In a Times Sunday Review article, David Leonhardt gave us a synopsis of new research into the reality and myths of the American Dream. It should be noted that the whole idea of the American Dream -- personal and intergenerational social and economic mobility -- is fraught with language that Andrew Carnegie would find comforting. As Leonhard tells us, The phrase “American dream” was invented during the Great Depression." At the time, of course, it would have seemed aspirational, not descriptive, and the "popular 1931 book by the historian James Truslow Adams, who defined it as 'that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.'" As anyone who has read Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939), or at least seen the John Ford film version (1940), would have some sense that such a land where life would be "better and richer and fuller" would have seemed a remote possibility, not a present reality. Today, however, we have somewhat lost sight of a fundamental human truth. Rarely have conditions been such that a "better and richer and fuller" life were possible for some, much less everybody. More commonly, conditions have been such that a select few have lived "better and richer and fuller" lives, while the vast majority have toiled without much hope of something better. In class ridden societies, one doesn't have to be a fan of Downton Abbey, or before that Upstairs Downstairs, that it was considered a virtue to "accept one's station," and to demonstrate honor through forbearance. If one wanted a better or fuller life, it certainly wouldn't come through the acquisition of a "richer" life. Today, however, we have come to see the American Dream, more as an entitlement, more a mark of American exceptionalism that every child born with a modicum of intelligence, who works hard, will lead a better and fuller life, or at least a richer life than their parents.
As Leonhardt points out, "In the decades that followed" the great depression, "the dream became a reality." As Thomas Piketty and others have suggested, the "widely shared economic growth" was an historical fluke. As the Economist summarizes, "only the chaos of the first and second world wars and the Depression disrupted this pattern. High taxes, inflation, bankruptcies and the growth of sprawling welfare states caused wealth to shrink dramatically, and ushered in a period in which both income and wealth were distributed in relatively egalitarian fashion." I am not sure, in other words, that we would want to recreate the sorts of devastating chaos out of which emerged conditions where "nearly all children grew up to achieve the most basic definition of a better life — earning more money and enjoying higher living standards than their parents had." As Piketty warns, however, "the shocks of the early 20th century have faded and wealth is now reasserting itself, and on many measures, "the importance of wealth in modern economies is approaching levels last seen before the first world war." That in itself should be sufficient warning, but it falls on mostly deaf ears, in part because a whole generation grew up in a world where everyone actually did earn more money and enjoy a higher living standard than their parents. If one was born in 1940, the odds were stacked in your favor. As the research of Raj Chetty, David Grusky, and others have revealed, "about 92 percent of 1940 babies had higher pretax inflation-adjusted household earnings at age 30 than their parents had at the same age." Things were good for the baby boomers, and "achieving the American dream was a virtual guarantee for this generation, regardless of whether people went to college, got divorced or suffered a layoff. " and they "spent their prime working years in an economy with two wonderful features. It was growing rapidly, and the bounty from its growth flowed to the rich, the middle class and the poor alike." It was a halcyon time when the rising tide did lift all boats, in part because the post war conditions created such unprecedented demand, in part because the "sprawling welfare states" had created tax structures that insured some measure of redistribution from those upstairs to those downstairs. Since then, however, wealth has reasserted itself, the historical anomaly has corrected itself, and money is again flowing as it always has from those downstairs to those upstairs.
Halcyon days, however, have a way of creating mythologies, and America's emergence on the world stage as a pre-eminent power after the second world war did a great deal to reinforce and aggrandize the mythology that we were indeed an exception, a land of opportunity, the big rock candy mountain where, in the Burl Ives 1949 children's version, "you're going on a holiday/Your birthday comes around once a week and it's Christmas every day." For those born in 1950, it was still mostly true, with 79% of Americans living a better life than their parents, reinforcing the notion that with a little luck, but mostly pluck, one could get on. I was born in 53, and given a bookish introverted nature, I did get on, thanks in part to higher education, and perhaps in larger part an overwhelming desire to escape rural Nebraska where my parents had taken me in my middle teens. My brothers, not so lucky. Born in the latter part of the decade, younger and more acculturated to the ways of rural Nebraska, they are still there, mired in the slow decay that is so endemic to much of rural America. For those born in the 60s and 70s, the odds were still a bit better than a coin toss, at 61% and 60% respectively, but in the 80s, one's chances of living a better life than one's parents is a coin toss at 50%. Though the returns aren't in for the 90s and the new millennia, there little reason to believe that the trend has reversed itself, considerable reason to believe that it has continued. If halcyon days have a way of creating mythologies, present realities have a way of undercutting them. As Leonhardt notes, "psychology research has shown that people’s happiness is heavily influenced by their relative station in life. And it’s hard to imagine a more salient comparison than to a person’s own parents, particularly at this time of year, when families gather for rituals that have been repeated for decades." McClintock's original, more "adult" version of big rock candy, for many of the millenials, may seem closer to the truth:
It's not altogether clear, however, why they are being "buggered sore," and even less clear what can be done to prevent it without at the same time destroying what is essentially American.
At one point, writing to Washington in 1787, Hamilton felt that a "disinclination to taxes and of course to a strong government" would derail approval of the constitution. Money, as we all know, is freedom -- freedom from the worst sorts of want, but it also provides the freedom to do as one wants. Of course, it is all relative. Contrary to most talk about "freedom," as if it were some sort of abstract absolute available to all in equal measure, in reality, as most of us recognize, some are simply more free than others. If happiness is heavily influenced by their relative station in life, we should understand that our "happiness," as such, derives more from those below us on the ladder of life -- more from those with greater need and fewer options -- more from the invidious comparison to those immediately inferior to us. We at least are happier than them. If we are charitable, it is because charity makes us feel "good," not because we have actually done "good" -- though, of course, we will expend considerable effort convincing ourselves and others of our essential "goodness." We are charitable because it is a tangible demonstration of our superiority. Taxes make us feel "bad" -- even those that go for ostensibly "charitable" purposes, like feeding the poor, schooling other people's children, providing medical care to the indigent -- in part at least because they are compulsory. They rob of us of charity, and our ability to feel good about ourselves. Taxes are particularly bad, when they confiscate our money and our freedom to make the inferior equal, or (god forbid!) even superior to us -- give to them freely an entitlement which we can barely, if at all, afford.
At another point, writing as Publius in the first of the Federalist Paper, Hamilton felt that "an enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of power, and hostile to the principles of liberty." When one examines closely the "principles of liberty," it becomes clear enough that we should distrust "strong" government not (or not only) for its ability to impose laws that would suppress "liberties" like our first and second amendment rights -- talk and guns, after all, are cheap -- but rather, most of all we should distrust government for its confiscatory power, its taxing power, and its ability to abscond with one's money, because, as we all know all too well, money is the real freedom. "It will equally be forgotten," however, that "the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty." He is not (or not only) thinking of government's role in securing our right to speak our mind, or own an AK-47, but rather most of all government's role in securing one's property. It's OK for government to use its confiscatory power, if (and only if) it uses that power to maintain "law and order," to hire the police that protect our person from the murderers and rapists streaming across the border, but also and especially our property rights, our first and fundamental liberty.
"History teaches us," Hamilton writes, that "the specious mask of zeal for the rights of people" has been "a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism." How so? Apart from the one tenth of the one percent at the very pinnacle of the pyramid, who enjoy an almost unimaginable freedom and are exempt from the wants that plague the vast majority of humanity, the rest of us are concerned with those immediately above, but especially those immediately below us. If we have a "democratic" jealously of those immediately above us, and would, if we could, attain a status equal to them, it is not unreasonable to suspect that those below us harbor the same sentiments. The higher we go on the pyramid, the more people we have to suspect and "a tyranny of the majority" becomes a real object of concern. The people, the dispossessed rabble, might rise up en masse, democratically seize control of the government, and use its confiscatory power to abscond with my money, and as we all know, my money is my only "real" freedom. Consequently, "the nobel enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a narrow and illiberal distrust," as Hamilton put it, particularly a distrust of those immediately below, the poor who might use the power of government to dispossess me of my possessions, and this "narrow and illiberal distrust," working its way back down the pyramid, opens the door to a peculiar American despotism, a republican despotism. This despotism champions "freedom," and if the only freedom is money, then so be it. It champions too the idea of the American dream, the idea that a "better and fuller and richer" life is available to all willing to expend sufficient effort, take sufficient risks, make sufficient sacrifices. This seemed true enough during the halcyon days of the 50s, although less true successively in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and now into the new millennium the American dream it seems has been betrayed, but by whom? This despotism is perpetuated by the ones who, pay "obsequious court to the people," ballyhoo their entitlement to the American dream and promise to "make American great again," but does so by sowing "a narrow and illiberal distrust" of those at the base of the pyramid. This despotism is perpetrated by the ones who promise to save us from a distant government "hostile to the principles of liberty," a government that taxes away my only real freedom and (god forbid!) redistributes it to undeserving others, those huddled masses who struggle just beneath me, and often struggle beneath my contempt. This republican despotism assures us that the American dream has been betrayed by a democratic government that taxes YOU and doles out your hard won wealth in easy welfare to the undeserving poor, a democratic government abetting an invasion of wetbacks willing to steal your job, your income, your freedom.
This republican despotism has succeeded, not by leaps and bounds, but by taking two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, grinding away at the sprawling welfare that taxed the wealthy to support programmatic aid to the less fortunate and the equally sprawling regulatory state that curtailed the worst excesses of capitalism, and helped "usher in a period in which both income and wealth were distributed in a relatively egalitarian fashion." It will equally be forgotten that a vigorous democratic government secured the "widely shared economic growth," the halcyon days of the fifties that so embodied the American dream for everyone -- well, almost everyone. If Martin Luther King had a dream, it was at least in part a dream that black America could share equally in the American dream, the rising tide of wealth and freedom. The racial unrest, perhaps, was the tipping point. The disinclination to taxes and strong government is so embedded in the American psyche, along racial attitudes that cannot be wished or legislated away, that the "great society" and the civil rights legislation provided the tipping point for the first two steps forward with "law and order" Nixon, a man of narrow and illiberal distrust of almost everyone. If the emerging republican despotism had to take one step back with Carter, so be it. He was at least willing to deregulate the airline industry and, perhaps more important, the beer industry, which had the salutary effect, in my opinion at least, of fostering the micro-brew explosion. Still, though, his lucklessness and fecklessness on the international front, he paved the way for the next two steps forward with "government is the problem" Reagan, "whose "Reaganomics", advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, control of the money supply to curb inflation, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending." If Clinton represented another step back for the emerging GOP depotism, so be it. He was at least willing to sign NAFTA and scale back welfare. And so it goes, two steps forward, one step back.
Until we arrive at Trump. He is, of course, the embodiment of the republican despotism. Vote for the re-emergent American dream and a richer, freer life for all, and get (here's my prediction) the American nightmare -- not only an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, but the narrow and illiberal distrust that guarantees the calcification of that gap across social classes -- not only a diminishment of the sprawling welfare state as the wealthy are taxed ever less, but a weakened government that has abdicated its power. As a sort of maxim, a first principle, there will always be rules, and those empowered to set the rules, and if it's not government, then something will flow in and fill the vacuum, and increasingly the government has abdicated its power to the corporate behemoths who have no interest what-so-ever in distributing income and wealth in a "relatively egalitarian fashion." If money is freedom, they are certainly interested in freedom, their own freedom, and seem willing to take egregiously undemocratic steps to preserve it. The people's only hope is a democratic government, precisely the sort of government that Hamilton feared -- a democratic government that uses the cumulative power of the people to check corporate power, balance the books, and begin slow to recover the American dream.
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