Who killed the American Dream?
David Leonhardt, a senior writer at The New York Times, picks up his magnifying glass and investigates in Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream. Note the past tense in the title.
In order to find the culprit, we must first learn about the deceased. What was the American Dream? As Leonhardt notes, while the range of definitions is vast, at its root, the American dream is about progress. In particular, he zeroes in on a “core part” of the dream, that children will lead better lives than their parents did. Leonhardt makes the definition sharper by beginning with the Origin Story. Pause for a second and ask yourself, “In what decade was the American dream born? What are the defining features of its life?”
Chances are your answer to those questions are not the ones in this book.
Read the rest at the American Institute for Economic Research
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