How to Money · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Joseph Moore contends that skepticism about the American Dream is not new, with similar sentiments appearing throughout history. He argues that a persistent narrative of decline, which he terms 'big woe,' is amplified by modern media, yet the reality is that the dream has endured and arguably become more attainable.
“So that's a great question. Let's let's do the Let's talk about the American dream first, and I'm gonna come to that housing crisis question, which is really important because there's there's a few sticky issues that make people think that the whole thing is destroyed and therefore like the American dream is dead.”
“But what I call big woe, the despair industrial complex, is very loud right now and very present, and they're in your phone and on your screen, and you can't really turn anywhere that you can't see their message because there's no clicks for a journalist, there's no votes for a politician, there's no tenure for academics like me. If we tell you the world is getting better. But if we tell you it's getting worse and we know who broke it and trust us to fix it, we can have all of those things.”
“The American dream has been buried many times and it keeps refusing to die. But now we're inundated with a message. It doesn't make it true. Just because it's loud doesn't make it true.”