If you work hard, can you build yourself a better life?
For a long time, millions of people believed the answer in the USA was yes. The โAmerican Dreamโ is the idea that anyone, no matter where they start in life, can achieve success through hard work and determination. You could own a home, have a stable job, raise a family, and earn more than your parents.
But today, many people in the US are questioning whether that dream still exists. Housing prices are rising. Student debt is growing. Many young people feel locked out of the middle class.
Some people argue the American Dream is dead. Hard work no longer guarantees success. Others disagree. They believe America still offers more opportunity than almost anywhere else in the world.
So, what exactly is the American Dream? Where did the idea come from? Why are people losing faith in it? And is it dead or changing?
Listen Here!
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTubeInteractive Transcript!
You Can Now Read and Listen at the Same Time With an Interactive Transcript!
Vocabulary
- meritocracy (n): a system in which success is determined by a person’s effort and ability
- The American Dream is closely tied to the idea of meritocracy: that if you work hard enough, you will be rewarded.
- social mobility (phr): the process of moving to a higher social or economic position than where you started in life
- Researchers argue that social mobility has slowed down, meaning it is harder today to rise above the situation you were born into.
- deindustrialisation (n): the decline of industrial and manufacturing activity in a country or region
- Deindustrialisation removed many stable blue-collar jobs that once existed in the US.
- precarious work (phr): employment that is unstable, insecure, or poorly paid.
- More and more Americans are working in precarious work like food delivery or temporary contracts.
- inequality (n): an unfair gap between different groups in terms of wealth, opportunity, or power
- Wealth has become increasingly concentrated among the richest people which has deepened inequality across the country.
- stagnant (adj): not growing or improving; remaining at the same level over time
- Wages have remained stagnant even as housing and healthcare costs have risen.
- nostalgia (n): a longing for the past, often based on an idealised or simplified memory
- Some people have nostalgia for the past, when it seemed easier to find a stable job or buy a house.
What is the American Dream?
The American Dream is the belief that anyone in the USA can improve their life through hard work, determination, and opportunity. It doesn’t matter where you were born, whether you are an immigrant or not, how poor or how rich your family is, if you work hard enough, you can build a successful and comfortable life.
For many people in the US, the American Dream is connected to things like building wealth, owning a home, raising your family, and having more opportunities or a better [00:05:00] life than your parents. It’s linked to the idea of upward social mobility. Moving to a higher social or economic position than where you started. You want to have a bigger house, a nicer car, a more luxurious life than your parents.
There are a few key parts to this idea.
One is equal opportunity. Everyone in the American Dream has the same chance to succeed.
Another is meritocracy. Meritocracy is the idea that effort and ability should be what decides whether you’re successful or not. It shouldn’t be your family or your social class.
Financial stability is another part of the American Dream, and so is the hope that your children will have a better future than you.
Importantly though, we have to mention that the American Dream wasn’t always [00:06:00] available to everyone. Many groups have faced major discrimination in the USA in the past, and today as well.
Black Americans experienced slavery, segregation, and racism. Native Americans were violently removed from their land. For a long time, women had limited legal and economic rights, and many immigrants and poorer communities struggled to get some of the opportunities that wealthier Americans could get.
But, this idea of the American Dream has been a major part of the culture in the USA for the past hundred years or so, maybe longer.
Origins and History of the American Dream
Actually, where did the idea come from?
Well, the US has been seen as a “land of opportunity” for quite a long time. It was seen as a place where you could go and succeed.
Compared to the class [00:07:00] systems of countries like Britain or France or the poverty of other parts of Europe, the United States seemed like a place where normal people could build a life. Normal people could own some land and improve their lives.
And this is why so many European immigrants moved to the US in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The actual phrase “American Dream” became popular in 1931, thanks to the historian James Truslow Adams in his book, The Epic of America. Adams said the American Dream was not simply about becoming rich. He described it as a society where every person could achieve their full potential and be recognized for their abilities.
Doesn’t matter where you’re born or how you were born, whether you were born rich or poor, if you had potential and ability, you could achieve [00:08:00] success.
Postwar Peak Era
I think the American Dream reached its peak after World War II. After World War II, the US economy grew rapidly. Manufacturing jobs were strong, wages were increasing, houses were quite affordable.
Millions of veterans of World War II, so people who had fought for the USA in the war, benefited from the GI Bill. The GI Bill allowed veterans, former soldiers, to attend university for free or buy homes with cheap mortgages.
This period created the image of the American Dream: a house in the suburbs, a car, a job that’s stable. Enough money for one income to support your entire family. You could have one parent working, one parent staying home looking after the children, and have three or four children, and be able to afford that.
Higher [00:09:00] education became a lot more accessible after World War II. And many people in the US believed that their children would have better lives in the future.
Is the Dream Dead?
But perhaps this is no longer true. I think a lot of people are now questioning whether their children’s lives will actually be better than their lives. And this is not just happening in the US, it’s an issue, a question, that’s happening in a lot of countries. I know in my home country, the UK, a lot of people are questioning, will our lives get better in the future?
But going back to the USA, it has been suggested that the American Dream is dying… maybe it’s already dead. Why?
One major reason is rising living costs. Across much of the United States, housing prices have increased faster than wages. For most of the 20th century, the average house price was around 3 or 4 times more than [00:10:00] the average annual wage. Now, it is over 7 times more in quite a lot of places in the US.
Rent has also become incredibly expensive in many cities in the US. I think the average across the country is $2,000 US dollars a month, which is expensive. Healthcare costs are famous, or infamous I should say. If you know anything about the US, you know that healthcare can be really expensive there.
Childcare is unaffordable for families, and student debt has grown massively. People are taking out big loans to attend university.
I was actually shocked by the childcare costs in the US when I was researching this episode. It’s incredible how expensive childcare is. From searching online, it seems like the average is around $1,500 per month per child.
So if you have two children younger [00:11:00] than school age but you need to work full time, you could be paying $3,000 a month just on childcare. Then add $2,000 a month on rent.
Many people in the US look at their grandparents, who were able to buy a house in their 20s with a normal job, and then compare that to people today who work full time but can’t really afford rent.
Another major issue that’s damaging the American Dream is inequality. More and more wealth has become concentrated, owned by, the richest people. But for many ordinary workers, wages are relatively stagnant, especially when you adjust it for inflation.
There’s also been a major change in the job market around the world, but especially in the USA. During the 20th century, millions of people in the US worked in [00:12:00] blue-collar jobs. They did things like factory working, or mining, manufacturing. These were manual industries that paid enough to support a middle-class lifestyle.
But deindustrialization and outsourcing has moved many of these jobs to other countries, or replaced these jobs with machines.
Many people now work in what economists call “precarious work“. Precarious work means jobs that are unstable or insecure. Think about things like the gig economy, delivering food for Uber Eats as an example, or short-term contracts and low-paid service jobs.
Many researchers also argue that social mobility has slowed down. In theory, the American Dream says anyone can rise through society [00:13:00] regardless of where you come from.
But today, it’s obvious that if your family’s wealthy, if you have a great education, if you grew up in a nice neighborhood, if you have some social connections, you can be successful.
Social media has also changed the debate around the American Dream. Every day, you go onto Facebook or Instagram or TikTok and you see influencers or celebrities or wealthy content creators showing their luxury lifestyles online. There’s now a different standard for success.
Many younger Americans, many younger people in the US, are less optimistic about the future. The American Dream seems to be dying in this case.
Still Opportunity in the US Today?
But, despite all of these problems, the American Dream is still alive according to lots of people. Or it’s not completely dead in any case.
Every year, millions of people still move to the United States [00:14:00] searching for better jobs and better opportunities. It might be more difficult now, due to Trump’s immigration policies, but people still move to the US every single day.
I know people who have moved to the US relatively recently, and they have much higher paying jobs in the US than they would have had in the UK or in Japan or wherever they were living before.
Many immigrants to the US feel like the country is full of opportunity, especially compared to home countries. Salaries are higher. There’s more convenience in life. You can buy more things. It’s more expensive, but salaries are higher.
So we have this kind of weird situation. Many US citizens feel a little bit pessimistic about their future, but a lot of immigrants to the US remain optimistic about their opportunities.
And it’s also true that the United States still produces remarkable [00:15:00] success stories. There are entrepreneurs every day in the USA building billion-dollar companies. There are immigrants who were born into poverty and are now in the middle class. There are athletes or artists or academics at universities or business owners who are achieving amazing success.
There are also systems in the US designed to create social mobility. Maybe not as good as other countries, but there are systems.
Maybe the best way is to join the military. If you join the military in the USA, you can use your military service as a pathway to university education and a stable job. I know people who were active US soldiers or Air Force personnel, and they were studying master’s degrees or undergraduate degrees completely for free in the UK and in [00:16:00] Japan because the military paid for it.
The US also has this startup culture and technology culture that has created a lot of opportunities, especially if you are in California or Austin, Texas, or New York.
Critics of the American Dream, people who say the American Dream is dead, will often compare today to the past: modern USA to what the USA looked like in the 1950s or ’60s. But this might not be the best way to decide whether the American Dream is still alive. Perhaps if you compare the USA to the rest of the world, you get a different situation.
Compared to countries where economic growth is weak, wages are low, there isn’t much freedom, the US still looks like a good option.
I guess the best way to say it is that the American Dream never really existed in the first place, at least this perfect American Dream.
We have something called nostalgia. I introduced it [00:17:00] in the vocabulary section. We look at the past and forget the negatives and only remember the positives. So nostalgia simplifies history.
The 1950s and ’60s in the US were not perfect. I’m sure the people in the past were comparing their lives to people before them and thinking about what was different and whether it was better or not.
Is the American Dream Changing?
I guess, rather than dying, the American Dream is changing.
As I mentioned before, that traditional American Dream had a clear image. It was a house in the suburbs, a stable job, getting married, having children, buying a car, enough money to live comfortably.
But younger people maybe define success a bit differently. Maybe you define success as flexibility. Having a remote job or being a freelancer can be a bit more attractive now than staying in the same company for 30 years.
Some [00:18:00] people like to think about their work-life balance rather than earning the highest possible salary.
Other people care more about their experiences. They care more about travel or hobbies than owning a large house.
Of course, you could argue that this change is happening because those traditional goals, like homeownership, are too difficult for normal people. People may be adapting their dreams to economic reality.
People just accept the fact that it’s impossible to buy a house, or your rent is going to be really high, so you put your ambitions towards other goals, like your hobbies or being flexible.
Other National Dreams
So I thought it would be interesting to end this episode by looking at some other dreams. The US is not the only place with a vision for success. It’s not the only place that immigrants want to move to.
I know a lot of you guys, a lot of [00:19:00] Thinking in English listeners, have ambitions to move to the UK or Australia or Canada or other places.
For example, if there was a Canadian vision for success, it would probably be less focused on becoming rich, like in the US, more focused on safety or healthcare, education. Canada has a reputation for strong public services, even though housing costs there are very expensive and are a problem as well.
Australia has a similar idea. There is an Australian dream. I think a lot of British people want to move to Australia more than wanting to move to the US. The Australian version of success is homeownership, middle-class comfort, a relaxed lifestyle, maybe living near the beach, nice weather. This is what people think about when moving to Australia.
China has its own success narrative as [00:20:00] well. Rapid economic growth over the past 30, 40, 50 years has changed China. Hundreds of millions of people used to be in poverty. Now they’re not. There are now huge opportunities for education and wealth in the country, and the Chinese government has even promoted the phrase the “Chinese Dream“, although it does tend to be a bit more on national success and collective progress
The UK, my country, is a little bit different, I think. Britain has traditionally had a stronger class system, so it’s been viewed as less socially mobile than the United States. In the US, everyone likes to define themselves as middle class, but in the UK ideas of self-improvement and financial success and moving up in life still exist.
And then there are the Scandinavian countries, like Sweden and Norway and Denmark. Their models of success [00:21:00] can look quite different from the version in the US. The focus is often on social security, work-life balance, having an overall good life.
So the American Dream has traditionally focused on individual achievement, the idea that a person can individually rise through society with hard work and talent. But in other places, success might be defined a bit more collectively, might be creating a society where most people can live comfortably and securely.
Final Thought
Is the American Dream dead? For some people, I think inequality, expensive housing, debt, other things like this have made that traditional American Dream feel gone, dead, [00:22:00] out of reach.
For other people, the US still offers a lot of opportunities, especially compared to much of the world. Some of my friends, who are highly skilled, have amazing jobs in the USA.
Maybe it is the American Dream itself that’s changing. In the past, people dreamed of houses, cars, and jobs. Today, people care more about freedom and flexibility and the quality of your life.
But what do you think? Do you think the American Dream still exists? Do you want to move to the US? Do you know anyone from your country who has moved to the US? Has your generation been given fewer opportunities than previous generations? And does your country have its own version of a national dream?
Extended Vocabulary List
Become a Patreon Subscriber to Access the Extended Vocabulary List!
Vocabulary Games and Activities!
Learn and practice vocabulary from this Thinking in English episode.
Practice using 5 different study games and activities – including writing, listening, and memorisation techniques!
Flashcards
Matching Game
Learning Game
Test Yourself
Listening and Spelling
Do you want to Think in English?
I’m so excited that you found my blog and podcast!! If you donโt want to miss an article or an episode, you can subscribe to my page!
