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We’ve all heard the Thomas Edison quote, “Genius is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration,” with the point being that an idea is nothing without hard work. It also suggests that if someone shows up and works hard, they can build a good life for themselves.

Is it true?

This week on the podcast ([link removed]) I interview Adam Chandler, the author of the new book, “99% Perspiration: A New Working History of the American Way of Life.” “This idea is baked into the ethos of what it means to be an American: if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. But by the numbers it’s not as true anymore, and doubts are picking up. For example, a 2023 Gallup poll found that 39 percent of Americans believed they were working hard but failing to get ahead. In 2002 that number was only 23 percent.”
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It's an idea that I’ve been grappling with for some time. My parents immigrated to the US and told me and my brother that if we studied, got a good education and worked hard, things would go our way. And it has been true in our cases. My brother is a successful professor; he’s the more studious and academic of the two of us. I’ve certainly lived a version of the American dream via entrepreneurship that is well beyond what my parents had in mind.

But I’m a numbers guy, and the numbers say that it’s gotten shakier and shakier for Americans to get ahead even if they put their head down and do the right thing. “I interviewed a woman for the book who was the first in her family to graduate from college, was working three jobs, and is wondering, ‘what did I do wrong?’ because she’s just treading water. She didn’t do anything wrong. There are more structural problems now that keep her from getting ahead,” Adam observes.

Most of us know the big ones: housing prices are higher and higher. My parents bought a modest house in Schenectady in the early 70s for about $40,000. That same house might cost $300,000 or more today. The cost of college continues to climb; my peers are trying to squirrel away tuition for two or three kids and the sums blow their minds. And of course, just about everyone tries to avoid the healthcare system because of sky-high costs and overgrown bureaucracy.

“The frontier myth of rugged individualism obscures that there was a lot of public support even in settling the West,” Adam says. “We say it was the individual but it was often acts of policy that would make it possible to build a railroad or clear a pass.” Adam’s book is largely about various points in American history and the mythology that arose, often oversimplifying a more complicated reality.

Here's the thing – I think people ought to have a positive attitude about what they can accomplish with hard work. It’s much more productive to think, “Let me go out there and kick butt and hopefully it will take me someplace good” than to say, “It doesn’t matter what I do, I’ll never get there, the deck is stacked against me.” That’s defeatism, which doesn’t lead anywhere.

But I also 100% endorse Adam’s point that there are policies we can undertake that would make hard work more likely to pay off. “Companies investing in their workers helps everyone and creates a lot of value,” Adam says. “And measures like the child tax credit give families more resources and flexibility.” I, of course, believe that AI is going to eat a lot of work for years.

There are indeed many more policies to pursue. If anything, what we should fear is a country where people think that applying oneself or doing the right thing doesn’t pay off. “People are getting more and more frustrated in the U.S. It’s feeding into our politics in unfortunate ways,” Adam writes. He also argues for a somewhat more enlightened culture where our lives and identities don’t revolve around work to the same degree.

I’d love for us to head in a more positive, people-centered direction economically, no matter who makes it happen. We’re not heading there right now. You know what it’s going to take? A whole lot of us working very hard to get there.

For my interview of Adam, click here ([link removed]) . For his new book click here ([link removed]) . To see what Forward is doing in your state, click here ([link removed]) – we’re growing fast, particularly in California ([link removed]) .
Andrew Yang
Co-Chair, Forward Party
forwardparty.com ([link removed])
andrewyang.com ([link removed])

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