Why You’re Wrong About “The American Dream” (And Why It Will Die Without Progressive Change)
In my last piece, I talked about why, even when the economy is “good”, most people won’t benefit from it the way politicians want us to think we will. Wealth inequality has skyrocketed for the past four decades, as the bottom 50% of American earners hold just 3% of the country’s wealth. Healthcare, housing, and education have all exploded in cost.
It should surprise no one that people are fed up with this. A cornerstone of American culture (and one that politicians frequently reference in speeches) is the idea of “the American dream.” Most people understand this to mean that if they work hard enough, their dreams will come true. That’s a key part of the concept, but there’s more to it than that.
In today’s piece, we’re going to talk about what the “American Dream” actually is and broach the conversation of what it would take to make this achievable for everyday people.
WHAT THE AMERICAN DREAM IS
The concept of “the American Dream” was coined by historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, Epic of America. He described it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for ***everyone***, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” He elaborated on this further by insisting that “it is not a dream of motorcars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which ***each man and woman*** shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
I’ve talked before on here about how powerful interests co-opt history to serve their regressive agendas — while most Americans seem to think that the American Dream requires you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and climb the economic ladder, that is not what Adams said. You might have noticed that Adams wrote Epic of America during the Great Depression, which came after a decade of tax cuts, mass consumption, and rampant wealth inequality. Adams saw a better way for everyone; while he acknowledged that earning money was necessary, there was a lot more to his vision.
In a 1929 essay about American education, Adams argued that education served multiple purposes. As he put it: “There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.” While Adams acknowledged that “for most of us it is essential that we should make a living”, he also warned that “in so doing we are learning a trade or a profession, but are not getting a liberal education as human beings.”
Like a graduation speaker at any liberal arts college, Adams drones on about how important it is to think critically about society, how we should contribute to culture and produce quality art, how education should be more than about doing a job, and all that stuff that then and now is dismissed as hippie mumbo-jumbo. Unfortunately, none of what he said makes corporations more profitable, so news outlets and politicians have tricked people instead into thinking that earning wages and serving capitalism is what it means to be American.
Other thinkers around this time shared Adams’s ideas of what it meant for people to realize their potential. Anyone who took a psychology class in school might have learned about another theory echoing this sentiment:
Pictured above is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — in 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow laid out different needs that human beings have, categorized them, and developed a framework to show how they fit together. Self-actualization, which is the top level on Maslow’s pyramid, sounds an awful lot like what Adams wanted a “second education” to provide Americans with.
This concept is represented by a pyramid because each level of needs can only be met if the levels of need below it are already being met. It’s a lot more difficult to have healthy self-esteem unless you have a sense of love from and community with others, which is hard to ensure until you are physically safe, which can’t happen until you have food, water, and shelter.
If anything, this makes Adams’ American Dream more realistic —his vision of collective self-actualization doesn’t require everyone to be rich, but it does require everyone’s basic needs to be met. Still, financial security for all feels far away today and felt far away when Adams wrote Epic of America. So, how do we get there?
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT
The good news is that there are already solutions already being talked about that would make massive impacts on people’s lives — let’s talk about three of them!
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME
The idea is simple in concept — every American gets a $1000 check from the government, automatically, every month. You need money to live, and each of us is guaranteed a little.
You might remember this policy as the centerpiece of entrepreneur Andrew Yang’s campaign for president in 2020, or because both the Trump and Biden administrations sent out stimulus checks to relieve the burdens of the pandemic. Previous localized experiments with UBI have shown an increase in part-time employment (among people who otherwise may not work) and improved physical and mental health outcomes among poor Americans.
Of course, $1000 per month isn’t enough for anyone in America to live on — however, it could offer a major boost over your existing situation. This extra financial support could be what a handful of people (maybe even you) need to go back to school, start their own business, or finally leave a toxic work environment. That sure sounds like the American Dream to me!
MEDICARE FOR ALL
Despite having the world’s most expensive healthcare system, the United States ranks poorly among other developed nations regarding quality, efficiency, ease of access, and equity in the healthcare Americans receive. For those of us not on Medicare or Medicaid, healthcare is either contingent upon full-time employment or is monstrously expensive.
The idea is simple yet complicated: we would create a single-payer, government-run healthcare program under which all Americans are covered and which replaces almost all private health insurance. Essentially, it would expand Medicare (which already covers Americans over 65 and people with disabilities) to everyone. While there have been different versions of this idea, the most well-known proposal is Bernie Sanders’s bill, which would result in all Americans being covered with no premiums or deductibles.
Under this system, having a medical emergency or going to an out-of-network hospital wouldn’t cripple you financially the way it probably would for most of us now. Insurance companies wouldn’t get to dictate what care you can receive and when/where. Hell, the entire plot of Breaking Bad wouldn’t happen.
TUITION-FREE PUBLIC COLLEGES
Rather than just making a living, Adams wanted us to be educated as citizens and critical thinkers. While college is not the only path to success or fulfillment, we have to make access to higher education not conditional on wealth. With inflation-adjusted college tuition tripling since 1960 and nearly doubling since 2000, we are getting further and further away from that.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and fellow progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) have proposed legislation that would make public colleges and universities tuition-free. After all, 41 states now spend less on higher education than they did in the 2000s, and students have to pick up that slack. President Joe Biden, for his part, has proposed tuition-free community colleges and tried to incorporate this into past legislation — we’ll see if he gets the opportunity to try again. This would put us much more in line with the rest of the developed world, seeing as university tuition is far lower at European universities.
While the Biden administration has made some efforts to cancel some student debt (and don’t get me wrong, doing that is better than doing nothing), that won’t prevent future students from taking on even more debt or college tuition rising even further and becoming more inaccessible for students. Sometimes, the best way to address a problem (in this case, inaccessible higher education) is the biggest and most obvious one.
There are many other great ideas and policy proposals coming from progressive leaders and organizations around the country that would make it far easier to meet your needs — if you have another one you think is worth talking about, leave a comment suggesting it below! That said…
I KNOW WHAT SOME OF YOU ARE THINKING
There are a few common objections to proposals like the ones I just brought up — while some of these are made in bad faith to maintain (or worsen) the status quo, there are others that well-intentioned people might have and that are worth addressing.
COST
So, yes, all of these ideas would cost money on the government’s part. This may even mean that some of us will *gasp* pay more in taxes, especially corporations and the wealthy. Nobody likes paying taxes, and given the trillions of dollars our federal government already spends, adding to that budget sounds scary. However, I want to remind you all of these mean *way less spending* that comes out of everyday people’s pockets.
Think about it — would you honestly prefer that your money line the pockets of billionaires rather than cover the basic needs of your neighbors and loved ones? Would you rather that you (or your children) be buried in student loan debt? Would you rather lose your entire income if tomorrow you were to join the millions of Americans who have been laid off in the past year?
I can’t say for sure how the numbers would exactly turn out for any of these proposals — the estimated costs of these proposals vary widely, and any of these would take lots of deliberation, re-budgeting, cuts in other areas (*cough cough* military) and planning and time to implement.
THESE WILL NEVER HAPPEN
To that, I can only say: try us! While universal healthcare hasn’t happened yet, the idea has been around for almost a century and Medicare has only been around for about 60 years. America has changed a lot over time, and it will change again — what we get to decide is in what direction it does.
Yes, America is hella divided and both parties are under massive influence from corporate donors. That said, we survived a Civil War once. We went to the moon, created widely popular social programs such as Medicare and Social Security, and revamped our presidential primary system once. We can do all of those things and more again — and at this rate, we may not have a choice.
WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW?
Fair question — if I know none of these ideas even have a chance of becoming reality federally until at least 2029 (under a president who is neither Biden nor Trump), why am I still promoting them?
The short answer is because we need them more than ever. In my piece introducing this blog, I argued that what you’re voting for matters far more than who you’re voting for. As I talked about last week, there are valid reasons for people to feel like the American Dream has gotten further away from them over the last four years, even with a Democrat in office.
If Democrats want a serious chance to win beyond 2024, they need to offer voters something beyond “Trump bad”, and they might not ever do that unless voters force them to. Political parties and their platforms change over time, even from election cycle to election cycle — in theory, they should change to fit with your values, not the other way around.
IN CONCLUSION/TL;DR
So, that whole American dream idea? Turns out, it has much less to do with climbing the social ladder and getting rich, and everything to do with people having their basic needs met, pursuing their dreams, and living meaningful lives.
James Truslow Adam’s vision is still possible for the world’s richest country to make happen. We can still save the American dream for a lot of people, but not without massive changes to our policies and installing a social safety net that hasn’t been there for decades. Pulling off any proposals we’ve talked about would be a daunting task that would take years (if not decades) of political will to be built, so it’s understandable to be cynical. If we don’t demand progressive policy, it has a 0% chance of happening; but if we do, it has a non-zero chance. Transformational change is necessary — we’re already living in the alternative, and most of us don’t like it.
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