What Happens to the American Dream in a Recession?

“At its core, this notion that anyone can be president or anyone can be a billionaire is absurd,” he said. “A lot of Americans work hard, but they don’t become president and they don’t become billionaires.”

The percentage of people who say the American dream does not exist or is only an illusion has remained low — 3 percent today and 2 percent four years ago. As one such person put it to our pollsters last month: “A bunch of hooey.”

 “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”