How to Money · Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Joseph Moore shares how his extensive research into American financial history fundamentally shifted his perspective from a deeply liberal, skeptical view of the American Dream to one of optimism. He now believes that diligence and problem-solving are key to success, and that individuals have more agency and face less risk than in past eras.
“So one of the things I said earlier I wanted to do for the books, like if Americans were trying to do it, I wanted to try to do it too. So anything within reason people did I tried on within reason was set by my wife saying under no circumstances. But she was pretty flexible. I mean, I AIRBN beat all the rooms in our house, okay, because that's what immigrant families did to pay off the house, right, Like that was the normal.”
“I started this journey very left of center, like I am a liberal academic at heart. I'm a liberal humanities professor assigning Karl Marx on the first day of class. That is literally something I used to do and the longer I went and studying this, the more I like, you can only torture the evidence for so long to make it say what you want to say before you realize maybe I'm wrong. And I started just kind of ask myself, like, am I what's wrong here? Like are people actually getting ahead of American history? Am I? Like? Are people actually getting ahead today? And so, like I had to flip completely sides from the nobody really gets ahead and the American dreams a scam to being the person who who is optimistic about the American dream and believes that it's actually getting easier, and so.”
“So the answer to. Your question to say, nobody cheats the rules. And that's not to say everyone gets ahead, but what you're saying is like, this isn't an anomaly, Like there is a there's a steady trend of more wealth in this country, and there is the reality that average Americans, over the course of hundreds of years have been able to under this system do quite well for themselves.”