Only the youngest Americans were lucky enough to see their incomes stagnate under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And while college graduates did better than less educated Americans, their gains were marginal. Most American households tumbled backward.
“As far as we know, this is anomalous,” Shapiro told me. “This has not happened before.”
To put this in its plainest terms, the American Dream that’s at the center of our national identity is not, in fact, in danger of slipping away. For most Americans, it’s already long gone, like Oldsmobiles and New Coke.
The question, of course, is why, and here you will get wildly different answers, depending on whom you ask. For his part, Shapiro contends that some of this trend has to do with policy choices. He credits both Reagan and Clinton for jolting moribund economies while ultimately keeping revenue and spending in balance (in Reagan’s case, later in his tenure), which helped attract business investment.
But mostly what we’re seeing, Shapiro says, is the inevitable result of a global marketplace that forces industry to keep its prices low and its dividends high in order to compete for customers and capital, even as fixed costs continue to rise.