By the time my great-grandfather returned to Ireland after two decades in the U.S., he\u2019d earned enough to buy a small business. My grandmother and her siblings were sent to private school. If America was ever a story of upward mobility, then he had made it part of ours.<\/p>\n
Stories like his still abound with the legend of the American Dream. But the arc of that story has grown harder to follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For young Americans today, the story sounds different: job prospects have \u201cdeteriorated noticeably\u201d<\/a> as AI replaces entry-level roles<\/a>. Many of my Gen Z peers are still unemployed\u2014or stuck in jobs that require none of the degrees they went into debt for.\u00a0<\/p>\n The American Dream\u2014the promise of happiness and financial success through hard work\u2014has, of course, never truly been attainable to all. When James Trunslow Adams coined the term in 1931, he described<\/a> it as a vision open to “every citizen\u2026regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position,\u201d But at any given moment in American history, this imaginary has remained just that. Still, belief in it persisted. As recently as 2024, a majority<\/a> of Americans said they believe the dream was still attainable. Believe you’ll be the exception, and the system doesn’t need to change.<\/p>\n American optimism<\/a> has long separated the U.S. from its Western counterparts. But a look behind the data suggests that belief may finally be eroding. In 2017<\/a>, 17% said that the American Dream was out of reach. By 2024<\/a>, the number had crept to 30%. \u201cThe reason the bottom 99% put up with it is that America\u2019s superpowers are optimism,\u201d said business professor Scott Galloway on Trevor Noah\u2019s podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n But what happens when that optimism fades?<\/p>\n Declining dreams<\/p>\n Cultural theorist Lauren Berlant began to answer this in 2011. In their book Cruel Optimism<\/a>, Berlant described how the very thing you desire can become an obstacle to your flourishing. It offers us a useful lens to understand why people cling to the American Dream, even when the traditional goalposts\u2014a stable job, homeownership, family and retirement\u2014have become harder to reach. The harder we push towards these goalposts in the hope of reaching them, the more the pursuit settles into us as anxiety and eventually, a sense of failure. Our very optimism\u2014our very Dream\u2014has permitted half a century of declining<\/a> upward mobility and gaping inequality.<\/p>\n No generation feels this more than Gen Z. More than half say they\u2019re worried<\/a> about their financial future, up from 30% in 2019. Everyone has their take on why this is: some dismiss Gen Z\u2019s concerns as salary dysmorphia<\/a>, others as laziness<\/a> or a lack of resilience<\/a>. But what Gen Z might actually be signaling to us is the unravelling of the social contract of the American Dream. <\/p>\n The belief that life would be \u201cbetter, richer and happier\u201d<\/a> by passing through the usual milestones has eroded. Where previous generations could secure a house, a family, and financial stability, Gen Z has had to prioritize what feels feasible. \u201cThere is a general feeling of angst,\u201d Taran Talbott, 18, tells me. \u201cThe typical outlook\u2026is that either you\u2019re lucky and have generational wealth or your material conditions are only as good as the salary you might one day earn.\u201d As a generation, Gen Z is hyper-aware of their economic conditions. And across the political divide<\/a>, there\u2019s a sense that the broader system is broken, and no longer serves people like them.<\/p>\n Gen Z\u2019s new goalposts<\/p>\n America has never reckoned with a generation unwilling to blame themselves for the failure of its Dream. Gen Z might be the first to reject these goalposts, but they likely won\u2019t be the last. This fracture should be alarming for a nation whose identity rests on the idea that even if you don\u2019t make it, your children might\u2014so long as you work hard enough. But even that expectation is shifting, as the financial anxiety of a less attainable American Dream is causing many to delay<\/a> or forego having children. This isn\u2019t to say that this refusal is a good thing; many haven\u2019t rejected these aspects of the American Dream by choice. <\/p>\n This collective disillusionment carries profound implications for how America sees itself. Without a shared story about the future, we risk further fraying our social fabric. As the American Dream becomes less attainable, we find ourselves in a \u201csocially-imposed loneliness\u201d<\/a>, a product of a zero-sum logic<\/a> where Americans feel they can only look out for themselves. A range of experts<\/a>, including the former Surgeon General<\/a>, warn that a loneliness epidemic<\/a> is devastating communities across the country. <\/p>\n Gen Z came of age in this environment, a generation with limited trust in institutions<\/a>\u2014and in each other<\/a>. We need a new story about our future\u2014one that targets the real reasons the American Dream is no longer attainable, without leaning on nostalgia.<\/p>\n Young people today force us to rethink what the American Dream is about, and who it serves. For so long, our dreams\u2014and the time spent reaching them\u2014have caught us in cycles of false promise. But Gen Z is refusing to be a part of that transaction. And what becomes of a nation when its defining myth no longer holds?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By the time my great-grandfather returned to Ireland after two decades in the U.S., he\u2019d earned enough to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-10397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}