3 minEconomy
Affordability crisis erodes Americans’ faith in the American Dream
A Fortune essay by Texas A&M communication professor Jennifer Mercieca argues that rising costs and stagnant incomes have turned affordability into a national crisis of broken trust, with the issue now central to the 2026 midterm elections.
Affordability has become the defining economic issue of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections, and a growing body of commentary argues that the squeeze on household budgets has undermined one of the country’s most cherished ideas: the American Dream of economic security. In an essay published by Fortune in partnership with Zócalo, Texas A&M communication professor and historian Jennifer Mercieca contends that the problem goes beyond prices and wages. She describes affordability as a national crisis of broken trust between citizens and the leaders who have repeatedly promised relief.
Mercieca points to a stark comparison to illustrate the change. In 1955, a family of five could eat dinner at McDonald’s for roughly three hours of minimum-wage work. Today, the same meal requires nearly a full eight-hour workday. The average family, she writes, is also less than half as able to afford a home as it was in 1960. These figures, she notes, capture a basic mismatch between what things cost and what ordinary households can spend.
She argues that affordability is best understood as several overlapping gaps. There is the gap between costs and spending capacity, the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else, the gap between a poverty wage and a livable wage, and the gap between campaign promises and what governments actually deliver. Each, in her account, feeds a sense that the economy works for someone else. Mercieca also cautions that aggregate statistics can be misleading, since personal circumstances vary widely, and that the financial news cycle, focused on stocks, gasoline, eggs, inflation and unemployment, often fails to capture how these pressures feel at the kitchen table.
Popular descriptions of the economy reinforce that disconnect. Mercieca notes the widely used metaphor of a K-shaped recovery, in which the rich keep getting richer while others fall behind. Opinion polls, she writes, show widespread frustration with the economy. She links these troubles to rising outrage, political instability and extremism, arguing that when Americans feel they lack meaningful choices in how they spend their money, their confidence in institutions erodes.
The essay also draws a comparison abroad. Mercieca cites Europeans protesting food prices, housing costs, stagnant wages and declining public services, suggesting that affordability pressures are not uniquely American. Within the United States, however, she argues that repeated promises from leaders to address the cost of living have not been matched by results, which she identifies as the core reason the issue has become so politically charged.
Source: fortune.com
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