John A. Burtka IV addresses the dilemmas that have been plaguing our society in his recent Newsweek article, “The American Dream is Dead.” From economic turmoil to social and spiritual shortcomings, young people are seeing the American Dream that they were once promised slip through their fingers. In the article below,  Burtka outlines the problems we are experiencing and highlights how our current election season could be the turning point for our culture. 

The following article by John A. Burtka IV was published by Newsweek on July 4, 2024.

The American Dream is dead. Nearly 80 percent of Americans under the age of 30 don't believe it holds true anymore, and a majority over the age of 65 agree. While it's tempting to chalk this discontent up to a lack of patriotism among young people, the reality is that Americans are feeling hopeless, cynical, and doomed for good reason: through no fault of their own, the doorway to opportunity has slammed shut in their faces.

With few exceptions, your birthdate now determines whether you will be part of a permanent class of debt-dependent renters who spend their lives scrambling to keep up or financially independent owners who have the leisure to cultivate passions and become influential members of local society.

Take the most profound example: the cost of living. Given rising inflation and high interest rates, housing costs and average monthly mortgage payments are about 100 percent more than they were four years ago. Twice as much—in just four years! That rate of change has effectively shuttered the market against new buyers. According to Zillow, "the roughly $106,500 needed to comfortably afford the mortgage payment on a typical home is well above what a typical U.S. household earns each year, estimated at about $81,000." Priced out of the housing market, young individuals and families are forced to either join the renter class—paying the national median monthly rent of more than $2,100—or move back in with their parents.

Just as economic success has always only been part of the American Dream, these economic challenges represent just a small portion of the crisis facing Americans today. Beyond the financial challenges, Americans are facing an acute crisis of meaning and belonging with profound consequences for health, prosperity, and democracy itself.

This crisis manifests in four key areas:

For the first time in American history there are more single adults (18-55 years old) with no children than there are married adults with children, and 40 percent of all births are now out-of-wedlock, compared with 18 percent in 1980. The emergence of the isolated individual as the primary social unit has radical implications for every facet of American life, specifically for politics and economics. Cut off from the support of family and civil society, we must expect the demands on government to grow and debt-related financing to increase to meet the needs of this new, socially isolated constituency.

Post-pandemic addiction rates remain high in America. Some habits like social media, porn, video games, and regular marijuana use—which recently outstripped alcohol use rates—erode mental health and sociability, and others like opioids and methamphetamines prove fatal. Over 100,000 Americans now die annually from drug overdoses, about a 500 percent increase since 2000. The burden of modern American life is so heavy that deaths of despair have become the new normal.

Meanwhile, a decline in civic literacy has contributed to a loss of cultural memory and identity. According to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation survey, "more than 70% of Americans fail a basic civic literacy quiz [and] just half were able to correctly name the branch of government where bills become laws." Our regime is premised upon the idea of self-government under law. We call ourselves citizens, not subjects, but most people lack an elementary understanding of how our government works. Without knowledge of that system and an appreciation for our past, it's impossible to have hope for a better future.

Finally, 28 percent of Americans are religiously unaffiliated and only 21 percent attend a religious service weekly. Our nation's second president, John Adams, wrote that "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Without a shared religious foundation, the ethical basis of our laws erodes, the social support provided by churches diminishes, and the thrust of our culture becomes fundamentally materialistic and nihilistic.

When faced with such significant, even existential, challenges, the rising generation is searching for answers—and for mentors. They want to learn how to live well but feel powerless to act. This explains the growing popularity of lifestyle influencers like Jordan Peterson, who pack venues with thousands of young men in places like Detroit, Michigan; Reading, Pennsylvania; and Fargo, North Dakota, looking for meaning and belonging.

As the 2024 election approaches, the crisis of "American carnage" that former president Donald Trump aptly, if shockingly, described at his 2017 inaugural address is more acute now than it was seven years ago. The great task facing our political leaders today will be to address it head-on by speaking to the heart and offering a blueprint to move Americans from isolation to independence, from despair and addiction to hope and health, from shame to confidence, and from doubt and loneliness to faith and community.

Given the scope of the problem, November's results may depend less on lawfare campaigns against Trump or Joe Biden's mental acuity than on which candidate can address the profound pain—economic and spiritual—experienced by the American people and can chart a pathway towards a restored American dream.

John A. Burtka IV is the president and CEO of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and editor of Gateway to Statesmanship: Selections from Xenophon to Churchill.​​​​​