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Remember when President Trump came down the golden escalator eight years ago? At the time, The Donald declared that “the American Dream is dead.”
President Trump followed up by declaring, “if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again.” And President Trump did just that, reinvigorating the moribund Obama economy and creating hope and optimism everywhere.
Now, not even three years after President Trump left office, the American Dream is dead yet again, and Biden killed it.
The American dream—the proposition that anyone who works hard can get ahead, regardless of their background—has slipped out of reach in the minds of many Americans.
Only 36% of voters in a new Wall Street Journal/NORC survey said the American dream still holds true, substantially fewer than the 53% who said so in 2012 and 48% in 2016 in similar surveys of adults by another pollster. When a Wall Street Journal poll last year asked whether people who work hard were likely to get ahead in this country, some 68% said yes—nearly twice the share as in the new poll.
The survey offers the latest evidence that Americans across the political spectrum are feeling economically fragile and uncertain that the ladder to higher living standards remains sturdy, even amid many signs of economic and social progress.
Half of voters in the new poll said that life in America is worse than it was 50 years ago, compared with 30% who said it had gotten better. Asked if they believed that the economic and political system are “stacked against people like me,” half agreed with the statement, while 39% disagreed.
And as a matter of fact, real wages have stagnated since 2015, according to the City Journal. All of this doom and gloom is making life milestones out of reach for the average American.
Moreover, for many Americans, the most salient life milestones are now out of reach. Profligate spending caused a dramatic rise in Treasury yields, sending mortgage interest rates near 8 percent. Car-loan interest rates are even higher. Consumers may be pleased that gas prices are down, but that’s little comfort if they must put off buying a home, having children, and other decisions commonly associated with pursuing the American dream. With unemployment still very low, most Americans who want a job have one, but they can’t afford the traditional lifecycle accomplishments of owning a house and a car.
Despite what the schoolmarms tell you, AI presents an opportunity for a better life, if only the globalists in charge would stop regulating America to death.
What could turn it all around? A massive jolt of productivity growth would solve many problems, boosting real wages and exerting downward pressure on prices. Unfortunately, given the raft of new regulations that further hamper the supply side, that looks unlikely. Artificial intelligence might deliver a productivity boom, but it’s hard to project yet what that would look like.
All of this discontent is surely why President Trump is bringing up the American Dream and promising to Make America Great Again, again.
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