Robert Reich: I am a boomer. I’m an early boomer. I was born in 1946, the same year as Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Cher and Dolly Parton.
Kahlil Greene: Oh, those are good ones. I like the ones at the end. I like those, too.
Robert Reich: My name is Robert Reich. I’m a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and I write Robert Reich’s Substack.
Kahlil Greene: My name is Kahlil Greene. I am the author of the best-selling history newsletter History Can’t Hide on Substack. And I’m also a content creator with over a million followers, and I make videos about the history that you never learned about in school or probably anywhere else.
Robert Reich: What is your definition of the American Dream?
Kahlil Greene: That’s a great question. My definition of the American Dream differs from the classical definition. It’s not as capitalistic. It’s not about buying a house and having a nuclear family with a white picket fence in the suburbs. I think for me, my version of the American Dream will be realized when people are not suffering because of unequal access to healthcare. People are not suffering because of American imperialism abroad. When we are a country that fulfills the ideals that that were set out at our founding and people can have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Robert Reich: Well, it’s very close to yours. I really do believe that at its best, this country is a place where almost anybody can make it through hard work and through diligence and through playing by the rules, of course. Now, as you said, we don’t really achieve the American Dream very often. And Kahlil, I think one of the sad things is that to many people, the American Dream really is a little bit of a mythology right now. Hopefully we’ll get closer and closer to that dream as time goes on.
Kahlil Greene: So do you feel like you’ve achieved the American Dream, and if not yet, does it feel realistic that you can or will?
Robert Reich: I do feel like I’ve achieved the American Dream. I mean, I’m pretty old. I’m an old white dude. And when you are a boomer like me, chances are you’re pretty close to the American Dream, particularly if you are white, and if you are middle class.
Robert Reich: And let me ask you, do you feel like you have achieved the American Dream?
Kahlil Greene: I would not say that I feel like I’ve achieved the American Dream. I think in some ways, I am living a life that’s very privileged and I’m very grateful for. I went to school at Yale University and after that I graduated and became a full-time content creator on social media and started my own business. And it’s a successful business, and I think that ticks off a lot of the boxes that we might associate with the American Dream. But at the same time, I can’t say that I feel like I’ve achieved this American Dream that I’ve been promised, because I think outside of just the material wealth that you might acquire, there’s also this promise that you’ll have peace and security at a psychological level, at a social level. And a lot of my friends, myself included, definitely don’t feel that right now. And one can only cross their fingers that in the next few years, maybe next few decades, that that’ll be something that we do feel.
Robert Reich: What’s one stereotype about your age group that you wish people would stop believing?
Kahlil Greene: That we only get involved in protests and movements out of some performative need for social acceptance. I think my generation is very much a generation that cares about so many social issues based on this intrinsic empathy that we have with the rest of the world. We live at a time where when there’s a crisis or a genocide or any sort of humanitarian violation, it’s getting streamed to us in real time, in graphic detail, by the victims of what is happening. And that’s a level of engagement with world events that no previous generation has ever had. Or at least not grown up with.
Kahlil Greene: So I’m going to throw this back onto you. So what’s one stereotype about your age group or your generation that you wish people would stop believing?
Robert Reich: The stereotype I get from young people about, certainly early boomers, is that we’re out of it. We are privileged. We had it made right from the beginning. We don’t understand the kinds of pressures and sacrifices and all of the other problems that you guys have got to deal with. I don’t think that’s true. Many people, even my age, are still working, not because they want to work, but because they have to work. Those stereotypes, you being performative and we being privileged, I think don’t really work when you look closely at who we are.
Kahlil Greene: I would absolutely agree. And I think, like I said, sometimes they’re used for nefarious intent. Sometimes I would guess young people frame you guys as privileged so they don’t have to listen to what you have to say. And I know from my point of view, a lot of times young people are told that they’re performative because people don’t want to actually engage with what we’re advocating for or what we are trying to raise awareness about, which I think on both ends, like you said, has issues.
Robert Reich: How has your personal definition of success, whether in your career or in your life, changed you?
Kahlil Greene: When I came into college, I actually was only looking to come out as rich and successful, by the definition of monetary success, as possible. I was gunning for a consulting internship, and I ended up getting one at McKinsey & Company. At the beginning of my internship at least, I thought I literally could climb Mount Everest. I thought I had achieved success, and I was set up to never have to worry about finances for the rest of my life. And I realized that that earlier definition of success was not what fulfilled me, and it was not how I wanted to leave a mark on the world. So I started to transition more into doing work that was more community-oriented, community-driven, that was focused on outcomes that improved society as opposed to improving a bottom line. And now I think that my version of success in in small ways always ties back to that.
Kahlil Greene: And what about you?
Robert Reich: Well, I’m quite different in terms of my experience. When I got out of college in 1968, I didn’t think of success in terms of making money. By 1968, there were plenty of jobs. It didn’t seem as if making money would be a difficult thing at all. I was much more concerned about issues such as civil rights and Vietnam, and I dedicated myself to those kinds of issues. In fact, I went into the United States government as soon as I could, not because I felt necessarily that the government was the best place to be, but I thought that that was a good place to continue my work toward social justice. Years later, I became Secretary of Labor in Bill Clinton’s administration, and years later, after that, I was a professor. I began to change my views a little bit. By the time I was retired, quote unquote, I felt that the most important thing for me was to be generative, to pass on my values, to pass on my ideas and to pass on to the next generation and the generation after that, whatever I had learned to equip them to be powerful and better participants in our society.
Kahlil Greene: You’ve discussed before the importance of interacting with people who disagree with you on politics, economics and other social issues. What’s your advice to people, especially younger generations, on building relationships with people who disagree with you?
Robert Reich: I tell my students, and I’m quite sincere about this, that the best way of learning is to talk to people who disagree with you, because that tests your assumptions. It tests your facts, it tests your analysis. It makes you open, hopefully, to the possibility that you might be wrong. I hope, as a country, we get back to a stage where we really can learn from people who disagree with us.
Kahlil Greene: I’d say it’s a much harder thing for my generation. There’s definitely a polarization that is really novel and unique in terms of you’ll be in some way socially ostracized for kiki-ing, or having a tea, or drinking a beer with someone on the opposite side. And what I tell people is very much the same thing as you in terms of the fact that there’s a utility to doing it. You do become smarter, sharper, you increase your conviction, or you change your mind when you talk to people who have different opinions.
Robert Reich: What is your message to Americans who feel disillusioned by the state of the American Dream today?
Kahlil Greene: I’d validate it, to be honest. I don’t think I’m in a position to talk someone down from the state of disillusionment, because I also feel it myself. And to feel disillusioned is very human and normal and understandable. And a lot of my work on social media is not necessarily telling people that they have to change their opinion about the United States, but it’s actually giving them the tools to understand why we are in this position.
Robert Reich: Well, I empathize with people who feel disillusioned with the state of the American Dream. When I graduated college in 1968, it was a terrible year. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated. Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. Our cities were burning down. People were so upset and angry. Some of my friends were in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, and they were beat up and clubbed by Chicago police. And other of my friends were shipped off to Vietnam. Some of them were killed. And that fall, who was elected president, but Richard Nixon? I mean, you have to understand, I’ve been through the valley of disillusionment, and I tell some younger people who I know that I have been there and I understand and I empathize, but it’s not going to stay that way. And I think part of our discussion about disillusionment and the American Dream has got to understand and recognize that technology is just moving ahead rapidly, regardless of how we feel about it. And one of our responsibilities is to make sure that technology is working for the people, and that it is not simply a vehicle for a few people making a huge amount of money.
Kahlil Greene: You’ve said before that the American Dream as we know it in the post-WWII era, is gone. What does the future of the American Dream look like to you, and what will it take for it to be achievable?
Robert Reich: The future of the American Dream to me has a lot to do with democracy. And I’m talking about democracy as I understand it, as it should be practiced: Democracy that empowers everyone and gives everybody a degree of efficacy and agency over their lives and the future. If we don’t have that, then I don’t think we have much of anything. A jurist, a member of the Supreme Court named Louis Brandeis, he said, “We can have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy, but we can’t have both.” Well, if Brandeis is right, and I believe he is right, then in order to get the democracy we need, we have got to do something about the extraordinary concentration of wealth and income and opportunity in a smaller and smaller portion of America. And I was just about to ask you the same thing.
Kahlil Greene: So I think for me, the future of the American Dream, I think it’s a place where we’re very honest about our country and I think able to assess the issues both historically and contemporarily, in a way that’s not grounded in like the deception of our politicians or the sort of the deception of the higher ups against the every person. I think democracy, as you put it, is the key word in both of these situations. It has to be information, wealth, political power. All of that has to be democratized for me to believe that the American dream is being achieved.
Robert Reich: By many accounts, the entry-level job market today is among the worst we’ve seen in years. What do you hope to see more of from policymakers, employers, educational institutions or other decision-makers to ensure young professionals have a viable entry into their chosen career?
Kahlil Greene: I hope that as a society, we very much embrace the idea that young people are going to enter the job market with probably more than one passion and more than one job. For me, I think it’s very important to understand that when someone isn’t fulfilled with a desk job, they’re not going to want to perform their best at work. I wish our educational institutions and our colleges set us up to be entrepreneurs, set us up to enter the gig economy, set up to set us up to be freelancers. I wish the job market prepared us in a way that doesn’t try to trap us in the same job for years and years on end, but understands that we’re probably going to change our jobs and our careers.
Robert Reich: You know, I think our labor market system, to the extent that it’s a system, really was appropriate to the 1930s, maybe the 1940s, but it is completely antiquated in terms of what we need today. In my view, we need a instead of an unemployment insurance system, we need a reemployment insurance system that helps people move rapidly, easily, from job to job, from income source to income source. I think we need universal basic income because a lot of jobs are going to disappear through artificial intelligence. They may sound radical now. They are not radical. I think these kinds of changes are necessary if we are going to save capitalism.
Kahlil Greene: Do you feel hopeful about the future of the United States?
Robert Reich: I do. Now, why in the world do I feel hopeful about the future of the United States, when we are so polarized, when people are so angry, when so many people are struggling to make ends meet? When the United States’ position in the world and our moral authority is probably at the lowest point in the entire post-WWII era? Why am I optimistic? I’m optimistic because of our resilience. I’m old enough to have seen this country bounce back from all sorts of things, depressions and wars.
Robert Reich: And let me ask you, how about you, your optimism?
Kahlil Greene: I don’t feel very hopeful about the future of the United States. I think it comes from my life experience, which has us on a downward trajectory, I would say. And I haven’t so much lived through a terrible moment that we’ve bounced back from. I’ve only lived through terrible moments that somehow get worse. It does feel like there’s an insurmountable odds in terms of fixing things, and I just can’t imagine how we’d do it, even though I’d like to try.
Robert Reich: It seems to me that it’s very important for us to avoid cynicism and to stay hopeful, because if we don’t, then we stop trying. If we don’t keep hope in our hearts, we stop really fighting the good fight to make the country better, however we define better. I really do appreciate and hope that you stay hopeful and you avoid the perils of cynicism.
Kahlil Greene: Yeah. I’ll take that. I’ll take that. I’ll keep the hope alive, no matter what.
Robert Reich: Keep hope alive.
Kahlil Greene: I’ll try my best, at least.
Robert Reich: Kahlil, thank you for everything. Thank you for your time, for your energy, for everything you’ve contributed so far and will contribute in the future.
Kahlil Greene: Thank you so much. I mean, likewise, I appreciate you very much. Honored to speak with you and hear your insights and get some hope.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
About the Author
