A recent Wall Street Journal piece documents nicely something I’ve been saying for some time now – many aspects of the traditional American dream, most notably home ownership, are increasingly out of the reach of the average American.
Americans overwhelmingly desire all the traditional trappings of the American dream—owning a home, having a family, and looking forward to a comfortable retirement. But very few believe they can easily achieve it.
A July Wall Street Journal/NORC poll of 1,502 U.S. adults shows a stark gap between people’s wishes and their expectations. The trend was consistent across gender and party lines, but held more true for younger generations, who have been priced out of homeownership and saddled with high interest rates and student debt.
While 89% of respondents said owning a home is either essential or important to their vision of the future, only 10% said homeownership is easy or somewhat easy to achieve. Financial security and a comfortable retirement were similarly labeled as essential or important by 96% and 95% of people, respectively, but rated as easy or somewhat easy to pull 
off by only 9% and 8%.
I can attest to this personally. Our two younger daughters and the one girl’s husband can only afford their rented townhome in the Denver area because all three of them are sharing expenses, a slightly non-traditional setup but one that allows them to cover the costs of living there. Fortunately, our youngest gets along with her brother-in-law very well, and the three seem content, for now. But it shouldn’t take that much to live an ordinary life on the outskirts of an American city.
Our two older daughters can only afford houses because they live in a small town in Iowa where real estate is much cheaper.
The kids have plenty of company.
Twelve years ago, when researchers at Public Religion Research Institute asked 2,501 people if the American dream “still holds true,” more than half said it did. When The Wall Street Journal asked the same question in July, that dropped to about a third of respondents.
By many measures, economists say, people are right to feel that their shot 
at success has diminished.
So, how do we get out of this mess? I will maintain, as I always have, that the answer is liberty. Set people free. Stop taking away from a third to a half of their income in taxes. Deregulation, which makes it easier to start and run a small business. It is enterprise, not government, that creates and builds wealth, and for several generations now, the American Imperial City has done everything it can to squash private enterprise.
Until we fix that – until we set the American people free – things will not improve. They will get worse.
