We All Have Dreams, but What’s the American Reality?
For most, seeking fortune in the big city ain’t it
Most public opinion polling is either of the horse-race variety (“who are you going to vote for?”) or else attempts to test perspectives on various policy issues and proposals. The first is fine, as far as it goes—campaigns need to know how they’re doing and the media loves the clicks. An entire industry is now dedicated to aggregating and averaging and modeling various polls into predictions obsessively tracked and discussed by pundits, all to no apparent effect. But hey, knock yourselves out.
The second would be useful in theory, but in practice tends to be of limited value. It’s fairly trivial to demonstrate that responses to questions about particular policies are dependent mainly on wording and framing. People typically respond with whatever they think is most consistent with their own partisan commitments—tell them that a proposal comes from their party or candidate and they will support it; tell them that it comes from the other team, and they’ll be opposed.
But what may seem fickle is really quite rational. The world’s top healthcare experts, after all, have diametrically opposed views of how to design good healthcare policy. Nobel prize winning economists can be found arguing opposite sides of almost any tax question. The foreign policy “blob” still disagrees on the wisdom of actions taken decades ago, whose outcomes are now part of the historical record, to say nothing of prospective actions for which it can only forecast consequences. Why should the typical voter believe that he or she can become independently expert on any, let alone all, of these issues? Far more sensible to identify the party or leaders whose values and priorities best align with your own and assume that the policies they pursue are the ones that best serve your own interests.
That’s why, at American Compass, we do extensive survey work focused not on horse races or popular policies, but instead on trying to understand what the values and priorities of the American people really are. Especially influential for me, in thinking about how researchers should approach this task, is a single question asked by Pew Research in the 2010s:
Which of the following is more important to you: (a) financial stability, or (b) moving up the income ladder?
It’s so simply worded, easy to understand, and something that every individual is fully qualified to answer. And the result is stunning: Americans prefer financial stability to moving up the income ladder by 12-to-1. I wrote about this particular result in more depth a couple of months ago (Why Our Political Elite Remind Me of Dumb and Dumber, September 9), but I return to it here because we’ve just completed our largest-ever survey of 6,000 Americans that tried in large part to expand on Pew’s finding and give it greater depth.
More than anything, the Pew result challenges the basic notion of “the American Dream” as premised on opportunity and upward mobility. Of course, it’s hard to find anyone opposed to those things. But life is full of tradeoffs, and so is public policy. An economy and culture oriented toward maximizing opportunity and mobility will be one that provides relatively less stability. If Americans overwhelmingly prioritize the latter, then either the American Dream is different than we thought, or else the American Dream is very nice but not what matters most.
So our survey began by presenting Americans with a series of dichotomies, asking them which they felt was prioritized in America today, and which they would want to see prioritized in their ideal America. (You can read the full report, The American Wake-Up Call.) So, for instance, do Americans prioritize:
An economy that emphasizes opportunity and dynamism, where new ideas are able to create new ways of doing things, delivering innovation, efficiency, and growth, or
An economy that emphasizes security and stability, supporting strong communities and ensuring that anyone can find a job that will support a family.
Describing America today, respondents were slightly more likely to perceive an emphasis on security and stability. But by roughly two-to-one, they said the latter should be a higher priority.
On two other dimensions, we found even sharper preferences. One was the choice between mobility and rootedness. Do Americans prioritize:
A culture that defines success as someone moving to a place of great opportunity and reaching the top of a prestigious field, or
A culture that defines success as someone building a decent life where he grew up, raising and supporting a family, and contributing to the community.
Here, respondents perceived the status quo as tilted toward “moving to a place of great opportunity.” But by more than three-to-one, “building a decent life where you grew up” would be the higher priority in an ideal America.
The other choice was between consumerism and productivity:
An economy that emphasizes expanding what people can buy, offering as many choices as possible at the lowest possible price, or
An economy that emphasizes making things and creating good jobs that ensure workers can support their families and the nation can provide for itself.
Here again, the perception of America today is a place where consumerism is prioritized, but the vast majority of Americans say their ideal America would be one where productivity is the priority.
All of this adds up to a striking result on the straightforward question: “Many people talk about ‘the American dream,’ but that term can mean many different things. Which of the following options is closer to your own definition of what ‘the American dream’ means to you?”
The American Dream is the opportunity to go as far as your talents and hard work take you; anyone, regardless of where they start, can rise to the top, or
The American Dream is the promise of dignity, equality, and a job that supports a family; everyone, regardless of where they start, can build a decent life.
On this question, respondents split almost exactly 50/50. We presented this question to 2,000 respondents. One skipped it. The rest split 1,001 to 998. And we can then look within each of those groups. Are the ones who chose “the opportunity to go as far as your talents and hard work take you” the same ones who chose “opportunity and dynamism” over “stability and security” as the priority in their ideal America? No.
In fact, priorities were quite similar regardless of definitions. Among people defining the American Dream in terms of opportunity, 57% wanted to prioritize security and stability; among people defining it in terms of the promise of dignity, 69% wanted to prioritize security and stability. Likewise, the priority for rootedness over mobility was 67% and 73% in the two groups, the priority for productivity over consumerism was 67% and 69%.
When we talk about the American Dream, we are often just talking past each other. We have no consensus (or even majority) understanding of what the Dream is, nor does an understanding of what it might mean necessarily correlate with what people in fact care about most. And of course, none of this correlates with how the pundit class and most politicians try to talk about what they think it is that Americans want. Anyone puzzled by how Americans can so insistently declare America on the wrong track and the economy poor, in the face of so much economic data demonstrating impressive growth and consumer welfare, should perhaps start here.
Oren
Here is the real dichotomy the new right has to face. While its proponents rightfully want to talk about economic issues that have been ignored by both parties, the political “leaders” of the right only appeal to voters on cultural, not economic grounds. This has been the case for years, and Don/JD are ratcheting it up. If you doubt it, look at what they say. Daily. On video. In the last days of the election.
Owen,
Once again I find that you have parsed some of the fundamental yet overly vague notions in our American society, into meaningful discussion. Thank you.
It reminds me of the recurring discussions I have experienced, as to the philosophical underpinnings of how the American economy should function. More often than not these evolve to the perceived sanctity of Adam Smith’s writings, offered as the “bible” so to speak, of our free enterprise system.
When questioned further, the speaker invariably acknowledges that they 1) do not understand the historical context of Smith’s writings, 2) have not even read Adam Smith, nor 3) can substantiate that we truly have an economy one could characterize as “enterprise that is free”.
The disconnects in our perceptions of American economic policy and governance, deserve to be revealed in a thoughtful way.
Again thanks for your conversation.
Mark