The Freedom to Rise
What This Value Means
Economic mobility is the belief that individuals should have the opportunity to improve their economic standing through effort, talent, and access to fair opportunities. It rejects rigid class hierarchies and instead embraces the idea that hard work can lead to a better life. Economic mobility includes upward movement within one’s lifetime, as well as the ability of future generations to rise further than the generation before. This value affirms that a person’s destiny should not be dictated by birth, wealth, or social status.
Why It Matters
A healthy democracy and a stable society depend on the belief that opportunity is open to all. When economic mobility is strong, people have hope, motivation, and trust in the system. When mobility collapses, resentment grows, inequality widens, and the social fabric weakens. Economic mobility expands the middle class, fuels innovation, and encourages entrepreneurship. It supports the idea that people can shape their own future rather than being trapped by circumstances beyond their control. Without mobility, the American Dream becomes a myth instead of a national principle.
Where This Value Comes From
Economic mobility has deep roots in America’s founding and development.
- Unlike European monarchies and aristocracies, the United States rejected hereditary privilege and embraced the idea of a society where birth did not determine one’s station.
- Early policies such as the Homestead Acts offered land to settlers willing to work it, allowing millions to build economic independence.
- Immigration policy welcomed people seeking a fresh start, enabling newcomers with few resources to build prosperity through labor and enterprise.
- The rise of public education and land-grant universities created pathways for workers and farmers to gain skills that opened new economic opportunities.
- Federal support for small businesses, from early banking laws to 20th-century loan programs, fueled innovation and allowed entrepreneurs to turn ideas into industries.
- Labor reforms, including fair wages, collective bargaining rights, and workplace protections, expanded the middle class and made upward mobility achievable for millions.
How American History Has Treated This Value
American history is shaped by periods of expanding and contracting mobility. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, industrialization created both new fortunes and new inequalities. The New Deal, postwar economic expansion, and the GI Bill dramatically widened opportunity, lifting millions into the middle class and cementing mobility as a national ideal. Civil rights legislation further challenged the barriers that excluded entire communities from economic advancement. At the same time, concentrated wealth, racial discrimination, stagnant wages, and policy choices have periodically undermined mobility. Yet the long tradition of expanding opportunity remains a defining force in American identity.
Why This Value Is Not Partisan
Economic mobility has been supported by leaders across the political spectrum. Conservatives value the freedom to work, innovate, and start businesses. Liberals emphasize reducing systemic barriers and expanding access to opportunity. Both perspectives depend on the belief that people deserve a fair chance to rise. Entrenching wealth and power in a permanent elite harms all Americans and contradicts the foundational idea that success should be earned, not inherited.
Closing Principle
The promise of America has always been the promise of movement — that where you begin does not determine where you can go. Protecting economic mobility means defending the very heart of the American Dream and ensuring that future generations inherit a nation where opportunity is real, not reserved for the few.
If there is a single idea that has drawn people to America across centuries, it is not the promise of wealth, or comfort, or even stability — it is the promise of possibility. The belief that life is not predetermined, that fate is not set at birth, and that you can change your future through effort and imagination. This is the beating heart of the American Dream. Not guaranteed success, but a fair chance. Not inherited privilege, but the freedom to rise.
Unlike the monarchies and aristocracies that dominated Europe for centuries, America deliberately rejected the notion that status should be inherited. At its best, this country defined itself as a place where class wasn’t destiny, where work could pave a path upward, and where children could climb higher than their parents. That idea did not emerge by accident. It was woven into the nation’s early policies, its cultural myths, and its economic structure.
Consider the millions of immigrants who arrived on American shores with little more than hope, determination, and a willingness to work. They came because they believed — correctly — that this country offered opportunities denied to them elsewhere. Many began in factories, farms, mines, kitchens, and shops, and rose through effort, education, and community support. Their stories became the backbone of the national identity: the tale of people who started with nothing and built something lasting.
The Homestead Acts of the 19th century further embodied this promise. By offering land to settlers willing to cultivate it, the federal government created a pathway to property ownership for ordinary people. Millions of families built economic independence through nothing more than hard labor and the opportunity to begin. For countless Americans, this was mobility in its purest form — a chance to create a life that would have been impossible in the class-bound societies their ancestors fled.
Education also played a transformative role. Land-grant universities democratized learning by offering practical, affordable education to people far from elite institutions. Public schools lifted generations into literacy and skilled labor. The GI Bill sent veterans — many from poor, rural, or working-class backgrounds — into colleges they never imagined attending. These programs didn’t just change the lives of individuals; they reshaped the country. They created the modern middle class, fueled economic growth, and made entrepreneurship and homeownership attainable for millions.
Work, too, became a vehicle for mobility when fair wages and labor protections began to take root. The rise of unions and collective bargaining in the early 20th century helped transform dangerous, low-paying jobs into pathways to stability. Workers could afford homes, send children to school, and build savings. Economic mobility wasn’t a slogan; it was a daily reality, supported by policies that valued labor and rewarded contribution.
The point is not that every era of American history has been equally fair, or that mobility has been distributed evenly. Far from it. Racial discrimination, segregation, and systemic barriers shut millions out of opportunities others enjoyed. Wealth often remained concentrated at the top, and economic cycles left some communities struggling while others surged. The American Dream has always been real, but it has never been equally accessible.
And yet, the aspiration — the belief that this country should offer a fair chance — has never disappeared. It has been the driving force behind civil rights movements, labor reforms, anti-discrimination laws, and public investments in education and infrastructure. These efforts all rise from the same conviction: opportunity must be open, and mobility must be possible, or America stops being America.
Today, the value of economic mobility is tested by new challenges: rising inequality, stagnant wages, concentrated corporate power, skyrocketing housing costs, and shrinking access to higher education. These trends threaten the promise at the center of the American idea. When people begin to believe that hard work no longer leads anywhere, cynicism grows. When whole communities feel locked out of prosperity, trust in institutions collapses. When wealth becomes hereditary rather than earned, a democracy begins to resemble the aristocracies it once rejected.
Economic mobility is not a luxury; it is the fuel that keeps the entire system running. It is what motivates innovation, inspires ambition, and binds citizens to a shared national story. When people believe they have a chance, they invest in the future. When they believe the game is rigged, they withdraw, resent, or revolt.
This is not a partisan principle. Conservatives depend on mobility to validate free enterprise and reward initiative. Progressives depend on mobility to reduce inequality and expand justice. Libertarians depend on mobility to preserve individual opportunity. Every ideology, in its own way, relies on the assumption that people must be able to rise.
And when mobility falters, it is not because Americans have become lazy or incapable. It is because the structures that once supported mobility — public education, fair labor standards, affordable housing, accessible healthcare, and pathways to college — have eroded. Without these supports, economic mobility becomes a matter of luck instead of effort, and the American Dream becomes a privilege instead of a promise.
The question before us is simple: do we still believe in the freedom to rise? If we do, then we must strengthen the systems that make mobility possible. We must ensure that opportunity is real, not rhetorical. We must reject policies that entrench wealth and power at the top while cutting off the ladders beneath. A society that preserves economic mobility is a society that honors its founding spirit. A society that abandons it descends into the very hierarchies it once escaped.
America has never promised equality of outcome, but it has always promised the possibility of change. That possibility — that movement — is the bridge between despair and hope, stagnation and progress, division and unity. It is the reason so many came here, the reason so many stayed, and the reason so many fought to expand opportunity to those who were left out.
Economic mobility is not just an economic value. It is a moral one. It defines whether we believe in each other’s potential and whether we believe this nation is still capable of becoming something better than it is.