It is harder to live now because the prices are so high. People are not able to save enough for retirement. (college-educated woman, online)
[Health care] deductions and copays, high prices on every product in the market especially grocery items. (college-educated woman, online)
It is a more higher-priced economy, where everything is more expensive and the government takes more and more. (some-college-educated woman, online)
Higher gas prices. Foreclosures. It’s the new norm. (college-educated woman, online)
Almost everyone is “living smaller” than their parents (college-educated woman, online). For past generations, ordinary expenses were not such a burden.
My parents were able to pay less for the things they bought. (some-college-educated woman, online)
Cost of living was less back then. (some-college-educated woman, online)
I think that families have to spend much more than my parents did just for the essentials and some wants. (college-educated man, online)
Gas was so cheap. (postgraduate-educated woman, online)
Plus, college was a lot less costly. (some-college-educated woman, online)
People have student debt today. My parents didn’t have student debt. (postgraduate-educated man, online)
They bought a home when they were very young and I have spent most of my life in an apartment. Everything costs so much more now and you can’t live a simple life anymore. (college-educated woman, online)
Another thing that has changed since their parents’ day is the rise of the two-income household and women in the workplace. Two-thirds of married mothers now work outside the home, compared to just 37 percent in 1968, and four in ten women are the primary breadwinners in their households. That is a perfect recipe for a surge in women talking up front in focus groups about the impossible and irrational costs of child care—a necessary expense for most families trapped by the new economy.44
Those women who are married, who have middle-class incomes, and with close extended families are better able to cope with child care, but do not raise the subject without expecting a fight about affordability. Nearly every newspaper article about child care begins with how “startlingly costly” it can be even for middle-class and two-salary couples, quoting parents who describe “the shock of day care costs.” The $25,000 to $30,000 a year cost in a state such as New York really can take up to 30 percent of your income. In thirty-one states the cost of day care exceeds the cost of college tuition.45
This is the front line in the cost-of-living crisis, where the bill can be more than your mortgage payment. You feel how painfully disruptive child care costs can be for working-class women without college degrees.
I have two kids and … they have to go to child care because I have to work full-time just so that I can afford to feed them … in the summers I pay like $1,500 dollars a month for child care for two kids … I mean, it’s more than my mortgage payment. (non-college-educated woman, Ohio)
We are just scraping by but child care continues to go up … [and] I have to have extended care because of my working hours. (non-college-educated woman, Ohio)
Raises aren’t happening [but] child care continues to go up. Nobody’s going to be able to do anything. (non-college-educated woman, Ohio)
My main consideration was for child care. I mean, it’s just outrageous. (non-college-educated woman, Ohio)
People feel powerless in the struggle with the unimaginable price for something that is close to a necessity for working people but whose jobs don’t pay enough to live on. This is such a dilemma that many wonder whether they are just treading water:
[M]y husband and I are both midlevel managers but we both work full-time. We have three little kids at home and child care is ridiculous … when [my parents] can’t watch my kids before they go to school that will be a decision where we’re like, “Is it really worth working if you can’t have reduced child care? That’s almost your income for three kids.” That’s a challenge. (college-educated woman, Oregon)
[If] I get a job right now that I am qualified for, I will basically make enough just to pay for the day care, so that’s pointless. (non-college-educated unmarried woman)
I can’t not do it because the money that I still bring in pays for electricity and food and so it’s, I mean, it’s just a complete vicious circle. But at the same time, I mean, I don’t have any more to give so I don’t know what to do. (non-college-educated woman, Ohio)
Another woman was getting help from the state, “so [she wasn’t] paying for all of day care,” but when she got a raise she went $5 over the eligibility limit and then faced a $1,000 bill each month. She summed that up: “Either if you’re wealthy you’re okay. If you’re poor, you get help, but if you’re working you are pretty much screwed” (non-college-educated unmarried woman, Wisconsin).
The cost of college and student debt are right up there with day care on the list of those expenses that are massive financial burdens but increasingly necessary. Student debt has exploded to more than $1 trillion in the past decade, rising $338 billion between 2008 and 2013 alone to become the lion’s share of the $3 trillion in consumer credit. Student debt has gone past auto and credit card debt and weighs down on graduates and families. Moreover, while delinquency rates on other kinds of debt have fallen over the past few years, the number of student loans that are delinquent for more than ninety days surged from roughly 7.5 percent in 2008 to almost 12 percent in 2013.46
At the same time, people feel a college education is increasingly necessary to get a job that pays well. So it should not be surprising that student debt and college affordability produce animated discussions in this world of debilitating costs. Many raise questions about whether college is worth it, and the debt burden may be putting the training people need out of reach. For many of the Millennials we talk to in groups, this is their central economic worry. The participants in our groups in Orlando, Florida, went right to the word “crisis.”
We have a student loan crisis basically where you’re getting into so much debt to get that degree, to get that better job, that that is becoming cyclical where you are working just to pay off your student loans so it’s almost, it’s a double-edged sword. (Hispanic man, Florida)
When you come out of school you’re $50,000 or $100,000 in debt. You’re lucky if you’re making, you know, $30,000 or $40,000 a year. That’s paying your bills. That’s paying your rent. You’re not paying off your debt so you’re never getting ahead. (college-educated woman, Florida)
People coming out of college are getting off on the wrong foot. My husband has $58,000 worth of student loans and isn’t making even close to what he needs to be making to pay it off. They’re saying that you need all this education to get these jobs to make more money but yet you come out of college with all this debt and you can’t ever catch up. (college-educated woman, Florida)
Many work jobs outside their degree, live with their parents, or make other strategic sacrifices so they can afford to pay off their loans.
I have plenty of student loans that I’m paying. I have a degree. I’m working as a bartender not by choice; not saying I love it but I make more money doing that than any position I could get in my degree so I pay my student loans as a bartender. (college-educated woman, Florida)
I live with my parents, rent free, so that I can focus on paying back my student loans. (postgraduate-educated woman, Ohio)
One woman battling cancer was going to have to go off disability and return to work sick because, as she said, “I’m looking at $40,000 in student tuition loans that I have to pay back. Unless I can win the lottery, or find a sugar daddy” (college-educated woman, Oregon).
Their near-breathless reactions to the cost of child care and the scale of student debt takes place in the context of an endemic cost-of-living crisis created by the jobs that don’t pay enough to live on and with the price of everything going up. In its fall 2014 survey for the Roosevelt Institute, Democracy Corps asked people whic
h three problems are the most important for the country to address. People zeroed in on the plain fact that jobs don’t pay enough to live on, what they make cannot possibly cover child care expenses or student debt, and working women don’t make as much as their male coworkers.47
National Survey of 950 2012 voters conducted by Democracy Corps for the Roosevelt Institute, October 16–21, 2014.
Those perceptions of rising prices across the board and the inability to earn enough to pay them set the stage for deep worries about big, sudden expenses over which they have no control that could make them cut to the bone, go into debt, go bust, or do something desperate.
I can’t afford to lose right now. (non-college-educated woman, Ohio)
Doing okay now but one slip and I could be in trouble. (college-educated man, online)
I’m finally starting to find a little bit of a plateau, but I’m always waiting for the rug to get pulled out from under me. (college-educated woman, Oregon)
Principle Three: People can aspire to a “comfortable life,” not middle-class dreams
People are consciously forging more realistic and downsized aspirations for what they want to achieve in their life and for their families. The starting calculation in life’s new equation are the jobs that don’t pay enough, the disloyal companies, and the lack of social mobility. That produces a new trajectory—one that people contrast with the middle-class trajectory open to previous generations. They know America has changed fundamentally and that they are forming aspirations and goals appropriate for our times.
Americans now seem settled on attaining a “comfortable life.” Getting to “comfortable” allows you to enjoy your family, your community, your church, your city, or your hobbies. That aspiration is a downgrade from hopes to become firmly middle-class or to get rich with hard work and enterprise, Horatio Alger–style. It notably lacks the imagery of a social ladder where millions are climbing to an ever higher level. That aspiration has the virtue of being realistic and satisfying, however, reflecting a country that has only produced a 5 percent increase in the median income in three decades and where income mobility trails behind old Europe.
A large majority of Americans—54 percent, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll—accept that “the widening gap between the incomes of the wealthy and everyone else is undermining the idea that every American has the opportunity to move up to a better standard of living,” while only a minority now accepts that “the United States is a country where anyone, regardless of their background, can work hard, succeed and be comfortable financially.” So their own experience confirms the economists’ characterizations of this new reality.48
That does not mean that people have given up. They have moved to more realistic goals in this new context, though still infused with a great deal of aspiration. Most people are feverishly looking for ways to attain that more comfortable, freer life. They are changing how and where they live, how they consume and what they borrow; they are trying to obtain the right skills, starting businesses or offering services on the side, and using technology to encourage that entrepreneurship. Increasingly, they are hoping to live in communities and metropolitan areas, feeling a strong local identity, joining networks of family and friends, seeking more time for leisure and a better quality of life.49
Americans today are very conscious that baby boomers and older generations had a different path and different outcomes, and they have no illusions about those facts. Actually, they almost romanticize what prior generations faced to make a point. That only underscores the clarity of their consciousness about how differently the new economy works. The older generations “went to school on scholarships and had jobs waiting at the end of college” (some-college-educated woman, online); “they could easily acquire houses” (college-educated woman, online); they “were able to save for retirement” and “more companies offered pensions” (college-educated woman, online). Listen to how these online group participants draw the contrast with their parents:
My parents could do what they wanted and didn’t have to worry too much about money. Jobs were more plentiful, it was easier to get a loan on a new house. (college-educated woman, online)
Their dream was a secure job, a house and higher education for their children. My dream is just to have health care. (college-educated woman, online)
My dream isn’t my parents’. I just want my kids to have an even shot in competition for jobs. (some-college-educated man, online)
My parents were at the height of the American dream: house, good STABLE job, low prices. I’m struggling in all areas. (college-educated woman, online)
What disrupted that path most dramatically was the change in the types of jobs available and the behavior of companies toward their employees. Working people in the past had more “stability” and “better job security.” Back then, you might have one job in a lifetime, but now “you cannot rely on your employer for security.” Those struggling to do well in today’s economy are very conscious that their “parents could work for a company that showed loyalty and took care of them” (college-educated man, online). One man crisply captured the consequences of not having that kind of job: “My parents could work/get an honest job and be able to live a ‘normal’ life. That’s not the case anymore” (college-educated man, online).
With that understanding clearly in mind, Americans across the class divides are articulating a shared view of the “American Dream” that aspires to a comfortable life. That may seem diminished, yet it gets to something fairly fundamental and unrealized.
In our groups with young people and those without a college degree, people were actively redefining it, and offering real perspective as to why.
Yes, I just think it needs to be altered a little bit, maybe brought back down. (young college-educated woman, Florida)
You can still live the American Dream but you have to reassess your priorities. (young college-educated woman, Florida)
I think sometimes we need to reorganize our dreams and make them a little bit more realistic. (young college-educated woman, Florida)
It’s not like it used to be. (non-college-educated woman, Ohio)
Well, to me, I mean, say back in World War II the American Dream was, you know, to have a nice house, 2 kids and a new car and that sort of thing. To me, I don’t necessarily think that, you know, the idea of a affording a new house is realistic for a couple of generations maybe. (non-college-educated man, Ohio)
The college-educated in their online discussion were a little more expansive, including good health and a happy family as part of the dream to live comfortably:
The American Dream = being able to maintain self-sufficiency during my working and retirement years. (postcollege-educated man, online)
My American Dream is ensuring that my family has health and that I have adequate means to live comfortably. (college-educated man, online)
The Dream to me means having a stable, happy, comfortable life and livelihood and family. (some-college-educated man, online)
Being able to live comfortably. (postcollege-educated woman, online)
Living debt free and not having to worry about money and providing for my family the way I want to. (college-educated woman, online)
Being able to live the lifestyle that I want without having to worry about finances and not being able to do for myself or others in terms of healthcare, etc. (college-educated woman, online)
What living comfortably means depends on what each person values and their passions: “The American Dream is simply living the life that makes you happy. Mine is teaching and being able to spend time with my family” (college-educated woman, online).
There are a handful of people who describe the American Dream as “working to achieve greatness” or “being rich” (postcollege-educated man and woman, online). The woman punctuated her statement, “Let’s be honest. It’s having enough money to live the way you want without worry.” Even her definition fell within the emerging consensus.
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p; Immigrants to the United States and Hispanics and not an insignificant number of blacks put a lot more faith in conventional notions of the American Dream. Their own recent experience with America and faith in America as a land of expanding opportunity creates a personal trajectory in their mind that is somewhat independent of the new economy. Some of the Hispanic focus group participants in Austin did not embrace a diminished notion of what is possible for their lives: “I mean I’d like to be able to save enough money to have a comfortable retirement, but at the same time I’d like the home ownership, the ability to put my daughter through college, be able to support and care for my elderly parents” (college-educated Hispanic, Austin).
When the moderator then asked the Hispanic participants if the American Dream is different for Hispanics, a number agreed and elaborated:
I think Latinos are generally more family-oriented, so they’re going to have more family preoccupations and will allow family to determine more of the decisions, the big decisions are made for people. (college-educated Hispanic, Texas)
I think that Latinos, it’s still a little more of like the old economy of having a house, and your family, and everything like that. The yard and the dog. I guess what you see on TV. I think that it’s still that way. (college-educated Hispanic, Texas)
I totally agree with that because in fact mine was family-oriented. I said having a job, my American dream is having a good job to be able to provide for my family and having the environment where I can raise my kids to be responsible adults. (college-educated Hispanic, Texas)
America Ascendant Page 14
