Is the 'American Dream' Still Possible? Less Than Half of U.S. Voters Say 'Yes'

The "American Dream." It's what being an American is all about. Get a good job, get married, have kids, and be able to buy a nice house in the suburbs. It's Norman Rockwell-esque. But for a growing number of Americans, that dream is becoming farther out of reach or non-existent altogether. For some, it might depend on what side of the political aisle you are on, remembering the prosperous years of the Trump economy and now comparing that to the struggling Biden economy. But a new poll is revealing that Americans are getting more cynical about the American Dream — or never really believed it at all.

% of americans who say the american dream (if you work hard you’ll get ahead) still holds true: 36%
-wsj/norc
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) November 27, 2023

A Wall Street Journal/NORC poll taken between October 19 and 24 surveyed 1,163 registered voters and garnered some interesting results. Of those polled, 36 percent said that the American Dream "still holds true." A larger number of respondents, 45 percent, said that it was "once true but not now." Just 18 percent said that "it never held true." The idea of America has always been to leave her for the next generation better than we found it, and the fact that the country has improved overall in a number of ways, economically, socially, and technologically, has been lost on roughly half of the voters surveyed, who said that America is worse off than 50 years ago, while 30 percent said it had improved.

Sadly, the left's game of "Who is more oppressed?" seems to resonate with a large portion of Americans. Half of those polled said they agreed with the statement that America's economic and political systems are “stacked against people like me," while 39 percent of respondents disagreed. Coming on the heels of a presidential election, it might be expected that such a poll might fall along party lines. However, both Democrats and Republicans stated that everyday life for them was "objectively worse."

One respondent who said he voted for Joe Biden said, “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that money was tight.” He also talked about the decline in the strength of the nation's labor unions. Another who said he voted for Donald Trump cited high inflation: “With inflation, you’re working hard just to make ends meet, and then any extra work that you put in is just trying to get so you’re not in the hole." As a retiree, he also spoke about how “If you showed up for work and you did your job well and you tried to help out, you were rewarded.”

Home ownership is a hallmark of the American Dream. For GEN Z the housing to income gap ratio closed for the first time 5-6 years ago. Now it is worse than ever. 90% of the housing areas are out of reach of the average income.

It's disheartening the amount of extreme left… pic.twitter.com/7pBDht5K3d
— jschner (@jschner2) November 26, 2023

Black and Hispanic Americans still believe that the American Dream is especially elusive to them. Even though unemployment rates for blacks and Hispanics hit record lows in April of this year at 4.7 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively, respondents in those groups say that achieving the American Dream is "stacked against" them economically and politically, 68 percent of black voters and around half of Hispanic and even white voters said the same. One 62-year-old African-American woman stated that she believed that things were "better" while she was growing up and that her children "have not been rewarded." She added, “I’m African-American, and the odds are always against black people." One of the most alarming results of the poll came to age groups. The belief that if you are willing to work hard, you can be successful and achieve the American Dream was held by 48 percent of those polled 65 and over. But not so much for younger voters; of those 50 and younger, just 28 percent believe that hard work pays off.

Will the 2024 Presidential election change the hearts and minds of Americans who have soured on the existence of the American Dream? Hard to say; it's still early. But if recent polls are any indication, many Americans may be starting to wake up to the fact that Republicans may be better for securing that dream than Joe Biden and the Democrats. The Real Clear Politics average has Trump up 47.4 percent to Biden's 44.8 percent. Among black voters, there has been a 15-point shift from Biden to Trump. Among Hispanics, an 11-point shift, and among voters under 50 years old, a 13-point shift.

The American Dream goes way beyond politics. But you can't help but think that other factors are included in the answers of the respondents to the poll. The American education system no longer teaches the virtues of the American Dream. There's also the possibility that, for whatever reason, some Americans are just not willing to work hard anymore to achieve it. However, if just 18 percent think it's dead, there may be hope for it yet.