me, and families all around me. And as far as we can tell, those numbers were based purely on greed, or in the sanitized terms of economists "what the market will bear". Well, the market don't give 2 fucks about us people; I say let it burn and bring out the guillotines.
NautilusWave 3y ago
Death of a Salesman was published in 1949. Has the American Dream just been dying in different ways over the past several decades?
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  But for the salesman, the dream died just before he did. It didn't die in his 20s, like it does for too many now.
rich_sasha 3y ago
I think about it a lot, and had some weakly structured thoughts about it: - when you picture the sickly sweet Boomer American dream of 60s or 70s, you see a suburban family, maybe some high-level blue collar job for the dad and a "homemaker" mum, living in a big house in a pretty suburb of some no-name town. - I guess these blue collar jobs don't exist anymore. Jobs that pay a medium-to-high salary require high specialisation. It's no longer the days of car companies building entire cities and herding people to them, providing housing, training and a salary. - the qualifications are also expensive to acquire. If we now say a university degree is a prerequisite to entering the race, and it costs O(100k) then your chance of getting on the gravy train is very small, unless you come from money yourself. - so I guess, it's easier to grow a less developed economy than a more developed one. The US used to grow by the pluck and bravery of bricklayers building Empire State Building by hand, now it's the highly skilled hands of bioengineers in start up labs. - out expectations of success have skyrocketed too. Did the boomers of 60s and 70s who made it go on holiday abroad every year? Did they have iPhones and lots of other gadgets? Thinking about films from the era, they seemed happy with a house and a hot family meal at the end of the day. - GDP per capita outperforms inflation in the US, and yet median standard of life is decreasing. I guess that tells you that more of what is produced is distributed unevenly, to "the rich". I mean, to some extent that happens always, but it's probably gone too far. - finally, and that's possibly controversial, but how much of the American Dream was fuelled by the "underclasses": ethnic minorities and women. People who contributed to GDP but didn't get to reap the fruit of their work. The US south first became rich literally off slave work, and arguably emancipation is still under way. Ditto for women. But then, have Black Americans experienced a larger increase in the standard of living than say White Americans? My impression is not; eg the previous boom may have been at their expense, but does not explain why it is over now.
thiht 3y ago
The American Dream is not dying. It died decades ago.
- PaulKeeble 3y ago
  Not sure it ever really existed given the high correlation of income with the income of someone's parents. When that is the primary driver of your success in life to claim the dream is still alive assumes that all the poor people deserve to be poor and none of them worked hard. Its always been a mirage to keep the existing structures in place to the benefit of the wealthiest and its getting worse.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
taylodl 3y ago
FWIW - people were complaining back in the 70's about being locked out of the housing market when mortgage interest rates were double-digit. The last decade I remember people not complaining about the cost of housing was in the 60's. What happened? President Nixon unilaterally destroyed the Bretton Woods System with his Nixon Shock. That sent interest rates soaring. As a result, the buying power of the average American peaked in 1972. The cost of housing has been rising ever since.
- simonsarris 3y ago
  Explanations like this do nothing to address that price-income ratio of housing in the US is better than almost any other nation. It seems far more likely that it was things like the single-room occupancy stock, which almost completely disappeared between 1960 and 1980, that changed housing availability and therefore prices far more. I say like because I suspect it was not at all monocausal, in terms of the regulations that made building more and more varied, harder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy > As a result, the buying power of the average American peaked in 1972 This seems suspect on the face of it. Percent of money spent on food, after all, has gone down dramatically since. You might say it's for reasons beyond inflation (eg, better food supply), but then so is everything else related to those conditions.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Percent of income spent on housing, energy, transportation and medical have all increased since Nixon up-ended the US economy - food was the single exception which you cherry picked. Nixon's actions couldn't have come at a worse time - right at millions of Baby Boomers were coming into the housing market the money with which to build housing was constrained. The supply hasn't kept up with the demand since then. Each decade since has seen housing reach new highs when adjusted for inflation. Even the looming Boomer die-off won't change the situation much. For one, they're the longest-lived generation in history. The other is there's decades of pent-upped demand for housing. The simple fact now is the majority of Americans will never own a home. That's become our norm and it was policy set in motion over 50 years ago by Nixon that led us here.

48 points by elsewhen 3y ago

There is no direct and certain pathway to prosperity but the right amount of hard work, hustle, creativity, and luck still produces success stories. It has never been a given. What has worked for the previous generation will not work for the next generation. America will remain the land of opportunity even if it is not the market of opportunity because of its capitalistic government with strong protection of property rights. Parents have always tried to give their children every unfair advantage. It will be successful for many, but many will also squander their inheritance. Edit: I’d love to hear from the downvoters what is controversial or misleading about my previous statement.

jimbob45 3y ago
Really? Because I can draw up a pretty simple and direct plan for any kid coming out of high school to make six figures in six years, provided the kid didn’t screw around in high school. The American Dream is alive and well as long as you avoid the traps of smoking, gambling, alcohol, and sex workers. And dumb debt too, I guess.
- whoknowsidont 3y ago
  You cannot, because your plan is idealistic and naive. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Explanations%20for%20the%20relatively%20low,and%20low%20rate%20of%20unionization%2C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_... The American dream only exists in dreams.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    The existence of a path forward doesn't mean everybody is going to take it. This is especially true because the path to long-term success is often the path that's not particularly pleasant in the short-term. Obesity is a reasonable comparison. Nobody wants to obese, but we're headed towards a world where the majority of Americans are. It's because many, and it's looking like the majority now, are more inclined to succumb to short-term pleasures, instead of exercising the discipline/restraint necessary for long-term pleasure.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      Now we solved it with a pill though!!
    - whoknowsidont 3y ago
      >The existence of a path forward doesn't mean everybody is going to take it. Which is not something anyone is even implying? >This is especially true because the path to long-term success is often the path that's not particularly pleasant in the short-term. This is just motivational fallacies sprinkled with moral posturing, while somehow ignoring an abundance of mammalian behavioral science. You may not realize it, but you're already arguing for a caste system. If you took someone who is "successful" and removed their support structures they would, as has been proven time and time again, fair far worse than their hardened peers in the same position. Inheritors of wealth or people who profit from social networks rarely have the skills and adaptive "augments" necessary to survive in the workplace let alone climb it. Look at The Vanderbilts as an example. Generations of the family profiteering off workers for literally no constructive purpose, and they lost of all it. And this happens day in and day out. People cannot climb the social ladder because it is not set up to do so, so a few benefit, even for hundreds of years, while squandering resources. Many people's productive hours and efforts simply go toward enriching some other people, who are not capable of using those acquired resources correctly for many different reasons. > instead of exercising the discipline/restraint necessary for long-term pleasure. What's silly about this statement if you took it at face value, and for the sake of argument assumed it was true, the upper echelon of people we are talking about have made this so. They profit from it. And they will continue to push it.
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        It's not clear to me what you're trying to argue, as your claims and evidence seem to contradict each other. Of course I agree that even individuals born into the greatest of wealth can certainly squander it all with bad decisions, as has happened countlessly throughout history. But this rather precludes anything like a caste system where those born into the elite can never full from such; nor can those ever born as an untouchable rise from such.
  - whynotminot 3y ago
    We probably need a better definition of the "American Dream" though, because I think GP is largely right. For a couple decades now there has been a very simple plan to execute that will result in probably 90% of successful adherents ending up with a 6 figure job: (1) Don't screw up high-school too badly. (2) Go to a college at least a few people have heard of and study STEM. (3) Graduate and go into Tech as soon as possible. That's literally it. Follow this plan and you are now a professional making 6 figures. Most people wallowing in student debt wondering what happened to the American Dream didn't really consider the marketability of their planned education. With that said, I think going forward this is all more complicated. I wouldn't really know what to recommend to a current middle schooler, for instance, in a world where most white collar work will probably be done better by ChatGPT 8 in a handful of years. But for the past few decades before this point in time, this has all been way simpler than people think, provided they were willing to gut out the level of effort required for a STEM degree.
    - wincy 3y ago
      Heck, I managed to screw up pretty much all of those things you listed and am making six figures in tech. A little ambition can get you a long way in this field.
      - whoknowsidont 3y ago
        And what about everyone who did not end up in your position. Are you going to claim the moral and ethical victory, or is it more logical to apply the survivorship bias? Do you truly believe that across entire societies there is limited mobility because of a lack of talent and drive, or is it more likely those societies are not setup with effective merit channels and proper reward mechanisms?
        whynotminot 3y ago
        > And what about everyone who did not end up in your position. Are you going to claim the moral and ethical victory, or is it more logical to apply the survivorship bias? Tech is overflowing with people who literally just did a few things right. And it's also renowned for welcoming in people with non-traditional backgrounds: people who don't have degrees but showed talent, people who have the wrong degrees but then went to bootcamps, Product Managers and designers with no technical background, etc. Survivorship bias implies a "most don't make it" result. I would argue that most who execute a reasonable plan do in fact make it fine in tech. There really aren't very many tech failure stories (outside of startup founders). If you "fail" at one place you'll probably get hired at another. Even if you're not good at it, there is no shortage of bad engineers who still have high-paying jobs. Now, not everyone wants to do tech. Not everyone enjoys that kind of work, or wants to put in the amount of effort required to get a STEM degree or go to a bootcamp. But then this is a different question--the question then is no longer "Is there still a reasonable path to the American Dream" and more "why won't the thing I've chosen to do irrespective of market conditions give me lots of money." I do think it's valid to ask why there aren't more routes to attaining success. Because I think in the past it felt like you could do a pretty vast array of things and still have a middle class lifestyle. But to say it doesn't exist is to ignore the very obvious routes to success that are still attainable.
- wvenable 3y ago
  You can draw up that plan for one lucky kid but as soon as you scale it to all kids, it doesn't work.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    It could, because wealth creation is not zero sum. But the likelihood is small. No system has entirely figured this out.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      There's also supply and demand; if supply is increased beyond the demand then what was a successful plan will stop being successful.
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    Trade schools, the armed forces, and jobs with educational assistance work for those who can’t swing student loans. There’s also not a single state whose state school isn’t worth the money.
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  Only if you no-true-scotsman the set of "any kid" down to the subset of any kid who 'wants it bad enough', 'is motivated', 'is a self-starter', etc etc. Of course you can just conveniently define that subset as "any kid for whom my plan works".

andrewstuart 3y ago

The Australian dream of owning a house is dead in Australia. Only rich people and corporations can afford to buy houses.

fader 3y ago
Indeed, see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/25/generational-wealth-gap-study-monash-old-to-young-debt-repayments-savings-rates https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/25/generatio...
tjpnz 3y ago
Same in New Zealand actually. As a longterm resident of Japan it would be cheaper to buy a brand new apartment in the middle of Tokyo than it would some damp hovel in Auckland.
- bushbaba 3y ago
  Could be good news for Japan if they allow for easier immigration.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Every country that does has this housing problem.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - robocat 3y ago
    Auckland is expensive partially due to immigration. Auckland region[1]: The proportion of people born overseas was 41.0%, compared with 27.1% nationally. When over 1/3 of the population is immigrants that causes housing demand. Fabulous "Upzoning New Zealand" article on NZ housing policy: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/upzoning-new-zealand/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/upzoning-new-zealand/ which mentions Auckland increased housing supply by 4% from 2016 to 2021. It also mentions large house supply growth in Christchurch and how house prices have been going up in Christchurch despite that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Region

dataflow 3y ago

How in the world can anyone believe that a country that adds O($trillion) in debts every year will leave its future generations better off than previous ones?

pharrington 3y ago
Our national debt goes almost entirely towards paying Americans. edit: Also, almost all modern money is debt. Printed currency is a tiny amount of the money in circulation. Nobody gets paid without debt. (at first I said "literally all" instead of "almost all")
- paulddraper 3y ago
  *some Americans
golergka 3y ago
That’s government, not country. And most of this debt is held by other branches of said government.
- dataflow 3y ago
  Edit: Do you feel your comment explains how/why this implies the debt is fine? I sure don't...
  - golergka 3y ago
    Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

pierat 3y ago

It's been dead for 30 years. TV has been a mirror of general society. And what did that look like? A shoe salesman could have a wife and 2 children in a 2 story house in the suburbs (Married with Children). Or, the Simpsons had similar. Again, single worker household paying for 2.5 children and 2 story house. It goes on and on. But yeah, the 'American Dream' of prosperity was uncovered, viewed, and all wealth extracted from that. And it left bones in their wake. Those bones are minimum wage staying the same since 2005 or so. Or home ownership blocked for most. Or student loans keeping generations in poverty. We all are collectively getting poorer, and some billionaire fucks are getting richer on the rest of us one cut at a time. We used to have it good. Those days have been done for a while now.

ip26 3y ago
I don't think your thesis is borne out. "Friends" was widely mocked during its run for how unrealistic the living arrangement was.
- wvenable 3y ago
  That was New York, now it's everywhere.
  - pierat 3y ago
    Rents 10y ago (here) were around $450/no for a decent 1br apartment in my city. They're now bordering up to $2000/mo . In fact, there's people who moved here from NYC, and are moving back because it's easier to work decent jobs and pay rent in NYC. And you can pay rent on time $1000/mo for 10 years, and it's absolutely no proof that you can pay a $1000/mo mortgage. The boomers didn't have to deal with "credit" but we do now. Again, all these systems are stacked against you and everyone else. It's all one big massive scam. It's the American psychosis, that hard work gets you somewhere. And for many, hard work is low pay, a torn up body, and you die.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    Well, rather importantly, not everywhere. Yes, pretty much every metropolitan area that has any level of desirability as a place to live is like that now. But that still leaves large areas of the country in a very different situation. That doesn't describe the lives of many people, because these tend to be low population density areas. But they exist, and their "exceptionalism" might end up providing an arrow into the future just as unaffordable metros did in the 1980s.

whoknowsidont 3y ago

[flagged]

paulddraper 3y ago
Solved it several times over IIRC

TulliusCicero 3y ago

The biggest problem is the cost of housing, and it's entirely a self-own. There's nothing inherent to America that means the cost of housing has to price into the stratosphere anywhere that has good jobs, we just constantly screw ourselves by not building enough housing. Whether it's private developers or public, we just constantly refuse to do anything beyond quarter-assing the problem, prioritizing having enough free street parking for cars over affordable housing for families. American productivity, our GDP per capita is still doing quite well, but it doesn't help the average person if all that money has to go into their rent or mortgage. And benefitting from property values rising from scarce housing is just a generational ponzi scheme.

dnsco 3y ago
The faircloth amendment prohibits an increase in public housing stock. Granted amendments can be repealed, but “refusal” is a bit of an oversimplification in the public housing case, it’s literally banned.
- viknesh 3y ago
  Is public housing the main driver of lower housing prices in comparable economies? I would have guessed that the HUD being unable to build more housing isn't helping us, but isn't the main reason that prices are skyrocketing in urban areas.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    Public housing is important, mostly because private housing growth contracts during economic slowdowns, and the delay in constructing new ones means an eventual crunch when the economy starts needing housing again. If the public housing pipeline is robust it can generate a more even supply.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    > Is public housing the main driver of lower housing prices in comparable economies? Most other Western countries seem to be suffering similar issues, with prices rising and various regulations making it hard to increase the supply of housing. Vienna seems to be doing better as far as capital cities go, and it has a large amount of social/public housing. That said, rents in Seoul and Tokyo are fairly reasonable given their size and national importance, and this seems to be because it's just a lot easier to make more housing.

bruce511 3y ago

I think there are two issues the article, and perhaps the wsj poll highlight. Firstly the "hard work leads to success" myth. In truth hard-working (by itself) means nothing. Johnny's hard work studying doesn't lead to an A. Answering the questions correctly leads to an A. Just working hard isn't enough, you have to work effectively on the correct material. So in the sense that "if you work hard, you will succeed", that American Dream has best be described as "incomplete specification." Hard work matters. An athlete works hard Monday to Friday in the gym, and on the training ground, so they can perform well on Saturday. Do they always win? Does the one who worked the hardest always win? No. Hard work, on the right thing, in the right way, stacks the odds. But luck plays a part. Sometimes a huge part. You still need the work to exploit the luck, but its helpful if its there. Secondly I think the "inequality" gap is not as significant as the "general standard of living". I know, I know, im supposed to care if you have a billion, and I only have a million, but I don't. For me, enough is enough, and good luck to you. Put another way, if you "have enough", then be content - you have achieved the American Dream. BUT that's not to say that I think we gave achieved that. The problem either the "inequality" reported is not the top end, but the bottom. At the moment the bottom are losing. Their standard of living us too low. I know it's controversial, but for me it's better to look at the problem as "how to raise the bottom", not "how to squash the top". Decent environment, housing, food, transport and health care would be enough. I don't need fancy yachts or private planed. Sure we can "hate billionaires", because they got rich exploiting labor (think amazon), but if they were all just millionaires, that wouldn't help much. (But yay, less inequality.) On the other hand raising the bottom likely makes the inequality gap bigger, not smller, but also makes it irrelevant. I'm aware that raising the bottom is not easy, it's a multi-faceted problem with many moving parts. There are no quick fixes. But I think its helpful to frame the problem this way. (Squashing the top is "easier" but less usefull overall).

nine_zeros 3y ago

Realistically, it is just housing. Fix housing, fix a lot of problems. And practically, just bam corporations from owning non-multifamily homes. I just don't understand why investment funds should compete for the same house as average Joe. It's not like the fund management will go homeless if they don't secure a house, but the average Joe will be. And this is why homelessness is on the rise. Corporate ownership has priced out real people.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

It is for children of broken family structures, but those with both parents are still flourishing (although this population is collapsing fast).

shrubble 3y ago

My parents had it rough, being born in 1929, they didn't really have a "good year" until 1946, the first year after the war. Then, there was a small recession caused by the war ending which didn't clear until about 1949. But, the house they lived in when they first married could be rented for $10 USD (in 1951 I think). The 50s allowed them to get a mortgage and get in a house of their own, and start the savings treadmill... Minimum wage was $0.75 per hour ; so in terms of hourly work, the house could be rented for 13 hours of labor (excluding taxes). If you figure $1200/month for typical rent (this is low) that means the equivalent of earning $90-100 per hour in wages, or $180k-200K per year. Quite a difference!

dragonwriter 3y ago
> But, the house they lived in when they first married could be rented for $10 USD (in 1951 I think). The 50s allowed them to get a mortgage and get in a house of their own, and start the savings treadmill... > Minimum wage was $0.75 per hour The general federal minimum wage didn't exist yet, that $0.75 cent minimum wage was for a limited subset of workers (basically, those either directly engaged in interstate commerce in the narrow sense or in manufacturing for it). When a broader minimum wage was introduced, it was at a lower rate than the then-current rate for that subset, as was also the case when the general minimum wage was introduced a fee years after that. So. its misleading to compare the general federal minimum eage that exists today with the narrow one in 1951 as if they were equivalent in setting the floor for all labor.
- shrubble 3y ago
  I don't the know the number of hours in 1951 that make up a year's worth of work (today we use 2000 as the usual number of hours), but 1951 US Census data seems to approximately bear out what I wrote: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1952/demo/p60-010.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1952/demo/p60-01... : "The average person's income was up by 10 percent between 1950 and 1951, according to estimates released today by Roy V. Peel, Director, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce. For all persons 14 years old and over receiving any money income, the average (median) income was estimated at $2,200 in 1951 as compared with $2,000 in 1950. The median income of men, which has been rising steadily since the end of World War II, showed a record postwar gain in 1951. The 1951 median of $3,000 was about $400 above the 1950 estimate, and the proportion of men receiving incomes or $5,000 or more rose to 14 percent from 11 percent during the year."

TMWNN 3y ago

And bear in mind that the US economy is better off than pretty much the entire rest of the developed world outside maybe Switzerland. Americans who think housing is expensive shut up the moment they look north of the 49th parallel, for example. So just how much worse off is everyone else? (And if your answer is that somehow "free[1] health care" and "vacation days" are enough to compensate for non-Americans, boy have you missed the point.) [1] No, Virginia, the NHS and Canadian Medicare's approaches are not the norm for the developed world

pierat 3y ago
The "economy" is just a measure of how much money the ultra-rich have. When the DOW or NYSE or whatever drops a bucket of points, that's still not me. It's the uber-rich. When a grocery cart of groceries goes from $40 to $200 for the same damned things, that's definitely on me, and families all around me. And as far as we can tell, those numbers were based purely on greed, or in the sanitized terms of economists "what the market will bear". Well, the market don't give 2 fucks about us people; I say let it burn and bring out the guillotines.

NautilusWave 3y ago

Death of a Salesman was published in 1949. Has the American Dream just been dying in different ways over the past several decades?

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
But for the salesman, the dream died just before he did. It didn't die in his 20s, like it does for too many now.

rich_sasha 3y ago

I think about it a lot, and had some weakly structured thoughts about it: - when you picture the sickly sweet Boomer American dream of 60s or 70s, you see a suburban family, maybe some high-level blue collar job for the dad and a "homemaker" mum, living in a big house in a pretty suburb of some no-name town. - I guess these blue collar jobs don't exist anymore. Jobs that pay a medium-to-high salary require high specialisation. It's no longer the days of car companies building entire cities and herding people to them, providing housing, training and a salary. - the qualifications are also expensive to acquire. If we now say a university degree is a prerequisite to entering the race, and it costs O(100k) then your chance of getting on the gravy train is very small, unless you come from money yourself. - so I guess, it's easier to grow a less developed economy than a more developed one. The US used to grow by the pluck and bravery of bricklayers building Empire State Building by hand, now it's the highly skilled hands of bioengineers in start up labs. - out expectations of success have skyrocketed too. Did the boomers of 60s and 70s who made it go on holiday abroad every year? Did they have iPhones and lots of other gadgets? Thinking about films from the era, they seemed happy with a house and a hot family meal at the end of the day. - GDP per capita outperforms inflation in the US, and yet median standard of life is decreasing. I guess that tells you that more of what is produced is distributed unevenly, to "the rich". I mean, to some extent that happens always, but it's probably gone too far. - finally, and that's possibly controversial, but how much of the American Dream was fuelled by the "underclasses": ethnic minorities and women. People who contributed to GDP but didn't get to reap the fruit of their work. The US south first became rich literally off slave work, and arguably emancipation is still under way. Ditto for women. But then, have Black Americans experienced a larger increase in the standard of living than say White Americans? My impression is not; eg the previous boom may have been at their expense, but does not explain why it is over now.

thiht 3y ago

The American Dream is not dying. It died decades ago.

PaulKeeble 3y ago
Not sure it ever really existed given the high correlation of income with the income of someone's parents. When that is the primary driver of your success in life to claim the dream is still alive assumes that all the poor people deserve to be poor and none of them worked hard. Its always been a mirage to keep the existing structures in place to the benefit of the wealthiest and its getting worse.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

taylodl 3y ago

FWIW - people were complaining back in the 70's about being locked out of the housing market when mortgage interest rates were double-digit. The last decade I remember people not complaining about the cost of housing was in the 60's. What happened? President Nixon unilaterally destroyed the Bretton Woods System with his Nixon Shock. That sent interest rates soaring. As a result, the buying power of the average American peaked in 1972. The cost of housing has been rising ever since.

simonsarris 3y ago
Explanations like this do nothing to address that price-income ratio of housing in the US is better than almost any other nation. It seems far more likely that it was things like the single-room occupancy stock, which almost completely disappeared between 1960 and 1980, that changed housing availability and therefore prices far more. I say like because I suspect it was not at all monocausal, in terms of the regulations that made building more and more varied, harder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy > As a result, the buying power of the average American peaked in 1972 This seems suspect on the face of it. Percent of money spent on food, after all, has gone down dramatically since. You might say it's for reasons beyond inflation (eg, better food supply), but then so is everything else related to those conditions.
- taylodl 3y ago
  Percent of income spent on housing, energy, transportation and medical have all increased since Nixon up-ended the US economy - food was the single exception which you cherry picked. Nixon's actions couldn't have come at a worse time - right at millions of Baby Boomers were coming into the housing market the money with which to build housing was constrained. The supply hasn't kept up with the demand since then. Each decade since has seen housing reach new highs when adjusted for inflation. Even the looming Boomer die-off won't change the situation much. For one, they're the longest-lived generation in history. The other is there's decades of pent-upped demand for housing. The simple fact now is the majority of Americans will never own a home. That's become our norm and it was policy set in motion over 50 years ago by Nixon that led us here.