😴“American Dream” Edition

Jun 09, 2026

The American Dream used to be fairly straightforward. Work hard, save your money, buy a house, raise a family, and maybe retire someday with enough left over to spoil the grandkids. Today, the dream remains alive and well, provided your grandparents bought a house in 1978, your parents inherited it, and you have a side hustle selling plasma.

For younger Americans, homeownership increasingly resembles one of those luxury items displayed behind glass at a museum. You can look at it. You can read about it. You can even calculate how much it would cost. But actually acquiring one requires either a trust fund, a winning lottery ticket, or the ability to invent a new cryptocurrency before lunchtime. Meanwhile, wages continue their long-running tradition of jogging leisurely behind housing prices while pretending they’re still in the same race.

Inflation hasn’t helped. Neither have gas prices, which now function less as transportation costs and more as recurring emotional trauma. Americans once drove to clear their heads. Now they drive to the gas station and discover what fresh horrors await them on the digital price board. Every trip to the grocery store feels like a scavenger hunt in which the objective is to locate a product whose price hasn’t doubled since the previous administration.

Of course, not everyone is struggling. This remains America, where economic hardship is distributed with remarkable inefficiency. While ordinary families debate whether they can afford eggs, rent, and car insurance in the same month, the wealthy continue accumulating fortunes at a pace that suggests capitalism has evolved from an economic system into a UFC cage match, and you’ve got both hands tied behind your back. The top one percent keep setting records while everyone else receives inspirational speeches about resilience.

The Trump administration insists prosperity is right around the corner. Unfortunately, so is another military parade, another billion-dollar White House ballroom proposal, another taxpayer-funded celebration, another commemorative project bearing Trump’s image, and another opportunity for politically connected allies to benefit from government largesse. The American Dream, meanwhile, has been quietly relocated to a gated community somewhere beyond the reach of median income earners. Americans are still encouraged to chase it, of course. The only difference is that these days the dream has a security guard, a six-figure down payment, and a waiting list.