The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

by Timothy Snyder

Inequality means not only poverty but the experience of difference. Visible inequality leads Americans to reject the American dream as unlikely or impossible. Meanwhile, more and more Americans are unable to change residences, which also makes better futures hard to imagine. In the 2010s, more Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four lived with their parents than in any other configuration. A young person who became a teacher and took a job in a public school in San Francisco could not afford to buy a home anywhere in the city. In other words, an American who completes an education and takes a job of the highest public value is not sufficiently rewarded to start what was once considered a normal life. A sense of doom pressed down especially on youth. More than a fifth of American families reported owing debt for college in the 2010s. Exposure to inequality persuaded American teens to drop out of high school, which then in turn made it very hard for them to earn. Children down to the age of four suffered in testing if they were raised in poorer families. As Warren Buffett put it, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Americans die in this war every day, in large numbers, in incomparably greater numbers than in wars abroad or as a result of terrorism at home. Because the United States lacks a functional public health system, inequality has brought a health crisis, which in turn has accelerat...