On Thursday, March 21, The Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs collaborated with The Steamboat Institute to host a debate between Michael Strain, the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, and David Leonhardt, a senior writer at The New York Times. The event was moderated by Kaylee McGhee, a senior fellow at Independent Women’s Forum, and focused on answering the question of whether or not the American dream is dying.
Haley Supergan, Vice President of Development at The Steamboat Institute, spoke about the goal of the company and why they sponsor events such as this debate.
“Our goal is to inspire Americans to defend liberty. People who come to our events are inspired to rely less on government and more on community and their social responsibility,” Supergan said.
The debate consisted of topics such as demographics, cultural aspects, the decline of patriotism, generational division, housing and relying on communities.
Leonhardt began the debate by defining the American dream using James Truslow Adams’s definition showing that there are two main points: the idea of progress and the idea of upward mobility. Adams, a writer and historian, described the American dream as a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” in his 1931 book “The Epic of America.”
The debate Leonhardt made is that the American dream is not dying but is in decline and it will go away if there is no change made to the problems of society today. One of the main points Leonhardt used throughout the debate to back his argument is the life expectancy in America. In the late 1900s, the life expectancy of an American was on the rise. Now, that has changed.
“For the last fifteen to twenty years the United States has had the lowest life expectancy of any rich country in the world,” Leonhardt said.
This is not the only measure that suggests America’s society is not thriving like it used to. Other measures presented by Leonhardt included the percentage of children who grow up with two parents, the number of Americans who report being in chronic pain and the number of Americans enrolled in a federal disability program.
While Leonhardt debated the reasons the American Dream is in decline, Strain brought a different opinion to the debate. Strain agreed with Leonhardt that people can and should do better. Still, he also believed that the American Dream has many meanings to different people at different times and places. It still has a consistent economic component to it that allows Americans to create goals for themselves and their families’ future.
Strain acknowledges that the labor market is changing, but that this creates new opportunities.
“Creative destruction creates as well as destroys,” Strain said.
To further his debate, Strain argued that in the past decades, quality of life has improved, air travel has never been safer, heart disease is on the downfall, access to education is easier and the current outlook for health innovation is something our country has never seen before, arguments that rebutted Leonhardt’s statement about life expectancy.
The debate ended with both David Leonhardt and Micheal Strain calling for action to public officials to create policies that would strengthen the American Dream. Telling the truth about how big the United States’ societal problems are is the first step.