The American Dream used to mean freedom and the chance to build your own life through hard work, faith, and independence. But today, it’s been replaced by comfort, consumption, and debt. Glenn Beck breaks down how America traded liberty for lifestyle, why socialism is gaining ground, and what it will take to reclaim the real American Dream before it disappears for good.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: I don't know if you saw the visualizing the American dream, Stu.
You know, what the American dream actually is, is that you can forge your own way.
You can -- you know, you can have a scrap of land, and grow your own food if up.
You can, you know, go to school. Not go to school.
You can find a job. If you're qualified for it, you have an equal chance of getting it, you know, based on merit.
But the percentage of Americans who say the American dream is retirement is 86 percent. Health care, 86 percent. Owning a home, 85. Raising two kids, 78. Owning a car, 72. Vacations, 71. Pets, 66. A wedding, 55 percent. That's the American dream, I can get married.
The American dream, if that's what you think, they've now estimated, the cost per household over the cost -- over the lifetime, retirement is $1.6 million. Owning a home now, 30-year mortgage, 20 percent you want to, is $957,594. Owning a car, buying and finance to begin with new cars every ten years is now $900,000 over your lifetime. Raising two kids to 18, plus four years of public college, $876,092. Two kids. Health care, over your lifetime, spending from ages 22 to 85, $414,000. Vacations, annual vacation from '22 to '85, $180,000. One dog and one cat for 11 to 13 years is $40,000!
That's more expensive than a wedding. The engagement ring, the ceremony, and the reception is now estimated to be $38,200.
There's a reason socialism is doing well. You look at that, and you're like, wow. I mean, if that's the American dream. And for a lot of people, that is the American dream!
That's not what the American dream is supposed to be, but, you know, once -- you know, once Woodrow Wilson and FDR got a hold of us and they started advertising, it became stuff instead of freedom. It became stuff. And, you know, when there's a new report out. Let me see if I have that.
There's a new report out now that shows, first time home buyers made up just 21 percent of the home purchases. That's the lowest on record.
The typical age of repeat buyers hit an all-time high of '62. The median downtowns, reaching 23 percent.
The highest since 2023.
And also, where is it?
The last one is -- the median age for first time home buyers, in 1981, it was 29 years old.
I'm sorry. Yeah. Twenty-nine years old. In 2021, it was 33 years old.
What is it this year?
Median age, first time homeowner, forty.
You're 40 before you can buy any kind of home. That puts these things that people want, dream about, out of reach, until you're 40?
You know, 29 is one thing. But if you're not seeing -- you're not seeing your life really kind of settling down until you're 40, I -- I can understand why you're like, you know what, this system doesn't work.
Because you've never seen it work. It's betrayed you.
Or so you've been sold. It's betrayed you.
And everything is being pushed out of your reach. And when you're young, the one thing you're not is patient.
And at 40, I can see why people are not, you know, yeah. Well, socialism is neat because capitalism isn't working. How would you respond to that?
STU: I mean, it's more lengthy than we have time for. But I would say that the response to, you know, you thinking that you want a home is not to embrace an ideology that murders 100 million people.
That's not -- that's not a good answer to the problem that you think you have.
GLENN: But they're not learning that anywhere.
They're not -- that is our responsibility! To teach those things. Because they're not learning it anywhere.
