A new publication from the American Enterprise Institute, Land of Opportunity: Advancing the American Dream, argues that well-being and upward economic mobility remain achievable and offers a series of policy prescriptions to achieve those goals.
The handbook was the focus of a webinar last week that featured two panels of experts making the case for conservative solutions to restore the availability of the traditional American Dream.
Scott Winship, director of AEI’s Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility, said the idea for the handbook was launched after a 2024 poll found 47 percent of Americans no longer believe the American dream is achievable. Winship said that after a series of conversations with other conservative policy analysts, he and co-editor Kevin Corinth found there was a need “for a roadmap to shoring up the American dream that did not succumb to the temptation to pander, to populism, focused more on signaling solidarity than actually helping everyday people."
Winship said that while on the economic side, the U.S. has largely lived up to the promise of offering widespread upward mobility, on the social side of the American dream, “it should be setting off alarm bells. Declining social well-being can be seen in the weakening American family, detachment from communities and erosion of social trust. Without social prosperity, American society's economic success will feel insufficient and confidence in the American dream will wane.”
Some of the policies panelists advocated to promote more social wellbeing:
- Tax and safety net programs that promote marriage. “The family is absolutely key to social well-being today,” said Robert VerBruggen, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
- Using the safety net to not just redistribute money and reduce poverty but to leverage funding to increase opportunity and self-reliance. “When you look at the structure of the safety net and what is provided to low-income families, the idea of how it affects families in terms of marriage or being unmarried is really an afterthought,” said Angela Rachidi, an AEI senior fellow.
- Combine the EITC and Child Tax Credit to ensure that they both operate on the same schedule and rules and reduce work disincentives and marriage penalties.
- Take the balance of the safety net – food assistance, disability assistance, child care assistance - and give states the flexibility to combine those funding streams and consolidate them into one program, reducing benefit cliffs and marriage penalties.
- Use a holistic approach to public safety, giving states more flexibility and seeing a larger role by private institutions to fund better behavioral health infrastructure. “We have to apply principles that are practical and don’t make this issue a political football,” said Ja’Ron Smith, senior partner, CGCN. “It should be one of those things that we all can agree upon—have some accountability but also allow for second chances.”
On the economic side, panelists also offered policy suggestions. Among them:
- Turning good ideas into policies that can scale, such as on deregulation or licensing. When it comes to economic growth, “there's no force in our toolkit that is as powerful for human flourishing,” said Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow, Mercatus Center.
- Energy abundance.
- AI regulation that has a lighter touch.
- Reducing inflation through spending cuts.
- Transferring federal land, particularly in the West, to local authorities to create more private housing.
- Consolidate and simplify workforce training into one stream of programs, the so-called “one door to work approach.” Mason Bishop, a nonresident fellow at AEI, said this was particularly important as potential job dislocations from AI loom. “We will see the same thing with AI that we saw with COVID if we don’t get this right now,” Bishop said.
“Compared to the kind of universal deterioration we've seen on the social side, there are a lot of positive stories to tell on the economic side,” said Winship. “That said, can we be doing better? Absolutely. We can be doing a whole lot better.”