Posted on 05/02/2026 6:56:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The American dream is dying, according to the Times. To mark the US’s 250th anniversary, the paper commissioned YouGov to explore whether the country’s citizens still believe that if you ‘work hard and play by the rules’ you will eventually be successful.
Turns out, only 38 per cent of the respondents think this applies to all Americans, while 59 per cent think the American dream is now less attainable than it was when they were growing up. In addition, 38 per cent rated today’s quality of life as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’, compared with 60 per cent who said the same about 1976, the bicentennial year.
No doubt flatlining real wages and the hollowing out of America’s middle class have played a part in this increasing pessimism, but it’s worth noting that the American dream has never really been grounded in reality. If you define it in terms of how many generations it takes a child from a modest background to reach the average level of income, the Nordic countries come out on top in the OECD, where it takes two generations; America in the bottom half, takes five generations. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Social Mobility Index, the US ranks 27th out of 82 countries, while Canada ranks 14th and the UK 21st.
In mitigation, one reason it takes longer for a poor person’s descendants to earn the average income in the US is because this is a lot higher than it is in most OECD countries. In Canada, the median income is approximately$40,000, whereas in the US it’s $59,000. GDP per capita is a slightly different metric, but the Institute of Economic Affairs recently published a revealing survey in which it asked Britons where they thought the UK ranked among US states according to that standard. The answer was seventh, but the correct answer is 51st: Britain is poorer than Mississippi, the poorest American state.
So seeing America as a land of opportunity is an illusion, but it’s one that has probably contributed to its economic prosperity. People will work harder if they believe that sheer effort will propel them to the top, even if it won’t. For that reason, the loss of faith in the American dream could have serious economic consequences. But there’s also a dark underbelly to that noble lie which I experienced during the five years I spent in New York.
From the moment I arrived in 1995, I was struck by how contemptuous people were of the people below them in the socioeconomic hierarchy. In London, the professional classes were – outwardly, at least – respectful of the service personnel they came into contact with every day, careful not to make them feel inferior by virtue of the gulf in status that separated them. In New York, by contrast, such noblesse oblige was almost unknown.
Successful people drew attention to their superior status at every opportunity, with none of the middle-class guilt I’d grown used to in England.
Had these cock-of-the-walks earned their places at the top of the pecking order, that would have been understandable. But most of them had been born to a life of privilege. Their achievement consisted of remaining in the same income bracket as their parents. Why, then, did they behave as if they’d pulled themselves up by their bootstraps? The answer, I eventually worked out, is because they believed in the American dream. So powerful is that myth, they were able to persuade themselves that they deserved their immense good fortune in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. But worse than that, they were convinced that those lower down the food chain also deserved their inferior status, hence the dismissive attitude.
I’m beginning to sound like a socialist, but the lesson I took from this was the opposite. All the things I disliked about Britain – the public schools, the belief that it’s not what you know but who you know, the hereditary principle – actually made life more bearable. Because we’re convinced our society is still hidebound by class (a belief no more grounded in reality than the American dream), the people at the top are plagued by doubt about whether they’re entitled to their success and the people at the bottom don’t feel so bad about themselves. If inequality is inevitable, I concluded, better that people think it’s undeserved than deserved.
So if the American dream really is beginning to lose its mythical power, that may not be such a bad thing. Yes, it’s been an engine of growth, but it’s also convinced US citizens that life outcomes are far more closely linked to merit than they really are. As one New Yorker put it to me: ‘Too many of us were born on third and think we’ve hit a triple.’
Free stuff.
The recent ones came for the free handouts, nothing else.
I provided a ton of actual inflation data, from which people can do their own analyses. I provided additional relevant data on mortgage interest rates, again from which people can do their own analyses.
You (and the other fellow) made unreferenced statements on your own authority, backed up by nothing.
I provided reference data. I added real, meaningful content to the thread.
A wise man (or woman) would thank me.
I provided a ton of actual inflation data, from which people can do their own analyses. I provided additional relevant data on mortgage interest rates, again from which people can do their own analyses.
You (and the other fellow) made unreferenced statements on your own authority, backed up by nothing.
I provided reference data. I added real, meaningful content to the thread.
A wise man (or woman) would thank me.
Howinthehell would I know? You don't list your age on your profile page.
I once read the following observation:
“If it wasn’t for the bisexuals there would be no population growth in England.”
Have a nice night……lol
What you are saying is very true. For decades the majority of our financial policy has been catered to help Boomers. And for young people today, they are not getting the same treatment.
“ From the moment I arrived in 1995, I was struck by how contemptuous people were of the people below them in the socioeconomic hierarchy”
Total BS. There is no country in the world where people in the lower economic strata are treated with as much respect and humanity as here.
I know it first hand. My family came here with nothing and did menial jobs at the beginning and they were never treated as second class citizens. And through hard work, savings every little they could they slowly rose up the economic ladder, without ever getting a cent from the government.
The US has spent two generations re-writing history to show how unfair it has been and a full generation destroying meritocracy. And throughout we have publicized and celebrated the most egregious examples of nepotism in every aspect of human success, from acting and politics to medicine and athletics.
What do we expect opinions to be. But, reality is still that a person regardless of birth can get exactly what he wants unless he is stupid - you can’t cure stupid.
Success is especially sweet when you make it despite losers’ malicious efforts to impede, thwart, entangle, “cancel” or otherwise interfere with your own. Sometimes you have to play by your own rules. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Cry in your $25 avocado toast.
For many that is what it has become, but quite funny coming from a British paper
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I would be appreciative to never read any Brit news again—what a bunch of lunatics.
That's a subtle but very important psychological difference: "income" is what -you- earn, not what's given to you.
The same is true about "middle class" measurements. The Europeans squash down upper levels by taxation and raise lower levels by counting government assistance, so each quintile is far narrower than in the US. Voila! Instant social mobility!
The most interesting statistic I read was that at least half of Americans in the top 20% spent at least 1 year of their lives at the bottom 20%.
The phrase and idea that the “American Dream is dying” has appeared periodically; an early notable instance is a 1931 article by political scientist and historian James Truslow Adams, who popularized the term “American Dream” in his 1931 book The Epic of America — he described the Dream as threatened by economic inequality and social conditions during the Great Depression.
Pretty much, for all my life, I have read articles and see TV show like this.
The dream is dying a long but beautiful dead.
Yeah, but Carter kept it long after the Arab Oil Embargo was over.
The decline was incremental it all started with Hillary declaring evil right wing Republican businesses. She made manufacturing and industry evil because they worked for profit.
This douchenozzle spent five years hanging out with future Mamdani voters and he thinks he knows what America is all about. What a joke!
The Right Honourable The Lord Young of ActonThose British "Conservatives" aren't so conservative after all, but they sure as heck resent Americans, none of us being "lords" or "peers" or royals.Source: Toby Young
"Life peerage -- 21 January 2025"
And though ostensibly "right-wing." of this "Baron Young of Acton, of Acton in the London Borough of Ealing" one reads, "During the 2015 Labour leadership election, he encouraged readers of the politically conservative Daily Telegraph to join the Labour party and support Jeremy Corbyn, who Young thought was the weakest candidate." See. Move between parties for advantages. Some nice info about his view to eugenics, and the little tidbits about drug use are interesting.
Toby Young. AKA Baron Young of Acton, of Acton in the London Borough of Ealing is happy the "American dream" is failing. [ Expletives deleted, in thinking about further comments. ]
A different take on the general subject: The elitist "pretend conservative" Marxist/British dream is dying. Good. Sad for the average working class Brit who isn't being served by the British elite.
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