Only 36% of voters still believe the American Dream is attainable, according to a 2023 Wall Street Journal/NORC survey. This figure is decidedly lower than other pollster findings in similar surveys. Those revealed that 48% of voters in 2016 and 53% in 2012 felt reasonably assured of their opportunities for a prosperous future.
In other words, more than half of Americans felt optimistic in 2012, and only slightly more than one-third do now.
Americans are consistently barraged with negative headlines and stressful news updates, from supersized natural disasters to political unrest to foreign wars. Despite the challenges, there is still plenty of evidence to justify a bullish attitude about the United States and the potential to reach the American Dream of financial prosperity. Five specific categories come to mind: education, demographics, geography/agriculture, energy, and the U.S. Constitution.
The road to a happy retirement can be lined with hazards, but the strength of the United States was never based on smooth and gentle tidings. It’s a comprehensive coalition that can put aside differences to forge ahead together, no matter what. Take a moment to look around. The uplifting signs of The Army of American Productivity are evident. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. By working together to shape an even more united set of fifty states, there’s no reason America’s best days aren’t still ahead.
Read The Full Transcript From This Episode
(click below to expand and read the full interview)
- Wes Moss [00:00:00]:
I’m about to scare you with some of the most recent reasons Americans are nervous about the future of the US Meaning America here in the United States. But I’ll also give you five reasons today that I’m still just as bullish as ever on America. As we head into the holiday season, it’s, it’s been already been. As we head into the holiday season, it’s already been a long 2024. A lot of rough things have happened in the U.S. if you, if you’re in the Southeast where we are, you’ve been hit by some pretty serious hurricanes. It’s not just Florida, these hurricanes Helene and Milton maybe if you’re in Texas or in California and you’ve been spared natural disasters to some extent this year, you’ve kind of missed out on just how rough it’s been in the Southeast. Two big hurricanes that impacted an enormous amount of lives in Florida, in Georgia, in North Carolina, Asheville, North Carolina, if you’ve ever been to it’s just a beautiful mountain town.Wes Moss [00:01:29]:
It is the last place you would ever think a hurricane would wreak havoc on yet their arts district. 80% of all the businesses, the homes, the structures completely flooded out, completely destroyed, with really no recovery anytime soon in sight. It took them a month or more in some places to even get power back, running water back. So it’s been rough in the Southeast, but if you’re in other parts of the country, let’s say you’re in Texas, you’ve experienced natural hits to the economy and natural disasters. Louisiana, California, really all over the United States we’ve experienced this at some point just happens to be an election year, 2024, tensions are high and there’s a lot that we keep getting kind of punched with here in the United States. And when you get to that period of so to some extent I’ve been reflective here on the Retire Sooner podcast that we’ve had a tough time. America’s have been dealt many blows in 2024. Twelve years ago, when researchers at the it was the Public Religion Institute that did this survey, it was 2,500 people or so.Wes Moss [00:02:46]:
And asked about the American dream and asked, hey, does the American dream still hold true to you? And more than half the people in the United States said, yeah, it does, absolutely, 51, 52% said, yes, American dream is still here. I can still prosper. I can still make it here in the United States. But the Wall Street Journal just redid that same question this past summer, 2024. And that number who believe in the American Dream dropped to about a third of participants. So we’ve gone in just a little over a decade, half the country saying, yeah, we’re good to around the third. That is a concerning trend. And before I get too far into today, I’m thinking of the United States, kind of like our family would over the holiday.Wes Moss [00:03:32]:
You love your family. No one talk bad about my family. But you also realize there’s a lot of flaws. There’s a lot of flaws in the family. So we recognize the flaws. But we still love our family and our family is the best. And that is really why I’m still very bullish here on the United States. The United States economy.Wes Moss [00:03:55]:
The United States American dream. Take a look at the stock market. For all of the punches we’ve been thrown and all the tensions that are high in the United States, here we are towards the end of October, depending on when you’re listening to this episode of Retire Sooner podcast. S&P 500 up 40% over the past year. Dow Jones up 32, 33%. And good old fashioned dividend stocks that we love to talk about on the Retire Sooner podcast up over 33%. Yes, tensions high. A pickleball bro.Wes Moss [00:04:27]:
I had to research this because there’s, I’ve read different, I’ve read different bits and pieces about this, but it was a place called Rossmoor. This is an upscale, very nice retirement community in Walnut Creek, California. It’s just outside of San francisco. July of 2024, we’re celebrating the Independence Day of the United States. Well, political conversation started out on the pickleball court. Next thing you know, two women going to brawl, going to fisticuffs. According to the article, the altercation involving two elderly women escalated from a disagreement about politics quickly turned physical. Pushing, shoving, hair pulling, resulting in clumps of hair left on the court.Wes Moss [00:05:16]:
That’s America today. Now, today’s not about how to handle your pickleball matters. It’s about why for all of our flaws in the United States and all the challenges we have, I’m still very bullish on the long term economy and the prospects here of the US and this is what’s so important when it comes to our retirement. We still are blessed with a wonderful environment to invest in. And we need, and we need the overall environment to be strong because that’s really what our 401k is dependent upon. It’s not stocks, it’s the foundational economy, the opportunities in the United States that allow for companies to do just a little bit better year after year after Year that then drive that then drives stocks. The Wall Street Journal NORC survey, the same survey that said that the American dream is slipping away from more and for more and more people in the United States. Asked what is asked what asked what’s important to you from a scale, what’s important to you as a family on a scale of 1 to 10 that you need to get right in your life.Wes Moss [00:06:41]:
And they asked about marriage and children and being able to go on vacation and home ownership, having a comfortable retirement and financial security. About 6 out of 10 people said marriage is paramount. About 7 out of 10 people said having children is paramount. Ranked just below by the way, the importance to be able to go on vacation, which got about a seven and a half on the scale of one to ten. Home ownership at about eight and a half. But comfortable retirement comes in at a 9.5 on a scale of one to ten. That’s what’s important to Americans. The only thing that superseded that was financial security in general.Wes Moss [00:07:39]:
That scored nearly a 10 out of 10 on the importance of Americans for their lives. So, so we look around the United States and we say, well, we need the foundation to be great in order to be able to have what Americans care about, the American dream. And then financial security, comfortable retirement home ownership and I guess third on the list out of those six. It’s not marriage and children. It’s being able to go on an annual vacation which to some extent financial securities needed to be able to do that. And I think it’s just important to not rose colored glasses what’s happening in the United States, but to acknowledge the challenges we have but also acknowledge why it’s still the best place to be in the world and the most fertile ground to be able to reach financial security and a comfortable retirement. So we’ve got hurricanes, political tension all of course exacerbated well, we’ve got hurricanes, political tension, of course political tension is heightened because we’re because 2024 is an election year. But here’s what happened if you if you missed out on what happened in The Southeast Asheville, North Carolina, 80% of built if you missed out what happened if you’re in another part of the country and you missed out on the Southeast and you and you and you maybe missed what happened for her and you may and you maybe missed what happened and you maybe missed what happened from hurricanes Helene and Milton.Wes Moss [00:09:35]:
Asheville, North Carolina, again, the last place that you would think would get hit by a hurricane or have a damage it’s a mountain town. Wait a Minute. How can a mountain. Well, there’s some low lying areas in Asheville. Flooding submerged 80% of the buildings in the River Arts District. Over $2 billion of damage. $2 billion for a very little town. Very big percentage roads were washed away.Wes Moss [00:10:05]:
Infrastructure, no electricity, no water for weeks and in some cases months. Georgia, we’re usually Georgia, we’re usually far enough from the coast in Georgia, usually because we’re far enough from the coast. Hurricanes that come in, yeah, we get a bunch of rain, but we don’t get a lot of damage. Well, this fall over 20 people died from the storms in the state of Georgia. And there were tons of neighborhoods just in the city of Atlanta where people were riding around in kayaks and canoes on the very roads they lived in. Florida, of course, the hardest hit, 15ft of flooding. Imagine the ocean rising 15ft above a nice sunny day, flooding, thousands of homes, 50, maybe $100 billion worth of damage and lives law and lives lost from those storms. Think about your car.Wes Moss [00:11:26]:
Here’s one of the. Here’s again, here’s one of the things that’s to me another shocking statistic about these two storms in the state of Florida because of that storm surge. And again, you’re looking out at the Ocean. Imagine it 15ft higher. Imagine how far that goes into the coastline. Parking decks were flooded, 130,000 plus vehicles completely washed, submerged in saltwater for 6, 10, 12 hours. They’re not fixable. They’re gone.Wes Moss [00:12:12]:
Another thing I didn’t even realize about these storm surges that just flooded areas really where hundreds of thousands, if not. Well. Another thing I didn’t realize about these storm surges that again impacted millions of people is when water goes into these homes. And yes, most of them are built high enough to try to avoid a hundred year storm and flood. But those calculations may not stand today with the weather that’s coming into the United States, with the weather that’s hitting our coast now, with the weather that’s hitting our coastlines. Now, these storm surges, they blow through storm windows, they blow through doors, entire floors, particularly of course, basements flooded. But when the water recedes, a lot of cases these basements are just left with four or five feet of sand. So you have to dig out your entire home.Wes Moss [00:13:14]:
Once the water recedes, that again takes days. Imagine trying to get a billion sand, a billion particles of sand out of your house and multiply that by thousands and thousands and thousands of properties. Then you’re left with a cleanup. Doesn’t happen over the course of a Couple of days. We’re talking about months and in some cases years and in some cases just complete rebuilds that we know that can take multiple years to try to just rebuild from the devastation we’ve seen from these storms. So we get. So we have storms, then we’ve got political violence. It starts maybe on the pickleball court.Wes Moss [00:14:11]:
But according to Pew Research, over 70% of Americans are still worried or very worried about political violence, particularly around the elections. Immigration tensions. Immigration is a top three issue in 2024. Almost 40% of almost 40% of voters support a national deportation effort, which again, is up and up and up from the last election. So there’s one group that is going crazy because we have too much immigration, and there’s another group that is completely and diabolically opposed to the people thinking we shouldn’t have that sort. Same sort of immigration. And I’m not weighing in on either side here. I’m just pointing out that we’ve got a lot of tension and it’s about a lot of different things.Wes Moss [00:15:19]:
Maybe the underlying fuel of all this has to do with the inflation that we’ve all lived through. Inflation doesn’t seem like a big number when it’s reported by the BLS. Inflation was up 0.2% month over month, and inflation now is down to only two and a half percent. Oh, ignore that. Who cares? Two percent. What’s two percent? Two and a half percent. Great. The inflation fights over.Wes Moss [00:15:41]:
Well, that doesn’t have anything to do or really help the fact that we’ve had almost 25 or 30% of overall prices, from everything from the food in your fridge to the furniture in your home, to your cars, your car insurance. Thank you. Hurricanes. To housing and education costs. Everything has squeezed your wallet. We know financial security is the number one goal for Americans. It puts that in jeopardy. When you’re feeling squeezed financially at home.Wes Moss [00:16:33]:
It just makes for again, more tension, more insecurity, more worry, hey, am I going to be able to get to a comfortable retirement? Hey, is my 401k still going to do okay over the next five years and 10 years and 20 years? Well, in order for that to happen, we’ve got to have the bedrock, the foundation of the house that we’ve built here in the United States to be able to thrive. You look at it on the surface, there’s a lot of things that point towards, well, maybe, maybe things aren’t all that great. So I want to acknowledge that, yeah, there’s a lot of challenges we face. But I want to go through five things today that suggest otherwise. That suggests that, yeah, otherwise things are good. That suggest otherwise. That things are good. And the foundation is strong for all the gnats and flies and comments that are hitting us at any given moment.Wes Moss [00:17:52]:
So there’s still a lot more to be bullish about or positive about. For those who don’t follow, I’m just going to say so there’s still much more to be bullish about than bearish when it comes to the US and the United States is the system. It’s the cards we’re dealt, and it is the system that we are fortunate that we’re lucky enough to be able to operate in. So as much noise as we get from Washington, which can make it, which can make it feel like the wheels are coming off. America’s core strength doesn’t come from politics. It comes from what you and I do every single day. And that is just a little part, a little piece multiplied by 350 plus million people. And I’m counting 100 year olds and 1 year olds in this as well.Wes Moss [00:18:53]:
And that’s the contribution to the army of American productivity. Every day, the people of this country create, they learn, they innovate, they hustle harder than any other economy on the planet. So today, here are five reasons why America continues to be far ahead of any other place on the planet and why we here on the Retire Sooner podcast continue to be very bullish on the state of the usa. So number one, I’ll get some statistics here. Number one is education. Number two is demographics in the United States. Three, geography and agriculture. Four, energy.Wes Moss [00:19:38]:
And five, just the Constitution, the rule of law, that kind of holds all of that together. So educationally, yes, there’s particularly. So let’s start with education. Yes, if you’ve got kids in middle school or high school and their public schools, you read polls that the United States is way behind. United States is way behind the rest of the world. And fifth graders and other countries are doing what our 11th graders are doing here. And maybe there is some real issue and Our K through 12 system needs some work. But if we were to look at higher education in the United States, we have collectively or in, we have collectively the top universities the world.Wes Moss [00:20:31]:
Seven out of the top 10 universities on planet Earth are right here in the United States. And those institutions, they churn out extraordinary talent that helps fuel that army of American productivity. And just when you think we’ve invented everything that’s going to take us to the next level, well, wait a minute, we already have. We already have the Internet. What could be greater than that? Well, a couple years later, well, then we have the iPhone and the smartphone that just 10x’s everyone’s productivity, and then that lingers for another decade or so. Well, what could be better than that? Well, how about artificial intelligence? A by your side tutor. And if you have kids, you know what I mean, A by your side intern that’s not 50 grand a year or 20 grand a year, but 20 bucks a month called artificial intelligence. And these are just examples of major leaps that we have in the United States.Wes Moss [00:21:46]:
And we don’t necessarily see them coming, but people are working on them, and they’re working on them for five years or 10 years, or maybe in some cases with artificial intelligence as an example, for decades. And then all of a sudden, they get it right, one day, it hits the mainstream and it increases everyone’s productivity. There’s no wonder productivity levels in the United States in 2024 have skyrocketed, have skyrocketed relative to the past decade. Now, I don’t know if that’s exactly pointed back to AI, but it’s the collective of all the things people are working on. Think about this. We’re a country that over the past 10 or 15 years has gone from all internal combustion engines to electric. And even though the push towards electricity was arguably too much too soon, and most of the big car companies are going back to hybrids. Well, hybrids are part electric, part internal combustion.Wes Moss [00:22:52]:
Well, now we need more energy. And now we need more energy. So now we need more electricity for cars. We also need electricity for all these data centers that power AI. Now there’s this big giant. Now there’s this giant thirst. Where are we going to get all the electricity? How’s the grid going to handle it? Where are we even going to produce it? Guess what? Under the surface over the last couple of years, we’ve got private companies that are saying, hmm, how are we going to do this? How are we going to fuel? Where is all the electricity going to come from? We could look up in the next five and 10 years and have doubled, tripled, quadrupled our nuclear energy, because private companies have been working on that. And again, it all comes back to the leaders that come out of higher education in the United states.Wes Moss [00:23:54]:
All right, seven out of the top 10 leading universities in the United States, of the top 100 universities worldwide, 58 are in the United States. U.S. universities have produced. And this is where this next level innovation comes from. 60% of the world’s Nobel Prize winners in science and technology since 1901. And guess what? What about patents again? Innovation protecting intellectual property. American inventors have accounted for nearly 50% of the world total when it comes to patents. Granite again, another sign that our education system produces elite innovation.Wes Moss [00:24:46]:
And that’s coming out of the United States. Multiples relative to other countries around the world. How about demographics again? At least Americans said that having kids was 7 out of 10 on their priority list because we need kids, we need babies. I’ve long advocated that, as opposed to a couple billionaires saying everyone should have 10 kids, which again, most people can’t afford. And I don’t know what the answer is. Countries all over the world have struggled with their own demographics. You look at some of the Asian countries, the European countries, every government understands that a growing population, again we measure it birth minus death rate in any given country is critical to the future of the economic system. Some countries do massive tax breaks for people to have kids.Wes Moss [00:26:03]:
Giant vacation two years off. If you have a child, work’s going to still pay tax credits. I think in some countries we’ve seen tax credits go towards minivans to further entice parents to say, hey, well, we’ll give you a half price minivan if you have more kids. Not a whole lot of that has worked around the world, but fortunately in the United States, our natural organic population is still growing and is projected to grow for the next several decades. Japan, China and most of the European nations are seeing their populations actually go down declining here. The US we’re going to go from around, let’s use round numbers here, around 330 million to over 400 million people by the year 2060. It’s not massive growth, it’s not a rocket ship. At least it isn’t right now with our family form, with our family formation rates and birth rates, but it’s still at least growing.Wes Moss [00:27:26]:
Countries like Japan. Japan’s expected to drop from about 125 million people today to 88 million people by 2060. Imagine being in a population, being in an economy that’s going to have a 15 or 20% decline over the next couple decades. Less people, less innovation, less productivity, less work hours. How is that a good place to invest for the future? Median age in Japan is 49. Median age in China, 39. U.S. it’s a little, it’s, it’s a lot younger than Japan and younger than China at around 38 and a half.Wes Moss [00:28:10]:
Again, workforce sustainability. Youth is better for the demographic trend. And We’ve got it. US labor force grew by 1.7 million people in 2023. Look at the workforce of Europe. It’s shrinking. And if you think of and of anything you can really. And if there’s an ingredient in the stew that grows in an economy, it’s population growth, it’s demographics.Wes Moss [00:28:50]:
And we fortunately here in the United States have three or four more decades of projected population growth. And that doesn’t even count immigration, if we can ever figure that out. Now, just good old fashioned geography. And this is one that we didn’t necessarily create, but it happens to be this enormous advantage for the United States. We didn’t create the coastline, we didn’t create the mountains, we didn’t create the multiple different climates that, by the way, help multiple kinds of agriculture in the United States. And we didn’t put the minerals in the ground, but guess what? They’re here. We’ve got about 7% of the entire world’s fresh water and 21% of the world’s surface fresh water. Thank you.Wes Moss [00:29:51]:
Great Lakes here in the United States. Yeah, we got those two big oceans on the left and the right of the US That’s a pretty big deal. It’s a great, it’s huge for defending ourselves, it’s huge for our military, but it’s also huge for trade in the United States with the rest of the world. And then not completely connecting those two coasts. But what goes a long way is another, almost two and a half million miles of what? Navigable inland waterways. Again, think about the Mississippi River. That helps us with almost $150 billion worth of exports. We produce United States, about 40% of the world’s corn.Wes Moss [00:30:54]:
Well, why is that? It goes back to education, goes back to innovation. Back in about the 1940s, corn was just kind of plodding along. Yeah, we’re getting a little better, a little more efficient. Yeah, we got some tractors and some combines. Bushels per acre going up little by little. Then what happened? Hmm, drought resistant corn. That’s an innovation. That’s technology.Wes Moss [00:31:24]:
So we went from 50 bushels per acre on average to about 180 per acre. That’s almost 4x the production. Because of what? Not better tractors, not better combines, but innovation, science, technology. So we have agriculture, we have geography. Which leads me to number four, energy. Again, we didn’t put it in the ground, but we figured out how to pull it out of the ground. The US became the world’s largest oil producer again in the world. You know, grown up.Wes Moss [00:32:11]:
I never thought of the United States as. Yeah, we got some oil wells down there in Texas. But we always look to the Middle east, we look to Russia, that that’s where they really pull oil out of the ground. Well, guess what? It’s happening more than any other place with bigger volume than anywhere in the world, any other country. Right Here in the US as of 2018, we survey passed Saudi Arabia, Russia, producing 12 to 14 million barrels of oil per day. Natural gas. We produce about 20% of the entire global natural gas complex. And because we’re able to do so, guess what? Natural gas is cheap here in Europe.Wes Moss [00:33:00]:
It costs between 10 and 12 bucks per BTU. For natural gas here in the United states, it’s about three bucks. So it’s 80% cheaper for natural gas here in the United States than almost any other country in the world. So we not only have this geographical advantage and agricultural advantage, but natural resource advantage here. The United States we are, even though we continue to export, even though we do import oil in the United States due to the kind of oil that we’ve gotten accustomed to, we still produce more here in the US we are energy independent and that’s a very big deal when it comes to setting the foundation for an economy, but without what Warren Buffett points to often as kind of the fabric. And the most important thing about the United States and what makes it special is the rule of law. And that goes back to our number five, the Constitution. That’s the backbone of the rule of law in the United States.Wes Moss [00:34:19]:
And we have that. Are we the number one country in the world for this? Not necessarily, but we rank pretty darn high. We’re sixth in the world according to the Heritage foundation when it comes to our index of economic freedom. And that’s due to our strong legal system, property rights, which again, if you do not have, just take that one ingredient out of the soup. There is no soup. It’s inedible soup. We don’t think about that on a day to day basis. But without it, you just don’t have business formation, you don’t have sustainability of what makes this country so great, which is small business.Wes Moss [00:35:05]:
Small businesses make up 99.9% of all US companies and employ 60 to 70 million people. That’s nearly half the total US workforce. So we hear of the global 100 companies that you hear about every day and the s and P500 companies, and there are a couple thousand big companies in the U.S. but there are millions of small businesses that employ half of our country. And again, without a legal framework to protect the little guy, the little business owner, the small business owner, our Economy would be overly top heavy and it would only be the big business that can afford to squash everyone along the way. Our rule of law, our rule of law, our constitution, our court system keeps it a more level playing field so we can all compete. And despite all the political wrangling, intentions and gridlock, well, we had over 1.2 million new businesses started in 2022, and really in any given year. And I love that the entrepreneurship rate in the United States is highest for what category? Well, the retire sooner category, 55 plus.Wes Moss [00:36:29]:
So yes, there are hurricanes that hit us, there’s elections that divide us. As much as we love pickleball, there’s fights breaking out all over court. As much as we love pickleball, there’s political fights breaking out on the courts across the United States. And yeah, we have geopolitical conflicts, we have constant chaos in the Middle East East. We’ve got a war in the Eastern bloc of Europe. We’ve got tactical maneuvers and war games going on in Asia on a weekly basis. And maybe if you want to throw something even worse on top of that soup, just, it’s probably that social media just blankets at all and makes all of it seem even worse than it probably is. But the strength of us, and then the strength of the United States, it lies in the togetherness of our people that comes out after we get hit by things like hurricanes, natural disasters, wars.Wes Moss [00:37:46]:
We mobilize here in the United States and we work together collectively as that army of American productivity. And that works in ways that we don’t see little by little, every second, literally every second of the day across hundreds of millions of people that are our neighbors and our friends. And that’s a big reason why I remain, and that’s a big reason why I continue to remain optimistic about the future of the foundation that we’re fortunate enough and blessed enough to be able to invest in for retirement. My eyes are open to all the problems that have been for my entire two and a half decade plus career. There’s no way that all of that chaos is going to suddenly settle itself and everything get better anytime soon. But I think if we acknowledge that, but then also at the same time understand that all that noise, that’s just the problems we deal with. Washington is not the United States. Our family is not perfect, but they’re better than any other family.Wes Moss [00:39:07]:
And I don’t see anything changing that for a very long time. Leave it at that.
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