David Leonhardt On The Dwindling American Dream

The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan

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David is a journalist and columnist. He writes the NYT’s flagship daily newsletter, “The Morning,” contributes to the paper’s Sunday Review section, and co-hosts “The Argument,” a weekly opinion podcast with Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg. In 2011 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary on economic questions. His new book is Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

The episode was taped on November 8th. For two clips of our convo — on African-American lefties against mass immigration, and black voters moving to the GOP over crime — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: David’s upbringing in NYC and Boston; “creating dorky fake newspapers in elementary school”; his mom was a copyeditor and his dad a high-school teacher; the debt that print journalists owed to the sports page; America’s economic golden age of the mid-20th century; how we used to have trust in institutions with more social cohesion; communism “just doesn’t work”; how the union movement was strong; how Eisenhower’s R&D was unprecedented but also had balanced budgets; how JFK was a “massively overrated president”; RFK’s conservatism and his deep popularity with black Americans; LBJ’s view that crime was just poverty; the immigration restrictions until the 1965 act; low crime before the 1960s; the much higher marriage rate before the 1960s, especially among blacks; the stagflation of the 1970s; OPEC after the Yom Kippur War; Milton Friedman; how the government created the computer industry; how the female workforce has been kicking ass; the anti-patriotism of the left; Obama’s love for America; how today’s government doesn’t invest as much in the future; IRA and CHIPS; the newfound bipartisan interest in unions; Covid relief; crime and disorder after the summer of 2020; effective altruism; the low price of clothing today; how our lower life expectancy is a sign of plenty; and how Millennials are not as far behind their parents as much as we’re told.

Browse the Dishcast archive for another convo you might enjoy (the first 102 episodes are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Carole Hooven returns to talk about her tribulations at Harvard, McKay Coppins discusses Romney and the GOP, my old friend Joe Klein and I do a 2023 review, Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman, and Alexandra Hudson on civility. Please send any guest recs, dissent and other comments to [e-mail].