Two sides of the American Dream
Another week, another article on American economic exceptionalism. In the Weekend Financial Times (subscription required) statistician John Burn-Murdoch highlights two sides to the American dream — extreme wealth coexisting with extreme poverty. Core beliefs are involved.
Data show that Americans see themselves as more upwardly mobile than people from other western countries (in reality the inverse is true), and are more likely to say hard work is essential for getting ahead in life. These are aspirational, meritocratic beliefs, but the flip side is that Americans are also the most likely to say low-income people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
This is coupled with a distrust of government, and in particular their belief that government is inefficient.
While Americans are the most likely to say income inequality in their country is unfair, fewer than half see this as the government’s responsibility to address. This compares with two-thirds or more in the UK, France and Germany. Where other societies see inequality as something that is done to people and must be tackled by helping them, Americans see it as something that people are responsible for themselves.
This generates tensions within US society — where a culture of aspiration and individualism that drives entrepreneurial wealth generation, also appears to engender apathy towards inequality and especially towards government intervention, leaving the poorest to fend for themselves.
Homeless encampments sprout on the streets of San Francisco, a city with more billionaires per capita than anywhere else. Health care costs more and delivers less than in many countries.
These tensions might well be resolved by political upheaval, as was the case in the France of the 1790s and Germany of the 1930s.
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