The American Dream keeps you working for a future that never comes built on a past that never happened. It is not so much a dream as a value judgement. A pretense of patriotism at a price few can pay and at a cost few can bear.

Sarah Kendzior

In the United States, few ideas carry as much weight as the American Dream, that old saw that could mean one of two things, depending on your proclivities. It can mean that the US is a place where anyone can strike it rich, can really “make it.” And that is certainly true, except that the usually unvoiced caveat is, “but odds are, you won’t.” A second iteration of the American Dream is that the US is a place where people can come from anywhere in the world, as immigrants, and their kids and kids’ kids will do increasingly better through the generations. This version is also, roughly, true, although it is becoming a much murkier proposition, as social mobility stalls in general, as the Trump administration attacks immigrants from all angles, and as younger people in general stop having kids, which shuts off the multi-generational dream.

But there is also another core belief about the United States, one that doesn’t get as much patriotic press, but which is arguably even more important in the national imagination than the American Dream. This idea may not even have an agreed-upon name, per se, but I like to call it “The American Bargain.” And what is that exactly? Well, the American Bargain holds that if you just work hard, obey the law, and generally act morally and responsibly, then you’ll be able to still “make it” in America, just in a more subdued sense. You may not become rich, but you’ll be able to: pay your bills, have some nice things, put food on the table, afford a pleasant dwelling, have some kids, take an occasional non-extravagant vacation, and you’ll be able to retire before all your joints and organs give out.

I view this idea or tacit expectation as more important than the American Dream proper, because the latter is more limited, and is more explicitly about striking it rich and passing on generational wealth. As such, plutocrats are comfortable with the ideology of the American Dream, because it sanctifies both their “success,” regardless of how it was gained, and asserts the sacred right to pass that success, via wealth and privilege, to their descendants.

But the American Bargain is not as comfy for the powers-that-be, because as consumer industrial capitalism has unfolded, especially in its American format, the tenets of that bargain have crumbled. When times are good, the American Dream and the American Bargain can conflate, and a rising tide can hide the jagged rocks of capitalism’s creative destruction. But since the 1980s, when big business put their foot down and began the long unravelling of labor power, economic egalitarianism, and a robust social democracy, the trajectories of the American Dream and the American Bargain have diverged, with the wealthy being more able than ever to “make it big” and pass it on to their kids, and regular people decreasingly able to access that basic laundry list of American Bargain milestones.

So the substance of the American Bargain has been ransacked and abandoned. We all know now that hard work, general abiding by the law, and moral uprightness are guarantors of, basically, nothing. As the Psalmist wrote, “Such are the wicked, always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.”

As it becomes more and more undeniable that virtue and effort don’t tie out too closely with ample cash and general life stability, the job of the Polarization Industrial Complex is to get people looking somewhere else in response to the uncomfortable conditions. So, for example, it it asserted that the American Bargain would still be functioning just fine if immigrants hadn’t stolen our jobs, or if DEI hadn’t wrecked meritocracy, or if feminists and gays hadn’t emasculated our men, or if globalists hadn’t sacrificed American treasure on the altar of free trade, or if secular humanism hadn’t destroyed the vaunted and austere Christian work ethic.

As we have discussed on this blog before, what gets disappeared in these scapegoating rationalizations is the truth, the simple truth about capitalism: that it just doesn’t give a shit about the welfare of human beings. Capitalism is a ruthless and powerful algorithm, an eternally moving vehicle for extracting value and maximizing profit, and its general drift, even in the social democracies of Scandinavia, is towards hyper-concentration wealth and power, regardless of what happens to actual people’s lives. The Invisible Hand is a fist and a choker both.

So as the American Bargain crumbles beneath our feet, our polarizing rationalizations of why things are the way they are become more intense but remain ineffective, which in turn makes the polarization and demonization even more intense. As this boa constrictor of bleakness tightens, some of the plutocrats, especially in the “tech space,” are starting to sweat. Even as they make plans to flee entangling national jurisdictions or the earth itself, more of these Masters of the Universe are starting to envision the necessity of Universal Basic Income. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and others have all come out in support of some form of basic income, mostly due to the mass displacements created by AI.

This is one kind of New American Bargain, the Techno-Utopian version: “Don’t worry about jobs or data centers or crypto risks, just give the tech gods what they want, and a basic income will facilitate the transition to a frictionless singularity, where all needs and desires will be fulfilled by AI and its human shepherds.” Needless to say, most Americans are rightfully skeptical of these promises. Maybe if Musk et al were willing to fund the UBI themselves for a few decades, it might be plausible. But I’m not holding my breath on that one. Oh yeah, and the planet itself would likely just disintegrate to cinders if we tried to make the entire Earth into a subsystem of high tech.

On the mainstream political front, the collapse of the American Bargain has been catastrophic, and is essentially the origin of Trumpism. Trump’s support draws overwhelmingly from areas where honest, hard work, labor that doesn’t require advanced degrees, has cratered, along with most of the ancillary social institutions that make life bearable. Trump has thus offered his own New American Bargain, but it is a Frankenstein monster of delusion and cruelty. Trump’s bargain is, “Give me everything I want, help me destroy everyone and everything I hate, get rid of as many dark people as we can, turn the country into a theocratic, white baby-making machine, and your reward will be…….” That’s the thing. What exactly will that reward be? What do the people get in that bargain? Well, so far, MAGA nation has just gotten the cold comfort of righteous rage and the thin gruel of vicariously enjoying the windfall profits of kleptocrats. Not too great.

The declining fortune of the Dems is largely due to the unconvincing nature of their version of the New American Bargain, often expressed as a Green New Deal, or a Better Deal. The thing is, people just aren’t buying what they’re selling, because they can feel that the whole system itself is buckling, and that a greened-up refurbishment of the status quo will just not work. And they’re right. Also, as an aside, I do sympathize with the younger DSA contingent, the heirs of Bernie. But their version of the bargain is still not radical enough. Affordable housing, free daycare, MFA, taxing the rich, union boosting, job retraining — none of these can cover over the fundamental unsustainability of the entire consumer industrial capitalist system.

I would propose a completely new American Bargain, one that radically reframes what can actually be delivered for people in a rapid manner, and what would be expected of people in return. And let’s remember the rather subdued, pedestrian terms of the old bargain: work hard and act morally, and the system will deliver a comfortable, stable, enjoyable life. Nothing flashy, just a basic agreement on simple, vanilla propositions.

In that spirit, here is the New American Bargain, something that flips the causal direction, starting with what the US government will deliver first, and then on to what people need to do on their end. And this causal reversal is not just cosmetic. It’s fundamental. I’ve always hated that JFK line, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” No way, screw that. That is precisely backwards. The state works for us, and we give up some of our inherent freedoms only on the mandatory condition that the government serves OUR needs. By subtly changing the language from “state” to “country,” JFK was trying to hide the actions of a government run by mortals behind the quasi-religious language of patriotism. But even so, we do not BELONG to the country. We ARE the country. It belongs to us. Most patriotism gets the casual flow backwards, urging us to sacrifice and go without, to glorify and lift up the country. But that somehow always manages to lift up the powerful and crush everybody. This version of patriotism should expire.

So the New American Bargain flips the usual causal script. Country (government) must deliver FIRST, to justify its very validity. As such, the system, through the federal government, will provide:

• Universal Basic Income – unconditional monthly payments for all American citizens; no vetting, no qualifications — everyone gets it
• Logistical support for assisting people who want to transition to living in larger household units (Bigger Home Bases)
• Federal dollars for states and localities to renew, repopulate, and repurpose rural areas, with the overriding goal of creating naturally self-sufficient regions, with a new physical infrastructure designed to reduce all manner of material and energy throughput
• Medicare for All

With these basic federal supports in place, the American people would fulfill their part of the bargain by:

• Reducing consumption
• Reducing travel
• Reducing participation in the outside labor market
• Making a concerted effort to transition to Bigger Home Bases
• Eating lower on the food chain
• Committing to bringing more economic functions in-house, reducing dependence on far-flung national and global markets

That’s it. That’s the basic picture of a New American Bargain, one that would not only rapidly and substantially reduce negative American impact on the planet, but would also actually make people’s lives richer, saner, and more dignified. See my earlier posts on BHBs to see the kind of alchemy I expect would be worked by transitioning to a much larger household format.

I don’t believe that all Americans, or even most, are desperate to be rich, or to have their kids and grandkids be rich. I think most Americans still long for the simplicity of the old bargain, one that doesn’t promise glory, celebrity, or fortune, but just a comfortable life that allows people to enjoy their loved ones and their communities. I also don’t think that people are yearning for the delusional futures on offer from Trumpism, the Techno-Utopians, or Green New Deal liberalism. I haven’t met many people who are dying to live in a theocratic Handmaid’s Tale world, or a complex AI multi-verse, or a Lake Wobegon mirage, where everyone is working in above average jobs with wonderful e-cars and backyard hydroponics.

I think that Americans are ready for a different future, a different bargain, where things can be slower, where work weeks are shorter or non-existent, where time spent with physical humans is pleasant and easy, and where our economic life is not plagued by uncertainty, dread, stress, and anxiety. I firmly believe that people would be perfectly happy to downscale their lives and desires, if our government would actually just put in the enabling mechanisms to make that possible. Oh yeah, and this could save the world.