My wife likes to tell the story of how, as a girl in the 1970s, she carefully saved money over a period of time to buy a pair of shoes she had been admiring in a local store.
Finally, the day came when she had exactly enough cash in hand. She eagerly went downtown — only to find that the price had gone up.
The story has two morals. First, people who are under 50 today can’t comprehend the relentless inflation of the ‘70s; and second, Americans haven’t always enjoyed an overabundance of cheap clothing. Our children are full-grown, but the memories of endless T-shirts, shorts and, yes, shoes strewn across their bedroom floors remain vivid.
Cheap goods are not the American dream?
So, when I read that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last month told the Economic Club of New York, “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream,” I had to nod in agreement.
But then he went on to say, “The American Dream is rooted in the concept that any citizen can achieve prosperity, upward mobility, and economic security. For too long, the designers of multilateral trade deals have lost sight of this.”
Which brought the subject back to tariffs and brought my nod to a halt. Upward mobility surely equates to home ownership and, perhaps, a car. Tariffs on Canadian lumber wouldn’t make homes any cheaper, nor would tariffs on cars bring down what AAA says is the $39,000 average price of a new one.
Neither would tariffs help the many people I met on a recent assignment to Bangladesh, a country with 4,000 garment factories competing to sell cheap clothing to the United States. The tariffs President Trump put on a three-month pause Wednesday included 37% on Bangladesh, which would undoubtedly lead to layoffs and pay cuts for millions of workers in a tiny nation with a struggling economy, and then create bad will toward the United States.
Trump’s 90-day pause this week may indicate an overriding aim to negotiate trade deals that eliminate the need to impose extra tariffs at all. Bangladesh, like many other nations, is anxious to do this.
And so, I am back to nodding in agreement about cheap goods — until I look around my own home office, that is.
The American dream
The term “American dream” was coined in 1930 by author and historian James Truslow Adams. According to the Jstor Daily, he defined this as “a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
Note the absence of houses or cars, which were falling out of reach for many in 1930. Those things were added to the “dream” by future generations of Americans.
An illustrated book simply titled “The West,” by Geoffrey C. Ward, contains an intriguing photo of a family posing in 1887 with an elaborate pipe organ, outdoors, amid livestock and farming implements. The caption says the family matriarch insisted on situating the organ, the family’s prized possession, in a spot where family back East could see it and not the unfortunate sod house they called home.
300,000 items per household
By contrast, several sources today estimate the average American home contains about 300,000 items. Which of them would we choose to pull outside to impress distant relatives?
NBC News reports that 84% believe their houses aren’t clean or well-organized enough, and 55% say this causes a great deal of stress.
But those figures are eight years old, meaning we probably have a lot more now — both things and stress. More isn’t always better, but we seem incapable of stopping ourselves.
The Wall Street Journal this week said the U.S. is home to about 80% of the world’s storage facilities, and many people stuff them full of things they can’t throw away, but can’t keep at home, either. Many soon forget what they put there.
We forget what we have
The Journal cites a survey by Storable that found 71% of Americans end up repurchasing things they own but can no longer find. It quotes Julie Hall, founder of an estate-clearance company, saying, “We’re battling a tsunami of stuff, and the stuff is winning.”
And many, myself included, struggle to absorb things passed on by deceased relatives.
I suspect I’ve touched on a problem here that’s completely separate from any notion of the American dream.
In the end, my wife had to save a little longer before buying those shoes. Delayed gratification was a bigger part of life back then. We didn’t know it, but that wasn’t a bad thing, especially compared to the unsatisfying regrets many experience today from impulse buying and clutter.
Would a round of tariff-induced ‘70s-style inflation bring a return to those days and put a stop to our self-inflicted madness? I don’t know, but I suspect the $1.21 trillion that Americans collectively owe in credit card debt offers a clue.
We probably don’t need someone in Washington telling us we’re not living the dream.