Byron Auguste: belief

Transcript context

…But why is despair up here? It’s not the worst country in the world. It’s not. I think there’s a lot of evidence that it’s how you thought your life would be relative to what it is. Over time, if this American dream anchor point is a life where your kids live better than you and you live better than your parents, that’s something that, certainly for white Americans, north of 90 percent were experiencing if you were born in, say, 1940. And now it’s a coin flip, right? If you were born in 1980, you’re age 30. It looks like about half of Americans were living better than their parents and about half were living worse. Presumably, when we see the 2020 data, it’ll have gone underwater. We’re the first generation in which Americans, and certainly white Americans, are living worse in material terms, in terms of their life possibilities — where more than half are living worse than their parents. That is a profound shock. I think that on top of it, given so much of it is economics and gender expectations being what they are, that probably does hit men harder. So, you think we should try to lower our expectations for significant portions of American society or raise them?…

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