“The American Dream is back.” President Trump made that claim in a speech in January.
They are ringing words, but what do they mean? Language is important, but it can be slippery. Consider that the phrase, the American Dream, has changed radically through the years.
Mr. Trump and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, have suggested it involves owning a beautiful home and a roaring business, but it wasn’t always so.
Let’s start today with a pop quiz. Here we go: in 1970, what percentage of 30-year-olds in America earned more money than their parents had earned at that age? Adjusted for inflation, of course. That’s question No. 1. And question No. 2: what percentage of American 30-year-olds today earn more than their parents earned at age 30? I’ll give you a second to think it over.
All right, you ready for the answer?
In 1864, Abraham Lincoln gave a short speech to a sanitary fair in Baltimore. While the address itself is of little note, it does contain a passage that sheds much light on the character of political debates in America. “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty,” said Lincoln, “and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
Americans are increasingly aware that the ideal of equal opportunity is a false promise, but neither party really seems to get it.
Republicans barely admit the problem exists, or if they do, they think tax cuts are the answer. All facts point in the opposite direction. Despite various tax cuts over the past 30 years, not only have income and wealth inequality dramatically increased, but the ability of individuals to rise out of their own class has declined.
The American commitment to equality of opportunity, economic liberty, and upward mobility is not tried in days of prosperity. It is tested when times are tough—when fear and envy are used to divide Americans and further the interests of politicians and their cronies. In this major address at The Heritage Foundation, Congressman Paul Ryan dissects the real class warfare—a class of governing elites, exploiting the politics of division to pick winners and losers in our economy and determine our destinies for us—and outlines a principled, pro-growth alternative to this path of debt, doubt and decline.
Recent battles in Washington over how to fix America’s fiscal failures strengthened the widespread impression that economic issues sharply divide average citizens. Indeed, many commentators split Americans into two opposing groups: uncompromising …