US President Joe Biden - Yuri Gripas/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
What are American values?
Not so long ago, the answer to this question wouldn’t have been controversial: faith and freedom.
But Americans aren’t so sure about that anymore. Faith – in the country, in community and in religion – is dwindling rapidly.
A new survey out this week, undertaken by the National Opinion Research Centre and the Wall Street Journal, found significant declines in the number of people reporting that patriotism, faith and starting a family were “very important” to them.
In just four years, the number of people prioritising patriotism has fallen from 61pc to 38pc, while “community involvement” – which actually rose from 47pc to 62pc between 1998 and 2019 – has tumbled to 27pc.
“Religion” has dropped from 48pc to 39pc in just four years, while the number of people who still highly prioritise starting a family fell from 43pc to 30pc over the same short time frame.
One can’t separate this collapse in historically American values from the pandemic.
It’s no surprise that the emotional and economic instability that Covid-19 ushered in impacted people’s future plans, including things like family planning.
Social distancing made “community involvement” impossible in many circumstances.
Anti-vaccination protesters take part in a rally against Covid-19 vaccine mandates, in Santa Monica, California, on August 29, 2021. - RINGO CHIU/AFP via Getty Images
Yes, we vigorously debated some of the harshest lockdown measures – the consequences of which we are still discovering – but critical tools for fighting the virus, like vaccines, did not become politically weaponised here as they did in the States.
It’s not so surprising that a country that has been tearing itself apart over how to get life back to normal isn’t in the mood for flag-wagging.
But as Americans turn away from faith, they might be embracing something else: freedom, specifically economic freedom.
According to the survey, while Americans are losing their faith in social institutions, they are putting greater value and emphasis on money. The proportion who said that it is very important to them rose from 41pc to 43pc between 2019 and 2023.
The survey reflects broader issues that have a tight grip on the public’s attention. Last month, Pew Research polling found that “strengthening the economy” remains at the top of the list of Americans’ priorities.
Note that the priority is not the economy generally, but “strengthening” it.
While the narrative in Europe may be that the US’s post-Covid recovery is going gangbusters – the rate of inflation down, economic growth up – that is not the experience of many Americans at home.
But the US has not been spared price hikes, which reached a four-decade high of 9.1 per cent last summer. The rate may have fallen to 6pc on the year now – a better trajectory than the UK’s – but it is painful for consumers regardless. Just like Brits, Americans feel poorer, too.
The Federal Reserve played the same game of denial as the Bank of England when prices started to go up coming out of lockdowns, forcing the central bank to take aggressive steps retrospectively to get inflation under control.
Interest rates in the US still sit above rates in the UK right now, their full impact has not nearly been felt yet.
It’s one of the handful of reasons that Americans are preparing for, if not a recession, then at least a hit to economic growth.
Yesterday, estimated US growth figures for the last quarter of 2022 were revised downwards by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, to 0.6 per cent from 0.8 per cent the previous quarter.
As higher interest rates start to impact the economy – putting strain on both businesses and households burdened by debt – GDP growth is expected to weaken further. The International Monetary Fund forecasts growth to slow in the US to 1.4 per cent this year, as rate pain sets in over the summer.
It is not at all clear that President Biden is up to the challenge.
His go-to solutions so far have been largely focused on multi-trillion stimulus packages – first for the pandemic, and then the “Inflation Reduction Act” which, ironically, is expected to boost inflation in the short-term, as it really acts as a massive subsidy to companies investing in renewable energy.
With the dollar acting as the world’s reserve currency, Biden may have more scope than other world leaders to keep up this borrow-and-spend agenda.
But the dollar has taken a pummelling recently, not least because rising rates are claiming unexpected victims – including the US’s regional banking sector, which saw the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.
While the US may have more leeway, the country is not exempt from the consequences that the last decade of ultra-low interest rates and cheap money have created, and the public is becoming increasingly attuned to its economic vulnerabilities.
People wait outside the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, to withdraw funds after the federal government intervened upon the bank - Nikolas Liepins/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
People are also uncomfortable with Biden’s policy of pulling the spending lever every time problems creep up.
That same Pew poll from last month notes that “reducing the budget deficit” is becoming an increasingly important topic for the public, with 57pc now seeing it as a priority: 12 percentage points higher than in early 2022.
America’s economy does not need more money sloshing around or more state-sanctioned sugar highs, but rather a liberalising agenda that gives a real boost to the private sector.
Not only does Biden seem underprepared to deal with economically turbulent times: his presidency so far suggests he doesn’t know how to do much more for the economy than sign some big cheques.
For all the division and polarisation Stateside, it seems the one thing Americans still agree on is the importance of a robust economy.
When James Carville pinned the words “the economy, stupid” to the wall of Bill Clinton’s campaign headquarters in 1992, he was emphasising the importance of the economy for winning elections.
Right now, it may be the one thing keeping an increasingly disputatious nation together. Restoring the country’s other values is going to become a near-impossible task if a strong economy isn’t underpinning the repairs.
