{"id":1486805,"date":"2024-08-29T20:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T00:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1486805"},"modified":"2024-08-29T20:25:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T00:25:00","slug":"two-thirds-of-americans-now-believe-that-the-american-dream-is-unattainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/two-thirds-of-americans-now-believe-that-the-american-dream-is-unattainable\/1486805\/","title":{"rendered":"Two-Thirds Of Americans Now Believe That The American Dream Is Unattainable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two-Thirds Of Americans Now Believe That The American Dream Is Unattainable<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

When we were young, most of us believed that we would achieve \u201cthe American Dream\u201d someday.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Today, two-thirds of us believe that the American Dream is unattainable.\u00a0<\/strong> That is a searing indictment of a system that is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes.\u00a0 As a child, it seemed like just about everyone was part of the middle class.\u00a0 In those days, people just took for granted that you could have a nice home, a beautiful family, a couple of vehicles and a comfortable retirement.\u00a0 But now that kind of middle class lifestyle is out of reach for most of the country.\u00a0 In fact, a brand new Wall Street Journal\/NORC poll discovered that only about one-third of the population thinks that the American Dream\u00a0\u201cis still alive\u201d<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

Only about a third of U.S. adults believe the American dream is still alive, a Wall Street Journal\/NORC poll published Wednesday found.<\/p>\n

A survey of 2,501 people conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute twelve years ago found more than half of respondents believed the American dream \u201cstill holds true,\u201d but now only a third feel that way, according to a recent WSJ\/NORC poll of 1,502 adults. The study also found an increasingly large gap between people\u2019s economic goals and what they think is actually attainable \u2014 a trend that was consistent across gender and party lines, but was especially common amongst younger generations.<\/p>\n

Those numbers are yet more evidence that the middle class is dying.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, we had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the entire history of the planet.<\/p>\n

But now most of the country is deeply struggling.<\/p>\n

So please don\u2019t try to convince me that the U.S. economy is in good shape.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our standard of living has been steadily going downhill for a long time, and things\u00a0have been getting worse<\/a>\u00a0for almost everyone.<\/p>\n

The same Wall Street Journal\/NORC poll also found that only 10 percent of Americans believe that\u00a0becoming a homeowner is \u201ceasy or somewhat easy\u201d<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

The decline in faith in the American Dream coincides with a decline in the share of Americans who believe homeownership and financial security are attainable, the poll shows. Only 10% of respondents to the WSJ poll believed becoming a homeowner is \u201ceasy or somewhat easy,\u201d despite 89% of respondents viewing homeownership as \u201cessential or important to their vision of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same was true of financial security, with only 9% of respondents claiming achieving financial security is \u201ceasy or somewhat easy,\u201d despite 96% believing financial security is \u201cessential or important,\u201d according to the WSJ.<\/p>\n

These days, you can\u2019t get about 90 percent of Americans to agree on just about anything.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But when it comes to this, there is an overwhelming consensus.<\/p>\n

Everyone can see that housing has become incredibly unaffordable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In fact, we just learned that home prices just set\u00a0another brand new all-time record high<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

Even as mortgage interest rates were rising, home prices reached the highest level ever on the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index.<\/p>\n

On a three-month running average ended in June, prices nationally were 5.4% higher than they were in June 2023, according to data released Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Overall, U.S. home prices are\u00a0up\u00a0more than 1,000 percent<\/a>\u00a0since 1974.<\/p>\n

Those that bought homes in the 1970s are in great shape today.<\/p>\n

But I feel so sorry for those that are currently trying to buy homes.<\/p>\n

A big part of the problem is that much of our housing inventory has become financialized.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Millions of homes are being purchased as investments, and this even includes\u00a0large numbers of low-priced homes<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

Real estate investors bought 26.1% of low-priced U.S. homes that sold in the fourth quarter. That\u2019s the highest share on record and is up from 24% a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Today, we have an absolutely massive housing crisis in this country.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is one of the reasons why millions of people\u00a0are now living in their vehicles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our middle class is being systematically eradicated and we are just standing aside and letting it happen.<\/p>\n

Today, vast numbers of Americans are living as paupers in the nation that their forefathers conquered.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout our history, most young people could safely assume that they would do better than their parents did.<\/p>\n

But that started to change several decades ago.\u00a0 According to a couple of very well known economists,\u00a0\u201conly around half of children in 1980 ended up wealthier than their parents\u201d<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

For many young people, the issue stems from feeling that they are worse off and face a tougher economic future than their parents dealt with at their age.<\/p>\n

According to MIT economics professor Nathaniel Hendren and Harvard University economist Raj Chetty, only around half of children in 1980 ended up wealthier than their parents.<\/p>\n

In 1940, this figure stood at around 90 percent \u2013 with the gradual decline only increasing since the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, those that are being born now are facing a future that is very dismal.<\/p>\n

But this is what we voted for as a society.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We just kept sending the big spenders back to Washington.\u00a0 As a result, it now takes\u00a0a boatload of money<\/a>\u00a0for the average family to live the American Dream\u2026<\/p>\n

The GoBankingRates analysis determined the American Dream now costs more than $150,000 a year for a family of four, but that figure differs widely depending on where you live.<\/p>\n

If you live in Hawaii, it takes an annual income of\u00a0$260,734<\/a>\u00a0for a family of four to live the American Dream.<\/p>\n

If you live in Mississippi, it takes an annual income of\u00a0$109,516<\/a>\u00a0for a family of four to live the American Dream.<\/p>\n

Of course making over $100,000 a year is out of reach for most of the country at this point.<\/p>\n

Now we have reached a stage where many people have simply given up, and the economic outlook for the future\u00a0is not good at all.<\/a><\/p>\n

Previous generations handed us the keys to the greatest economic machine that the world had ever seen, but we allowed our leaders to wreck it.<\/p>\n

We have debased our currency<\/strong>, we are drowning in debt<\/strong>, and a big chunk of the population is no longer capable of supporting themselves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We thought that we could defy the laws of economics, but we were wrong.<\/p>\n

So now we are headed into a period of severe economic pain, and that will certainly not be pleasant.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Michael\u2019s new\u00a0book\u00a0entitled\u00a0\u201cChaos\u201d<\/a>\u00a0is available\u00a0in paperback<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0for the Kindle<\/a>\u00a0on Amazon.com,\u00a0and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at\u00a0michaeltsnyder.substack.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nThu, 08\/29\/2024 – 16:25<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/personal-finance\/two-thirds-americans-now-believe-american-dream-unattainable<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two-Thirds Of Americans Now Believe That The American Dream Is Unattainable Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, When we were young, most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1486806,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1486806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}