One of America’s defining characteristics used to be optimism. That’s not just a stereotype or a cliché. It has been captured by a number of opinion polls. A 2015 Pew Research survey, for instance, found that Americans were much more likely than citizens of other rich nations to describe their day as “particularly good”. They tend to view their country in positive terms too: an earlier Pew survey found that Americans were more likely than citizens of other countries to describe their culture as superior. And a 2017 study for the US’s National Bureau of Economic Research found that Americans tend to be more optimistic about prospects for social mobility than Europeans and were more likely to consider their society fair.
America’s national identity is built on the dream of individual aspiration and self-improvement, but for a long time this has existed more as a kind of mental state than a real feature of American society. Actual social mobility in the US is low and declining and inequality is increasing. For all the national myth-making, it’s better to be born poor in Denmark, or any other Nordic country, than to be born poor in the US.
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