Meanwhile, thousands of workers have gone on strike to demand better conditions.
For six months, Americans have been quitting in record numbers, with 4.4 million in September alone. Workers have taken advantage of the hot post-vaccine labor market.
The pandemic tightened the screws even further, with billionaires notching trillions in gains as low-wage workers found themselves on the frontlines - or just out of a job completely. Meanwhile, the opportunities available to workers are increasingly low wage. Wages have been declining for five decades the student debt meant to finance the educations that supply the American Dream has skyrocketed, trapping many in untenable cycles of debt. Now, urbanites are living there because they want to, not because they need to for work, and it's reshaping cities as a place centered around personal interaction rather than the office.Īs Samuel said, "The new white picket fence can be said to be the freedom and peace of mind that comes with not having to do whatever it takes to keep the fence." Power is slowly shifting from employers to workers, and leaving shortages in its wakeįor decades, the American Dream has valued the ideal of wealth through meaningful work: You want to work hard enough that you'll amass enough wealth to buy all the things you want, like a house, a TV, or a car.īut the economic reality for many workers hasn't kept pace with these all-important items. Skyrocketing rents and the 60% of wealthy millennials who plan to buy a home in a big city within the next year indicates that city life still holds an allure. Others are finding alternative options in a life on the go, bypassing debt-based homeownership for a more mobile lifestyle in a tiny house or a van, both of which saw a boom in sales since the pandemic began.īut that doesn't mean cities are dead. It boxed aspiring first-time homeowners out of a cash-is-king seller's market. But the dream of suburbia was stronger than the market's ability to support it, as the ensuing housing shortage left America short millions of homes. Remote work freed knowledge workers from the chains of office life, bringing the postwar dream in sight as workers snapped up nearly every suburban home. The American Dream home became a choose your own adventure quasi-gameshow during the pandemic. Americans are at a fork in the road, so what will the next dream be? Housing has become a choose your own adventure The housing shortage, the labor shortage, and the supply shortage are coalescing in 2021 to challenge every aspect of the 20th-century American Dream: The affordable house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, the job that pays well and provides meaning, and the consumer culture that meets every need and desire. The global health crisis that ushered in an era of shortages 70 years later is changing everything again. The postwar boom of the 1950s introduced the house, white picket fence, and other consumerist trappings of the suburban idyll. When writer and historian James Truslow Adams coined the term in 1931, he defined the American Dream as the opportunity for a better life for all.
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