I’ve seen the goalposts on “the American Dream” move a lot. It used to be, everyone can work hard and have a good life. Buy a house, car, raise kids on a single

I’ve seen the goalposts on “the American Dream” move a lot. It used to be, everyone can work hard and have a good life. Buy a house, car, raise kids on a single income with free high school education. It might be a historical fluke but that’s what it was. Then it somehow became “anyone can become rich” and we celebrated the middle class origins of our billionaires. Now it seems to be “we have the richest billionaires”. People are being gaslit with metrics like GDP and stock index prices that measure the performance of corporations and the wealthiest Americans. But the reality is that American life expectancy has plateaued or going down, while the EU has blasted past us.