The American Dream Is Dead for Most Americans Because Markets Aren't Actually Free
Source: Sean Davis. "Pretending Everything Is Fine Won't Save The American Dream." August 14, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that the American Dream is basically out of reach for most people today because of unaffordable housing, vanishing manufacturing jobs, crushing healthcare and college costs, and immigration policies that he says squeeze out ordinary (especially white) American workers. He says conservative pundits who just repeat 'work hard and the free market will save you' are lying to people, and that fixing the country requires admitting these problems are real before any solutions can work.
Conclusion
We cannot restore the American Dream by pretending the country's economic and social systems are still fair or by repeating generic free-market talking points; we must honestly confront the specific structural forces (mass immigration, offshoring, easy-money housing policy, unaffordable healthcare/education, and DEI-driven hiring) that have locked most Americans out of it.
Premises
- Decades of artificially easy monetary policy have simultaneously inflated housing prices and devalued savings, making homeownership unattainable for most working people.
- Manufacturing jobs and pension-based careers have vanished due to offshoring to China, which also steals intellectual property and dumps subsidized low-quality goods back into the U.S.
- College has become unaffordable, and admissions and campus culture (DEI policies, in-state tuition for illegal immigrants) disadvantage the children of ordinary Americans.
- Healthcare is the 'least free' market in the country, with premiums and deductibles now exceeding many families' mortgage payments.
- Mass immigration, including H-1B visas and refugee admissions, has undercut wages and job opportunities—especially for native-born men—while making cultural assimilation impossible.
- The markets in housing, healthcare, education, and labor are not genuinely 'free' because they are distorted by government subsidies, foreign state support, and corporate diversity mandates.
- Free speech and equal justice under law have been undermined (e.g., selective prosecution, suppression of dissenting views), further eroding the conditions needed for the American Dream to function.
Assumptions
- The 'American Dream' historically meant that hard work reliably led to homeownership, stable career, family stability, and upward mobility for most citizens.
- Current free-market rhetoric (as exemplified by commentators like Ben Shapiro) ignores how distorted and subsidized modern markets actually are.
- Mass immigration and diversity-focused hiring practices function as zero-sum competition against native-born (particularly white, working- and middle-class) Americans.
- Economic hardship among young people is primarily attributable to immigration, offshoring, and monetary policy rather than other factors such as automation, tax structure, or corporate consolidation.
- Simple, unspecified 'solutions' exist and could work if political and media figures would first acknowledge the true scope of the problem.
- The author's characterization of opponents (e.g., Shapiro) as detached from 'actual reality' constitutes a fair representation of their actual policy positions.