How the American Dream Became Unaffordable

THERE’S NO DENYING that a big chunk of the economy feels pretty screwed up right now for millions of working-class and middle-class Americans.

- KATHERINE MANGU-WARD

There’s a widespread sense that obtaining housing, education, and health care was once fairly easy and cheap but has now become mind-bogglingly complex and expensive. Addressing anxiety around the increasing elusiveness of these building blocks of an archetypical American life is at the heart of virtually all rhetoric in the 2020 election cycle, with everyone from democratic socialist presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to nationalist conservative Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) hastening to offer funeral orations for the American Dream—while also promising to resurrect it.