How Our American Dream Unraveled

The Age of Entitlement
If you grew up in the 1950s, you were constantly treated to the marvels of the time. At school, you were vaccinated against polio, until then a dread disease. At home, you watched television. Every so often, you looked up into the sky and saw the white vapor trails of a new jet. You stared until the plane vanished. There was an endless array of new gadgets and machines. No problem seemed beyond solution. Good times and the power of American technology: these were not lessons learned, they were experiences absorbed. You took prosperity for granted, and so, increasingly, did other Americans. Thus quietly began the Age of Entitlement. We came to believe that prosperity was inevitable-and that it would automatically create the Good Society. On these two pillars of faith rested our national identity and hopes for the future.

Every age has its illusions. Ours has been this fervent belief in the power of prosperity. Our pillars of faith are now crashing about us. We are discovering that we cannot, as we had once supposed, create prosperity at will. We still remain prey to the economy's euphoric expansions and dispiriting declines. Worse, we are learning that even great amounts of prosperity won't solve all our social problems. Our Good Society is disfigured by huge blemishes: entrenched poverty, persistent racial tension, the breakdown of the family and staggering budget deficits. We are being rudely disabused of our vision of the future. The result is a deep crisis of spirit that fuels Americans' growing self-doubts, cynicism with politics and confusion about our global role.

Our crisis of faith has been building since the late 1960s, when the automatic advance of prosperity became less automatic. The Gallup poll regularly asks whether Americans are satisfied with "the way things are going in the United States." In the past decade a majority of respondents has said "no" two thirds of the time (page 33). In a sense, this is what the New Hampshire primary was about. The outcome was less a triumph for any candidate than evidence of pervasive uneasiness. Pat Buchanan's strong showing was a protest vote that blamed the nation's ills on government. Democrat Paul Tsongas's victory provides a hint that Americans yearn to be told the truth. But do they really? For the message is inevitably sobering. It is that we require sacrifice in government-fewer benefits or higher taxes-and that popular expectations have grown wildly unrealistic.

"Entitlement" (a postwar term) best captures what we have expected. We have felt entitled to a great deal: secure jobs, rising living standards, global economic preeminence, a clean environment and much more. Through effortless economic growth, we could shape and control our future. We felt entitled to entitlement. The sense of struggle that always characterized American life would gradually disappear. We would be shielded from anxiety and uncertainty. Well, we aren't. Our expansive notion of entitlement grew increasingly romantic and unrealistic. But we still feel embittered and confused that it hasn't materialized.

It is not that the economy has permanently stagnated or that life for most Americans is miserable. Quite the opposite. The long economic expansion of the 1980s, despite obvious flaws (too much debt, for example), was real. Even with a recession, the economy's output was 28 percent larger in 1991 than in 1980. In many respects, we have achieved the American Dream since World War II. Family incomes have roughly doubled. The quality of life has improved in countless ways, from better health care to earlier retirement. Most Americans aren't affected by our most publicized national ills. They aren't unemployed. They don't face staggering health bills (about 87 percent had health insurance in 1989). They aren't victims of violent crime.

Indeed, most Americans remain personally content. The Gallup poll also asks whether people are satisfied with their own lives. Four fifths of respondents routinely say "yes." What connects high personal satisfaction and low national confidence-an apparent contradiction-is growing fear for the future. Life is OK today, but will it be tomorrow? Americans believe that upward mobility is our birthright. More than 90 percent of us place ourselves somewhere in the middle class (page 34). The "middle-class way of life" promises the opportunity to get ahead and the security to raise families and find self-fulfillment. Now these ordinary ambitions seem increasingly threatened.