Back to Basics Series: Is the American Dream a Lie? (with Christian Cooper and Khiara Bridges)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The promise of the American Dream—work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll get ahead—is unraveling before our eyes. In this Back-to-Basics episode, Christian H. Cooper and law professor Khiara Bridges join Nick and Goldy to posit whether economic mobility has ever truly existed, or if the system was rigged from the start. As wages stagnate, homeownership drifts out of reach, and inequality worsens, their conversation exposes how the American Dream has always been selectively granted and systematically denied. Amid today’s debates over “competitiveness” and “opportunity,” this episode is a reminder: the American Dream didn’t disappear by accident—it’s been taken. Understanding how is the first step toward winning it back. Christian Cooper is a derivatives trader, quantitative finance author, and commentator based in New York City. He directs Banking for a New Beginning, a collaboration between the Aspen Institute and the U.S. Department of State that connects central banks in emerging markets—such as Turkey, Tunisia, and Pakistan—with best practices to strengthen their financial systems Khiara M. Bridges is an anthropologist and professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law, specializing in race, class, reproductive rights, and constitutional law. She is the author of The Poverty of Privacy Rights. Social Media: @christiancooper Further reading: The Poverty of Privacy Rights Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social TikTok: @pitchfork_econ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: ⁠The Pitch⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, pitchfork listeners, Goldie here. We've been doing this podcast for a long time now, so we thought we'd take a little break this summer.
0:08.4	But we don't want you to miss us too much, so we thought we'd revisit some of the most essential episodes from early in our history with a back-to-basic summer series.
0:19.2	And what could be more basic than the American dream? Is the American
0:24.3	dream dead? Was it ever real? We spoke with Christian Cooper and Kiara Bridges about this all-American
0:32.8	narrative and whether we really ever have controlled our own economic destiny.
0:38.8	When we say the American dream, you can define that a lot of different ways, but I think this
0:42.4	dream has sort of been in decline for decades.
0:45.3	Baby boomers are concerned that they're never going to be able to retire because they
0:48.4	won't have enough money.
0:49.8	Since 1979, a 200% rise for the top 1%ers.
0:55.0	It's not class that is causing people of color to be thicker and die younger than their
1:03.0	white counterparts.
1:04.0	It's race.
1:05.0	If you're moving up, effectively someone else is moving down.
1:20.8	From the offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer,
1:27.2	a pointed conversation about who gets what and why with one of America's most provocative capitalists.
1:36.4	Welcome to Pitchfork Economics. I'm Nick Hanauer. Last episode, we talked about economic growth,
1:42.9	what it is and where it comes from. But today, we'd like to devote the episode to the American dream. Is it dead or not? And today, joining me is
1:47.2	Dushi Tahat, and he's going to talk about his experiences with the American Dream, and I'm going to
1:52.0	share some of mine, and we're going to get right into the status of the American Dream. So welcome,
1:58.0	Dugi. Thanks, Nick. I'm Dugi Tahat, former troublemaker of Civic Ventures. I now run a program called
2:04.1	the Communications Hub at Fuse, Washington. I was born in the Philippines, arrived to the
	...

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