Prosperity

If there is one aspect of the American Dream that everyone recognizes, it is prosperity.

Steve Harvey, who spent years living out of his car before becoming one of America’s most successful entertainers, was once asked on his show what the American Dream was.

Steve’s response was simple: “The American Dream is the ability to achieve, and America makes it possible for anyone. But the hustle is sold separately.”

And how would he know if he had achieved his American Dream?

“I wouldn’t know,” he replied, “but my mama would!”

Today, ask people to describe their American Dream and they will mention comfortable retirement, owning a business, a home, a successful career, financial security, or the ability to provide opportunities for their children.

In fact, for many immigrants, prosperity is also the first thing they notice about America²⁰.

They see thriving businesses, large homes, well-stocked stores, modern infrastructure, and a standard of living that much of the world still aspires to achieve.

For generations, these visible symbols have represented the promise of a better life.

Prosperity is indeed an essential pillar of the American Dream. The ability to pay bills, afford healthcare, educate our children, and prepare for retirement are important goals. Financial security reduces anxiety and expands economic opportunities. Few people would willingly choose hardship over prosperity. It allows us to pursue goals that might otherwise remain out of reach.

On the other hand, even among prosperous societies, while opportunity can continually be created, talents do differ, luck plays a role, and circumstances vary widely.

As a result, even in America the pursuit of prosperity is not without challenges.

In recent years, the weakening of family units, technological disruptions, misplaced government regulations, global commerce, and political division have contributed to a growing sense of pessimism²¹.

For many people, the immediate concern is not about finding a deeper meaning, but paying rent, putting food on the table, or caring for a sick family member.

A lifetime of careful planning can be disrupted by events that no individual created, and no individual can fully prevent. These are not trivial concerns, nor should they be minimized.

Consequently, financial security provides the stability upon which much of our life is built.

So, it follows that the pursuit of prosperity has always consumed much of our attention and energy. It was that way for the immigrants arriving at Ellis Island and it is true today.

A popular saying captures this idea well: “Money may not buy you happiness, but it buys you the kind of misery you enjoy.” While humorous, the saying contains an important truth.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow²² proposed that human needs develop in stages. We begin with basic physical needs and security. Only once those needs are reasonably satisfied can our attention shift toward community, achievement and personal fulfillment.

Whether or not one accepts every aspect of Maslow’s model, the basic insight is difficult to ignore.

However, while obstacles are real, the American Dream has always depended on our ability to hold both truths at the same time.

America’s unique contribution is not that it guarantees prosperity. No nation can make such a promise. Instead, America’s contribution is that it provides an environment in which we can pursue prosperity regardless of our family name, social class, religion, or place of birth. The opportunity to strive remains accessible.

A defining feature of our culture is our attitude toward failure.

In fact, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) has consistently found that Americans have one of the lowest levels of fear of failure²³, while also having one of the highest rates of entrepreneurial activity.

Failure is accepted and respected as a stepping-stone, not as a culmination or stigma. Most successful entrepreneurs and artists openly describe the setbacks that ultimately prepared them for later achievements.

The willingness to try, and the general respect for it, has become woven into the American story.

Tied closely to the willingness to try is the American tradition of reinvention²⁴.

We regularly change careers, return to school, and learn new skills in order to pursue opportunities. Reinvention is not viewed as abandoning one’s past, but as being built upon it.

The American Dream does not require everyone to become affluent to the same level.

It requires that people have the freedom and opportunity to improve their condition according to their own values, abilities, and aspirations.

Driven by this culture, America has also evolved an educational ecosystem that makes this possible. Community colleges, vocational schools, apprenticeships, and continuing education programs provide opportunities to acquire new skills throughout their working lives.

According to the American Association of Community Colleges²⁵, community colleges educate millions of students each year, many of them working adults seeking new skills, and often entirely new careers.

It reflects a strong cultural confidence that our talents can continue to grow, our circumstances can improve, and new opportunities can be created regardless of where we started.

This is a testament to, and a result of, the underlying culture of the pursuit of opportunity and happiness.

When I was working in an office in New Jersey, our administrative assistant was going through hard times.

With a husband suffering from medical problems, and children in school, she was also facing the daunting prospect of digitization and automation that threatened to reduce the relevance of the work she did. She even broke down and burst into tears one day.

But refusing to let herself be a collateral damage, she went back to school part time and developed new skills in social media and digital collaboration tools. This allowed her to cater to the aspirations of her own supervisors to be more visible in the professional world.

Now seen as a marketing assistant too, she solidified her position in the company and allowed herself a difficult career change.

I could see it wasn’t easy to develop new skills with the daily pressures she faced. And years later, when I faced my own fears, I thought of her to find my motivation and inspiration. In fact, I have reinvented my own career more than a few times.

For Americans, prosperity has therefore never been viewed solely as a competition over existing wealth. Someone else being richer does not mean we must remain poor. Opportunity is not a fixed pie; it grows as we create more of it.

When a new business is started, a problem is solved in a way that helps other people, and new value is created that did not previously exist. The entrepreneur benefits, and so do employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and often entire communities.

America’s economic history is filled with examples of innovation that gave birth to industries that barely existed a generation earlier.

From automobiles and aviation to software, biotechnology, space travel, and now robotics and autonomous vehicles, the ecosystem has taken birth many times as innovators pursue their dreams.

These wonderful successes have created millions of jobs and opportunities, and countless small businesses that quietly serve their local towns.

All this innovation has not come without pain. According to the concept of Creative Destruction³², the driving force of growth is not price competition among existing businesses, but the “perennial gale of creative destruction” brought on by new consumer goods, new methods of production, and new markets. The paradox is that to achieve this long-term prosperity, society must tolerate and get past short-term disruption such as painful job losses and retraining. And the American culture is well suited for that.

Our pursuit of prosperity can therefore be viewed as a process of creating new possibilities through our own agency, not as the responsibility of a benevolent actor or state.

The belief that ordinary people can build something useful, improve their skills, take a chance, and create opportunities for themselves and others has long been one of the defining features of the American Dream.

Despite many struggles and challenges, prosperity asks a simpler question: Are we actively developing our talents and creating more choices for ourselves and our families?

Several years ago, while driving through the American heartland, we passed dozens of small towns that looked remarkably similar.

There was often equipment strewn on farms, a church, a diner, a hardware store, and a collection of modest homes spread along a main road.

None of it looked extraordinary at first glance.

Yet each place represented hundreds of people quietly pursuing their version of prosperity in their own way.

Only a few of these Americans would reach the top echelons of affluence or fame. Yet all of them were participating in one of the most important pillars of the American Dream which was to improve their condition and create more choices for themselves and their families.

This is prosperity in its most common and perhaps most important form.

It is not a sudden leap from poverty to extraordinary wealth. It is the gradual expansion of possibilities through years of work, and the thirst to invest in oneself and others.

The pursuit of prosperity is by no means unique to America.

What makes the American experience distinctive is the degree to which individuals feel empowered and then seek to apply themselves in order to work, create, solve problems, and take risks.

Prosperity is completed by belonging and purpose, which we will see next.

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Next Chapter: Belonging

Previous Chapter: The American Mindset

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