“Is The American Dream Alive and Well?”
Last week, the Free Press posed this question to Tyler Cowen, Katherine Mangu-Ward, David Leonhardt, and Bhaskar Sunkara. Bari Weiss started by polling the audience. 71% for, 29% against. I watched in-person and voted for.
David opened the night, reading poll numbers that showed most Americans disagree with us. You can listen to the arguments yourself. The most interesting question was why that gap existed. Did that gap exist between them and us? Or between perceptions and reality?
No one really answered those questions. The prompt was up for interpretation, but there wasn’t really much debate about it. Everyone agreed to argue about whether economic reality, and maybe life expectancy, was getting better.
A few moments in the debate risked taking us somewhere new. Bhaskar mentioned the solidarity or power felt by workers in a union. But the other side never engaged in the question of dignity, of whether more union control made work better beyond wage increases. More broadly, the question of political dignity never moved beyond a lurking shadow.
In the second moment the debate almost became more than economic, Tyler pointed out that the life expectancy of a Swedish American is higher than a Swede in Sweden, and that of Japanese Americans more than Japanese born in Japan. He didn’t feel the need to go further down that list, nor did his opponents feel the need to ask him to.
Tyler and Katherine defended the empirics well, in my opinion. But is it really so satisfying to defend that castle without expressing a theory of vibes?
The debate ended 72% for, 28% against. I feel like the room’s numbers were asking to be pushed, but at this point I’m not sure by who.
The American Dream of a house in the suburbs and a full-time Mom who stayed at home with the kids is certainly dead for the average blue collar worker today. That was its classic formulation back in the 1950's and 60's. Since then it has come to be understood, especially in the mind of many immigrants, as the chance to get rich.