Kerby Anderson
Yesterday I discussed a Wall Street Journal article about a poll that revealed that most voters see the American dream slipping away. Only a third (36%) of voters said the American Dream holds true.
My focus yesterday was on the mindset that prevents young people from being successful. Why work hard if you are convinced the system is rigged against you? Perhaps the better way to look at it is to focus on the economic reality since the 1970s.
Go to a search engine and type the words “disconnect between productivity and work compensation.” You will see more than a dozen charts that show that productivity and wages were correlated and then sharply diverged in the 1970s. You can find other graphs that show that wages never increased when adjusted for inflation.
The reasons for this divergence are many: going off the gold standard in 1971, wage and price controls, dual incomes to qualify for home ownership, etc. You can debate some of the reasons, but you can’t argue with the result.
The builder generation (born before the end of WWII) generally was able to support a family with Dad working while Mom stayed home. They bought a house and were able to pay for their expenses. The boomer generation had a more difficult time making ends meet but still were able to own a home, sometimes by having a dual income.
Fast forward to families today where both parents are working and having a difficult time paying bills. As one couple in the Wall Street Journal article put it, “I’d be lying if I didn’t say that money is tight.” He then added “I feel we are a couple of paychecks away from being on the street.”
Over the last fifty years, the value of the dollar declined and the prices of everything went up. Wages didn’t keep up, and that’s another reason why people no longer believe in the American Dream.

Kerby Anderson
Just over a week ago, a poll published in the Wall Street Journal revealed that most voters see the American dream slipping away. Only a third (36%) of voters said the American Dream holds true compared to a majority (53%) of American voters who said that in 2012.
Derek Hunter argues in a recent column that “the American Dream is not dead; what is dead is most people’s idea of what that phrase means.” The poll defined the American Dream as “the proposition that anyone who works hard can get ahead, regardless of their background.”
He responds that the US is not like “Lake Wobegon, where everyone is above average.” Instead, the American Dream, he argues is a shot at success at any level. The US is still the land of opportunity, but that vision is marred by the left-wing educational complex.
“White kids are taught they’ve got all the advantages because of their skin color” and “young Black people are taught the country is racist.” But he argues that the true oppression in this country comes from so many people talking about oppression. You can’t tell young people to work hard and get ahead if they reject the American Dream and are convinced they can never succeed.
He says young people have “all been marinated in a culture of entitlement while denigrating the concept of earning.” Even “the concept of hard work is nearly dead, too – everyone wants to be Kim Kardashian now.” He is convinced that this pervasive sense of entitlement is true oppression.
There certainly are barriers to success and achievement, but you won’t ever be successful if you refuse to work hard and use your God-given talents, and if you start with the flawed assumption that the system is rigged against you.