Is the American Dream dead? Is economic mobility a myth? The foundational promise of America is that anyone, if they work hard and play by the rules, can enjoy a secure, middle-class life. Christian Cooper and Khiara Bridges join us to discuss the prevailing narrative that we each control our own economic destiny.nChristian Cooper: Derivatives trader and author. Frequent commentator in the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Financial Times, and Bloomberg News. Director of Banking for a New Beginning, a public/private partnership between The Aspen Institute and the US Department of State. Member of the roundtables at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. nTwitter: @christiancoopernKhiara Bridges: Associate Dean for Equity, Justice, and Engagement at the Boston University School of Law, specializing in the intersectionality of race, reproductive justice, and law. Professor of Law and Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. Author of The Poverty of Privacy Rights and Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization. nFurther reading: nWhy Poverty Is Like a Disease: http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/why-poverty-is-like-a-diseasenExcavating Race-Based Disadvantage Among Class-Privileged People of Color: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3143892 nIncome Mobility Charts: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-your-own-mobility-animation.html nDivided We Fall: https://newrepublic.com/article/141644/divided-fall-trump-symptom-constitutional-crisis-inequality nRaj Chetty in 14 charts: Big findings on opportunity and mobility we should all know: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/01/11/raj-chetty-in-14-charts-big-findings-on-opportunity-and-mobility-we-should-know/
Back to Basics Series: Is the American Dream a Lie? (with Christian Cooper and Khiara Bridges)
The promise of the American Dream—work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll get ahead—is unraveling before our eyes.
In this Back-to-Basics episode, Christian H. Cooper and law professor Khiara Bridges join Nick and Goldy to posit whether economic mobility has ever truly existed, or if the system was rigged from the start. As wages stagnate, homeownership drifts out of reach, and inequality worsens, their conversation exposes how the American Dream has always been selectively granted and systematically denied.
Amid today’s debates over “competitiveness” and “opportunity,” this episode is a reminder: the American Dream didn’t disappear by accident—it’s been taken. Understanding how is the first step toward winning it back.