Why the American Dream is impossible - no matter how hard you work

Living the American Dream is an impossibility for an increasing number of middle class people thanks to the soaring cost of living. 

According to a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll, the gulf between people's desires and their expectations is seen across gender and party lines, with just a third of people still feeling the American Dream 'holds true.' 

Becoming a homeowner and retiring comfortably are two common goals that are now far from guaranteed, no matter how hard you work towards them.  

The inability to buy a home especially holds back young people looking to kickstart their lives, with Kentucky resident Lily Roak saying a once-respectable $250,000 budget left her and her partner 'looking at houses that had no walls and no floors.' 

She said prioritizing finding a home has led her and her partner Jessica Holland delay getting engaged, having a wedding or planning for children - all of which were attainable for their parents on smaller salaries. 

Kentucky couple Lily Roark and Jessica Holland said their hopes of starting a life are proving impossible amid a bleak economic outlook, as they feel they are 'doing everything right... and it's still so hard' 

Holland told the Wall Street Journal that for her and Roark, they feel they are 'doing everything right, we’re saving, we went to good schools, I have a master’s degree - and it’s still so hard.' 

They are far from alone, with the study finding that while 89 percent of people said owning a home is essential or important to their future, just 10 percent said doing so will be easy or somewhat easy to achieve. 

Similarly, financial security was seen by 96 percent of people as essential, but just nine percent said it would be easy or somewhat easy in the future. 

And while generations of Americans were promised hard work would earn them a comfortable retirement, just eight percent said they saw this as easily attainable in their futures - despite 95 percent feeling it is essential to their visions of the future. 

'Key aspects of the American dream seem out of reach in a way that they were not in past generations,' Emerson Sprick, an economist with the Bipartisan Policy Center, told the outlet. 

While many Americans dream of owning a home and enjoying a comfortable retirement, a growing number of young people admit these goals are out of their reach 

For many young people, the issue stems from feeling that they are worse off and face a tougher economic future than their parents dealt with at their age. 

According to MIT economics professor Nathaniel Hendren and Harvard University economist Raj Chetty, only around half of children in 1980 ended up wealthier than their parents. 

In 1940, this figure stood at around 90 percent - with the gradual decline only increasing since the 1980s. 

'It’s still a coin flip whether or not you’ll earn more than your parents, but mobility probably hit a record low in the early 2020s,' Hendren said. 

Chetty added: 'People are right to feel that the American dream has become harder to achieve both in terms of their chances of doing better than their parents and their chances of rising out of poverty.' 

The crisis of confidence for the future took a noticeable hit due to recent years of high inflation, which former Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas said turned his idyllic family lifestyle into a struggle to stay afloat. 

Former Mayor of Mount Vernon Richard Thomas, pictured with his wife Cherish Celetti and their two children, said they 'had the American dream - now it’s the American nightmare' 

Thomas and his wife Cherish Celetti bought their upstate New York home for $612,000 in 2017, and were handed a mortgage of $5,400-per-month. 

Despite the high cost, Celetti said it 'was like everything was moving in the right direction' - before inflation sent their bills soaring, including doubling their energy bills to over $2,000-per-month. 

The parents saw their American Dream diminish as they brought their retirement contributions to near-zero, and have been left considering selling the home they love to make ends meet. 

It is worth double what they paid for it, but the Thomas and Celetti say that if they do sell up, they won't be able to afford anywhere else nearby.  

'We want to stay in our community. We want to raise our kids here, but the dream of being able to do that really escapes us,' says Thomas. 

'We had the American dream. Now it’s the American nightmare because it feels like the country made us a promise and then took it away.'