Americans made hopeless on economy by the left

The American Dream is at risk of death, thanks to decades of terrible economic policy and social engineering from the left.

A new Wall Street Journal-NORC survey tells the tale: 80% say the nation’s economy is poor or not so good; 47% see it getting even worse over the next year.

And 44% disagree that people like them and their families have a “good chance” of bettering their living standards, while 78% are “not confident” that their children’s lives will be better than their own — the highest level since NORC began the poll in 1990.

The proximate causes are clear. Ever since President Joe Biden took office, he and his allies have at every turn adopted policies designed to wreck the economic lives of average Americans and laughed off the consequences.

They dumped trillions into an economy already running hot and sent inflation to levels not seen since the ’80s.

It’s still sky-high, at “only” 6%, with little relief in sight. Especially as a banking crisis constrains the Federal Reserve in its tightening efforts.

And Biden’s medicine for that crisis is worse than the disease.

His administration is moving to save all depositors in failing banks, far above the $250,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation-insured limit, again riding to the rescue of the super-rich on the backs of the less well-off.

But this economic devastation has been a much longer-term project for our liberal elites.

The disastrous experiment in Fed-created easy money began in the Obama years, driving a series of asset bubbles — in tech, stocks, real estate — that are now bursting.

That easy money came on top of President Barack Obama’s own drunken-sailor spending; indeed, it was a disastrously conceived effort to get the economy growing despite his anti-growth policies.

And now we are paying the piper. Or rather, the little guy is: Biden and his rich cronies don’t feel a thing. No wonder anomie is hitting America so deeply.

The poll also revealed that a majority of Americans now see a college degree as not worth the cost. They’re right, of course.

College was once a pathway to upward mobility. But the left’s march through these institutions has turned most campuses into expensive indoctrination machines where education is replaced with woke ideology that leaves students intellectually and emotionally stunted with zero real skills.

This is the fruit of the left’s long crusade for justice and equity: widespread despair and deepening economic inequity.

Curing the infection will be the work of generations (and politicians like Florida’s Ron DeSantis have already made a start). But it’s essential. Hope is central to American being, and its restoration should be the first priority of our governing classes.