Changing American Dream
What do Americans want?
A CBS/New York Times poll last month found some interesting results regarding the status of the American Dream. In today’s Times Katharine Seelye reports on the decreasing faith in American economic mobility.
The poll also found Americans had begun defining the “American Dream” less as access to material wealth and more as an abstract value (or set of values):
Four years ago, 19 percent of those surveyed supplied answers that related to financial security and a steady job, and 20 percent gave answers that related to freedom and opportunity.
Now, fewer people are pegging their dream to material success and more are pegging it to abstract values. Those citing financial security dropped to 11 percent, and those citing freedom and opportunity expanded to 27 percent.
Here’s some respondents’ answers that were put in the category of freedom and opportunity:
“Freedom to live our own life.”
“Created equal.”
“Someone could start from nothing.”
“That everybody has a fair chance to succeed.”
“To become whatever I want to be.”
“To be healthy and have nice family and friends.”
“More like Huck Finn; escape to the unknown; follow your dreams.”
Those who responded in material terms were hardly lavish. Here’s a sampling:
“Basically, have a roof over your head and put food on the table.”
“Working at a secure job, being able to have a home and live as happily as you can not spending too much money.”
“Just financial stability.”
“Owning own home, having civil liberties.”
This is an interesting shift. Although, as the Times points out, the term “American Dream,” likely dates to 1931, when it referred both to material circumstances as well as fulfilling one’s potential:
In his book, “The Epic of America,” the historian James Truslow Adams wrote, “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”
It’s hard to know what the original “American Dream” (i.e. that intended by the Founders), but it was probably closer to the abstract side than the material side. The Founders laid out a constitutional order that prized individual freedom and equality. The governmental programs designed to redistribute wealth and aid asset building weren’t really implemented until much, much later.
–Sam
Related posts:
- The American Dream is descriptive
- The American Dream and self-resect
- How the West was lost
- Michael Gerson: Closet German Idealist?
- A changing political philosophy?
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