The Archbridge Institute is pleased to announce Dr. Justin Callais as its Chief Economist. Dr. Callais previously worked with the organization as a Research Fellow, and we are excited to expand his role and welcome him to our team full-time.

Dr. Callais is the lead author of the Archbridge Institute’s Social Mobility in the 50 States report. As a Research Fellow, he authored original publications such as Economic Mobility, the Rule of Law, and Property Rights Protection; Economic Mobility, Business Dynamism, and Barriers to Entrepreneurship; and Intergenerational Mobility, Social Capital, and Economic Freedom. Dr. Callais is currently an assistant professor of economics and finance at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

On naming Dr. Callais as Chief Economist, Archbridge President and CEO Gonzalo Schwarz said:

“I have been delighted to work with Justin as a Research Fellow over the past few years and look forward to expanding our work together. We are excited to grow our team with a Chief Economist, especially one as original, dedicated, and energized as Justin. Justin brings a passion for both economics and our mission of lifting barriers to human flourishing. I know he will make a great addition to our team and can help launch a human flourishing movement that takes seriously the challenges and insights of economics while embracing a holistic vision for human flourishing.”

You can follow Dr. Callais on X (formerly Twitter) @JustinTCallais.

Dr. Callais sat down for an interview with Archbridge President and CEO Gonzalo Schwarz to discuss his new role, the economics of human flourishing, and his latest venture on Substack.

What drew you to the Archbridge Institute and ultimately inspired you to leave academia and join the organization as chief economist?

I am impressed with both the previous work that has been done at Archbridge, as well as the vision. Archbridge has the great ability of taking academic output and being able to explain it to a non-academic audience, without losing its sophistication. Few people in the classical liberal tradition care and do work on mobility, whereas Archbridge is one of the exceptions.

What projects and priorities are you excited to tackle in your new role?

I am very excited about continuing the Archbridge Institute’s work around upward mobility, particularly with expanding the outreach of our Social Mobility in the 50 States index, updating it over time, and developing other areas as well. I am also eager to grow our influence within both academic and non-academic circles. Within academia, I hope to encourage more scholars to engage with these ideas, and then use that work to collaborate with state and national-based policy centers to translate the research into real-world policy solutions. Across the board, I hope to do more to educate people about the importance of economic mobility and its impacts on human flourishing.

Speaking of human flourishing, the Archbridge Institute has called for a renewed focus on what we’ve dubbed “the economics of flourishing.” From your work, what are some of the most interesting findings you have discovered in this research?

What I have found most interesting in this research is that there is a holistic approach to solving social mobility — or the economics of flourishing. While most previous studies focused on family stability, education, and social capital, many ignored influences matter. The entrepreneurial environment is crucial for mobility, as entrepreneurship breeds economic growth, which in turn brings about greater chances for mobility. Similarly, the rule of law and legal quality are important determinants. Governments should provide opportunities, not stifle them. Too often, government policies protect the interests of those who are already rich and powerful, while targeting those at the bottom of the income distribution. This only furthers the opportunity gap, and more freedoms are the solution to that problem.

As an example, Vincent Geloso and I wrote in the Southern Economic Journal that protection of property rights and a lax regulatory environment are strong predictors of higher rates of income mobility across countries; in a recent working paper with the Archbridge Institute, Vincent Geloso, Alicia Plemmons, Gary Wagner, and I find that the same is true within the United States, too.

That is interesting. Tell us more about the connections you have found between economic freedom, upward mobility, and income equality.

In a recent paper in the Journal of Comparative Economics, Andrew Young and I find that large scale market-based reforms have a substantial positive effect on incomes across the entire distribution. This means that average incomes for all rise when a country institutes more economic freedom. In particular, these reforms are strongest for the top 30% and bottom 40%, meaning that it is not a case of “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.” While there are small increases in inequality from such reforms, the absolute gains heavily outweigh any distributional effects.

You recently started a Substack called Debunking Degrowth. What motivated you to launch this project, and why are degrowth ideas in need of being debunked?

In my opinion, the momentum around de-growth is incredibly worrisome. I believe that the heart of de-growthers is in the right place, but their ideas are dangerous and will only worsen the causes they care about. The benefits of economic growth are underappreciated; many de-growthers see economic growth as a sign that the powerful are getting richer and even more powerful, leaving the rest of us in the dust. However, economic growth has been the engine in solving some of the world’s most intractable issues. Economic growth has lowered poverty rates, reduced infant and maternal mortality, and increased overall well-being. Furthermore, technological advances (which are intrinsically tied to economic growth) have allowed countries to grow and prosper while also reducing emissions. Trying to stop growth via large-scale restructuring of the economy is only going to make us sicker, poorer, and the environment worse off.

A simple example is Venezuela, one of the richest countries in the world until an influx of bad policies led to turmoil. These policies disincentivized private production and innovation, making the country more reliant on its state-owned oil company. This meant that Venezuelans were getting poorer, and emissions were rising. If there is one big takeaway I want people to learn from my Substack, it is that economic growth (and the factors that promote it) is the solution to issues like emissions, poverty, and well-being, not the cause.

To follow Dr. Callais’s work and the rest of the Archbridge team, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on social media.

The Archbridge Institute Names Dr. Justin Callais as Chief Economist was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Archbridge Institute is excited to announce our newest research fellow, Noah Trudeau.

Dr. Trudeau is an assistant professor of economics in the Shields School of Business at Saint Francis University and a research affiliate with the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at West Virginia University. His research specializes in occupational regulation, with a specific focus on the intersection of economic history and the study of barriers created through regulatory action. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from West Virginia University.

Recently, Dr. Trudeau co-authored with Dr. Edward Timmons the Archbridge Institute’s new “State Occupational Licensing Index” (SOLI) report. The index is an annual measure of occupational licensure across all 50 states plus DC.

On welcoming Dr. Trudeau as a Research Fellow, Archbridge President and CEO Gonzalo Schwarz said:

I’m excited to officially welcome Noah to the Archbridge team. He is the lead co-author of the Archbridge Institute’s new State Occupational Licensing Index, and he is a valuable partner in our mission to uncover barriers to social mobility.

In addition to co-producing the annual index, Noah and senior research fellow Ed Timmons provide research insights and testimony for state policy reform. Noah’s expertise will help us expand our efforts to relieve the burden of licensing all across the US.

You can follow Dr. Trudeau on Twitter @EconTrudeau.

In an interview with Archbridge President and CEO Gonzalo Schwarz, Dr. Trudeau addresses his research on licensing and lifting barriers to human flourishing:

Why do you think occupational licensing is such a crucial topic for expanding human flourishing?

The trend over the past century has been to license more occupations and more strictly license the occupations that are already licensed. At its core, there is a place for licensing to protect public interest, but licensing also gives an avenue for special interests to lobby for restricting competition under the guise of public interest. For everyone to flourish, we need to avoid placing unnecessary barriers between them and being productive. I can see areas where occupational licensing places those barriers.

What have you found to be the most interesting aspect about studying occupational licensing and regulation?

Occupational licensing and regulation are so diverse. When states have discretion over anything, they all tend to do it differently. So there are always great opportunities for comparison on what works and what doesn’t.

Can you summarize some of the key takeaways from the recent State Occupational Licensing Index you co-produced with Archbridge Institute senior fellow Edward Timmons?

The big takeaway is that it is possible to put all of the states and DC on the same scale for comparison when it comes to barriers-to-entry through occupational licensing, and we see some states stand out in putting up a lot of barriers. Arkansas, Texas, and Alabama (my home state), unfortunately, stand out in that way. I think some of the most interesting takeaways from the SOLI are the occupations that ended up “Most Uniquely Licensed.” I was really surprised to find that some occupations are only licensed in one or two states.

What are a couple of the most bizarre licenses you have encountered in your work?

Most people that work in licensing would probably point out that Louisiana has a license for florist, but I think Dance/Movement Therapist is one that is unusual to me. One that stands out as surprisingly restrictive is funeral director or mortician. Every state and DC except for Colorado licenses them.

One of your interests as an academic is focusing on pedagogy. Why do you think that’s important?

I’ve always loved teaching. A big part of being an academic, fundamentally, is teaching as well. Whether I’m teaching about restricting competition to my ECON 101 class or to Congress, it’s important to do it effectively. Economics is nicknamed “the dismal science.” Studying pedagogy helps make it a little more interesting and fun.

Archbridge Institute Welcomes Research Fellow Noah Trudeau was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Human Flourishing Lab at the Archbridge Institute is pleased to announce a new initiative, Flourishing in Action. This project will provide applicable tools and resources for researchers, practitioners, and everyday people to increase human flourishing.

Through Flourishing in Action, the Human Flourishing Lab seeks to provide research-based materials to help others reach their full potential. The initiative will be led by Clay Routledge, director of the Human Flourishing Lab and Vice President of Research at the Archbridge Institute. The lab also will partner with scholars, researchers, and creatives through the Flourishing in Action Fellowship.

Announcing Flourishing in Action Fellows

Fellows will develop a project to create a resource that individuals can use to improve their own lives or the lives of others. These resources will be made available in an online toolkit at the Human Flourishing Lab. The first cohort features three Flourishing in Action fellows.

Dr. Andrew Abeyta will focus on exploring strategies to promote a resilient meaning-making mindset to impact young adults struggling to find their path in a post-pandemic America.

Amna Hyder will create short, animated videos showcasing a variety of research on human flourishing, with the goal of increasing optimism and encouraging people to make their lives more positive and meaningful.

Dr. Camilo Ortiz’s latest work involves developing an innovative new treatment for child anxiety that focuses on strengthening resilience and self-efficacy by vastly increasingly child independence. His project will work on refining the treatment manual to spread this exciting intervention to more mental health providers.

On launching the Flourishing in Action Fellowship, Clay Routledge said:

I am thrilled to be launching the Flourishing in Action Fellowship program. At the Human Flourishing Lab, our goal is to not just study flourishing as a scholarly activity but to put what we learn into action. There is growing evidence that teenagers and young adults are increasingly struggling with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and a lack of hope. Our first three fellows were selected because they are doing important work that I believe can make a real difference on these and related issues. This fellowship program is just the beginning of a larger Flourishing in Action project in which we create resources for individuals, schools, churches, and businesses looking for ways to promote the psychological and social ingredients — including agency, optimism, resilience, curiosity, creativity, social trust, community engagement, tolerance, and collaborative problem-solving — that support a flourishing, free, and pluralistic society.

To receive updates about the Flourishing in Action program, sign up for the Archbridge Institute’s twice-monthly email newsletter.

Human Flourishing Lab Launches Flourishing in Action Project, Welcomes Fellows was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Archbridge Institute is excited to welcome Tony Morley as a new Progress Studies Fellow.

Tony Morley is a progress studies writer and communicator who specializes in historical trends in global living standards and the forces that drive human progress and flourishing. His written work has appeared in TIME, Big Think, Freethink, Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), HumanProgress.org, and Quilette, among other publications. He is currently working on “Human Progress for Beginners,” the world’s first children’s book on progress. It is scheduled to be published with Pantera Press at the end of 2023.

On welcoming Tony as a Progress Studies Fellow, Archbridge President and CEO Gonzalo Schwarz said:

I’m very excited to partner with Tony. I’ve been following his work for a few years and believe he’s a master researcher, communicator, and evangelist on the role progress plays in our lives. We share an optimistic, positive, and solutions-oriented view of the world.

As I have mentioned elsewhere: “Increasing human flourishing and reaching our fullest human potential will be achieved when we’re able to reach a rigorous multidisciplinary consensus on what drives progress, understand how people and nations escape poverty, and what the main barriers to social mobility consist of. The synergies among these areas are key to building a robust, antifragile policy agenda for the 21st century and centuries to come. Progress and mobility studies share similar challenges but also potential. Both are keys to solving some of the world’s biggest challenges.”

I think Tony’s addition to the team is key and expands our toolkit to discuss and enable more human progress and flourishing.

You can follow Tony on Twitter @tonymmorley.

Upon joining the Archbridge Institute as Progress Studies Fellow, he spoke with the team about the emerging field of progress studies and his vision for human flourishing.

To kick things off, why did you decide to join an organization with lifting barriers to human flourishing as its central mission?

We’re living today in the most abundant and prosperous time in human history; never before have so many people had access to such a high standard of living as they do today. Travel back just 200 years, however, and life was much different. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the year 1800, every country on earth, including the richest (with the exclusion of just Iceland) had an average life expectancy of under 40 years, and child mortality was roughly 43%; neither of these conditions was aided by literacy rates of just 12% and an extreme poverty rate of roughly 90%.

Where 200 years ago virtually no country had a life expectancy over 40, the world’s lowest life expectancy today can be found in the Central African Republic at just 53.4 years. As for global child mortality, it turns out there’s never been a better time to be born, as I wrote for Big Think in an op-ed entitled “How child mortality fell from 40% to 3.7% in 200 years.” When I began pursuing progress studies five years ago, I was astonished by how few had any knowledge of the incredible progress and growth that had taken place over the last two centuries; however, someone who did was Dr. Clay Routledge, Vice President of Research and Director of the Human Flourishing Lab of the Archbridge Institute. Back in 2022, Clay reached out, noting that our mission for the past and future of human flourishing was remarkably similar. He introduced me to Archbridge — and I’m certainly thankful for that serendipitous introduction — one that would provide an opportunity to work with an incredible team, helping shape the narrative and tell the story of human progress and flourishing and inspire a brighter future.

What do you think is the importance of progress studies and having a more positive vision of the future for human flourishing?

A global zeitgeist of doomerism is an existential risk that’s little spoke of; a culture that’s ready to throw in the towel on civilization could threaten progress toward solutions for many of the challenges facing humanity, from poverty to climate change. Many young minds are growing up in a world awash with news of doom and coming away with a disproportionately negative view of the current state of civilization. Why study to be an engineer, work hard to become a teacher, or invest in learning a trade if the future is a write-off? We can’t let the narrative of culture continue to be hijacked by the doom-mongering of an unapologetically pessimistic media.

Progress studies seeks to research, understand, communicate, and apply those forces which push humanity forward, and to tell the stories of human flourishing that show our incredible resolve as a species to innovate and improve our lives and the greater civilization.

Over the last five years, the progress studies movement — the term largely coined by Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen in an op-ed in The Atlantic titled “We Need a New Science of Progress” — has gained considerable traction. Now with momentum growing, many bright thinkers within the are leveraging that growth to begin to make a difference, and that includes the work being undertaken by the Archbridge Institute.

What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about progress and human flourishing?

The most immediate and perhaps the most significant misconception about progress studies and human flourishing is the nature of the mission. It’s tempting but wrong to see progress proponents as cheering “mission accomplished” or to see them as propaganda engines of panacea. When we hear progress studies communicators speak of progress, we instinctively hear that the past was worse and the present is great, and then subsequently feel that our struggles and the struggles of others are being marginalized. But nothing could be further from the truth; progress forward isn’t progress completed.

I think it’s worth quoting at some length Hans Rosling in Factfulness, Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World — And Why Things Are Better Than You Think:

It seems that when we hear someone say things are getting better, we think they are also saying ‘don’t worry, relax’ or even ‘look away.’ But when I say things are getting better, I am not saying those things at all. I am certainly not advocating looking away from the terrible problems in the world.

I am saying that things can be both bad and better. Think of the world as a premature baby in an incubator. The baby’s health status is extremely bad, and her breathing, heart rate, and other important signs are tracked constantly so that changes for better or worse can quickly be seen. After a week, she is getting a lot better. On all the main measures, she is improving, but she still has to stay in the incubator because her health is still critical. Does it make sense to say that the infant’s situation is improving? Yes. Absolutely. Does it make sense to say it is bad? Yes, absolutely. Does saying ‘things are improving’ imply that everything is fine, and we should all relax and not worry? No, not at all. Is it helpful to have to choose between bad and improving? Definitely not. It’s both. It’s both bad and better. Better, and bad, at the same time. That is how we must think about the current state of the world.

What do you think are the key challenges and opportunities in advancing a progress studies agenda?

I think it’s important to remember that progress studies is still an emerging field of research and communication; there’s still a great deal of room for improvement regarding how the message is communicated and what shapes the movement. The movement is at the bottom of the s-curve of innovation and growth, which is both a major challenge and a major opportunity. Very few people understand the incredible progress humanity has made over the last 200 years, and still fewer are aware that there are dozens of people who are dedicating their lives to understanding and communicating that progress with the hope of inspiring a better future. The progress studies movement is poised, over the next decade, to work toward helping guide culture and policy with a mission to improve human flourishing still further. The great thing about being at the bottom of the s-curve is that you haven’t exhausted all the low-hanging fruit, nor have you run out of steam to innovate and improve the mission delivery. In the coming two years, we’re going to see more books, more Youtube channels, more podcasts, and more thinkers working on progress communications. While it’s still too early to say what those innovations will look like, what can be said with unequivocal confidence is that the best is yet to come.

What are you hoping to achieve in your new role with the Archbridge Institute?

Within the scope of this current role, I’m looking forward to writing and speaking on progress studies and human flourishing. Through 2023, I’ll be bringing original work to the Archbridge Institute that helps shape the progress studies movement and influence, albeit modestly, the current zeitgeist toward a more solutionist and abundant future.

Tony Morley Joins the Archbridge Institute as Progress Studies Fellow was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Gonzalo Schwarz

A recent survey by the Archbridge Institute on the state and health of the American Dream found most Americans believe the American Dream is alive and well. These findings support a hopeful and inclusive narrative that if often lacking in our media and political discourse.

The American Dream Snapshot is an annual survey that asks a diverse, representative group of Americans about their views of the American Dream and what it means to them. In 2022, eight out of ten Americans said they have either achieved the American Dream or are on their way to achieving it. Only two in ten believe the dream is out of reach. When asked what items are essential for the American Dream, most people valued freedom of choice on how to live (83%) and having a good family life (79%). Becoming wealthy was selected by just one in ten Americans, and only half of respondents thought owning a home was essential to the American Dream. These results were consistent across age, levels of education, income, and race/ethnicity.

In addition to these measures, we compared the results across the political spectrum. The survey asked participants to self-identify as liberal (very or somewhat), moderate, or conservative (very or somewhat. The findings based on political affiliation are summarized in the figures below.

Table 1. To what extent do you believe your family has achieved the American Dream?

Regardless of ideology, people across the political spectrum are positive about the American Dream. Liberals are slightly more pessimistic, with 24% of them saying the American Dream is out of reach compared to 17% of moderates and conservatives. However, that still means at least 75% of liberals, moderates, and conservatives are optimistic, believing they have either achieved or are on their way to achieving the American Dream.

The following questions seek to measure whether people view specific achievements as essential, important but not essential, or not important for the American Dream. The results are shown in Tables 2, 3, and 4.

Table 2. Percent of Americans who say the following is essential for the American Dream

Table 3. Percent of Americans who say the following is important but not essential for the American Dream

Table 4. Percent of Americans who say the following is not important for the American Dream

Again, we see a trend of hope, unity, and optimism surrounding the American Dream, regardless of political affiliation. Notably, this vision values measures of purpose and meaning above material pursuits. Even though material success could be a necessary pre-condition for achieving those goals, most people do not view becoming wealthy as essential to the American Dream. In fact, becoming wealthy is the only item reported as “not important” by more than 10% of respondents.

Although statements such as “freedom of choice” and “having a good family life” likely mean different things to different people, the American Dream can still unify us in our diversity. We can think about common threads that resonate with people across the political spectrum, such as freedom, aspiration, overcoming obstacles, purpose, and hard work. The American Dream can reduce polarization and offer a unifying and hopeful narrative for all Americans to embrace.

Gonzalo Schwarz is the Founder and CEO of the Archbridge Institute, a Washington, D.C. based public policy think tank focused on removing barriers to human flourishing.

Note on the survey data and methodology: For this survey, we partnered with NORC at the University of Chicago and its AmeriSpeak® panel. AmeriSpeak® is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the US household population. Randomly selected US households are sampled using area probability and address-based sampling, with a known, nonzero probability of selection from the NORC National Sample Frame. The nationally representative sample consisted of 2,073 respondents, with 494 identifying as liberal, 998 identifying as moderate, and 553 identifying as conservative. The survey was conducted May 26–31, 2022.

The American Dream is America’s Political Common Ground was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Archbridge Institute is pleased to welcome Axel Kaiser as its newest Senior Fellow.

Axel Kaiser Barents von Hohenhagen is a Chilean-German lawyer, Master in Investments, Commerce and Arbitration, and received a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Heidelberg (Germany). He is Director of the Friedrich Hayek Chair at the Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago de Chile and a Senior Fellow at the Atlas Center for Latin America based in Miami. He is also the co-founder and president of the think tank Foundation for Progress in Santiago, Chile — one of the most influential think tanks in Latin America. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and is a best selling author who has won several international prizes for his writings, such as the Hayek Essay contest from the Mont Pelerin Society.

He has been highlighted as one of the ten most admired intellectuals in Chile by the newspaper La Segunda. He is a columnist for the newspapers Diario Financiero and El Mercurio and his opinions have been published in international media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Quillette, Forbes.com, La Nación de Argentina, El País de Uruguay and El Mundo de España, among others. He is an international lecturer and author of several best-selling books. A study published by the John Hopkins University Institute for Applied Economics placed him in third place among the influencers on economic matters with the greatest global impact in Latin America, Spain, and the United States on Twitter.

Upon joining the Archbridge Institute as Senior Fellow, he sat down with the staff to discuss prosperity in Latin American, the American Dream, and what he hopes to accomplish as Senior Fellow.

What are the keys to prosperity and flourishing in Latin America and how has the region fared in these areas over the past couple of decades?

A fundamental reason why we lack institutions that enable sustainable prosperity in our region has to do with the fact that public ideologies reinforce a class struggle worldview. There is widespread envy of the rich and stigmatization of success even in countries like Chile where poor people have proportionally experienced more prosperity than the most affluent segments of the population. Success is punished because it is usually considered unfair for the simple reason that it is not evenly distributed. Thus, inequality then becomes a cause for revolution, even when it is just.

There is also a strong culture of dependency from the government which populists exploit in order to be elected and remain in office. To be sure, some of this also happens in the developed world where the welfare state has eroded work ethic and has undermined incentives for people to stand on their own feet. But in Latin America a weak work ethic, very low trust among citizens and the expectation that a strong man or some revolutionary change could bring about paradise on earth is part of what is absorbed by people throughout their entire lives. Too many Latinos lack faith in their own abilities to flourish economically, socially and personally. We tend to blame others for our shortcomings precisely because we feel powerless. This mindset, which is also gaining ground in the United States, has devastating consequences for the social order. If there is one lesson the United States should learn from Latin America, it is that authoritarian populism cannot prosper where people believe in themselves because you don’t need some “strong” leader to achieve your goals for you or a state that covers your basic needs.

The pursuit of happiness, which is essentially a philosophy of self-reliance, is what Latin America has lacked from her very beginnings. That is why we keep falling into the same trap. If you take a look at the region nowadays you would see Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Peru and Bolivia -to name the most relevant cases — in the hands of far left anti-capitalist and anti-human flourishing governments. Most of these regimes came to power after Venezuela’s economic and social Armageddon at the hands of authoritarian socialists, not the mention the disastrous Cuban revolution. If we do not change the mentality that prevails in our region, we will never escape misery.

What are American Dream voters and do Hispanic Americans fit that characterization?

I would define American Dream voters as those who do not vote for a political party per se but for those politicians who best represent the founding ideals of America. Self — reliance, faith and trust in yourself, hard work, honesty and a disposition to help others are the essence of the American Dream. All of these and other values demand that the government is strictly limited in its ability to direct people’s lives and affect their property. I fear that a large part of Hispanic Americans tends to vote for what is familiar to them, namely politicians who exploit fear of want and envy of the rich in order to increase their own power in the name of noble intentions.

There is no reason to believe that many Latinos who have left their ruined countries for a better life in the United States will truly embrace the American Dream on a value system level. Not even if they are hardworking people. Culture and mentality do not change because you crossed a border and most people in Latin America do not rationally understand why their own countries keep failing. We need to bring them closer to the values of the American Dream so that they become a force for preserving the ideal that made of the United States the greatest nation on earth. That is no easy task but we have no choice. If the United States loses its soul the whole world will descend into darkness.

How might the future of the United States influence the future of Latin America?

I believe that one of the reasons why Latin America has gone back to 1960s type of revolutionary regimes and rhetoric has to do with the fact that the United States abandoned the region after 9/11. You can see we are lost without the positive influence of the United States and now that this super power is experiencing a spiral of self -hatred at the hands of the woke left, respect and admiration for America among many people is deteriorating rapidly. Latin America’s best moments have always been the result of trying to emulate our northern neighbors. Unfortunately, resentment spread by elites and demagogues have led us over and over again to blame the United States for our own incapacity to create prosperity. But there are forces working in the opposite direction. There lies Latin America’s hope. At any rate, if the United States continues on its self-destructive path and abandons its founding ideals, Latin America will be completely lost. Russia and especially China will take over as the region’s main political, cultural and economic influence. That process has already started.

What type of work will do in partnership with the Archbridge Institute and its focus on human flourishing?

We will translate the American Dream into Spanish. This basically means that we will engage in an intense work of cultural change in order to make the values and ideas that are responsible for human flourishing a driving force of the public and intellectual debate. People follow the ideas that are spread by intellectuals, artists, writers and many others. We need to work on the prevailing narratives if we want to change how people think about themselves, about success, about government and about the different social issues they confront. There is no doubt that in Latin America cultural hegemony is completely on the side of those who undermine the values of self-reliance and individualism and that this plays a decisive role in hindering human flourishing.

In the United States, where the best universities and the cultural elites have become increasingly illiberal, the effects of the change in mentality have also been dramatic. But here in the United States the fight is about the preservation of the founding values that have been there since the beginning. In Latin America and the Spanish speaking world, which includes Hispanic Americans, the fight is about creating a new mindset altogether. In order to achieve that we need to convey the American Dream message in simple terms so we can reach wide audiences and not only sophisticated and well-educated people. We need to use social networks, write popular books, novels, go on talk shows, etc. True and effective public intellectuals make a gigantic difference. We need more “mind changers”. Aside from my academic work, that is the fundamental role I expect to play with Archbridge’s support, both among Latinos in the United States and in Latin America.

You can follow Axel on Twitter @AXELKAISER.

Axel Kaiser Joins the Archbridge Institute as Senior Fellow was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Archbridge Institute is pleased to announce that Dr. Clay Routledge will be joining the organization as Vice President of Research and the Director of the new Human Flourishing Lab.

Dr. Routledge is a leading expert in existential psychology. His work examines how the human need for meaning in life influences and is influenced by different cognitive processes, self-regulation, momentous life experiences, personal and professional goals, creativity, social connections, spirituality and religiosity, entrepreneurship, and prosocial behavior.

Dr. Routledge has published over 100 scholarly papers, co-edited three books on existential psychology, and authored the books Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource and Supernatural: Death, Meaning, and the Power of the Invisible World. His work has been featured by many media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, ABC News, BBC News, CBC News, CNN, NBC Today, MSNBC, Men’s Health, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. As a social commentator, Dr. Routledge has authored articles for a number of outlets including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, USA Today, Scientific American, National Review, Entrepreneur, National Affairs, and Harvard Business Review. He was the lead writer for the TED-Ed animated lesson Why Do We Feel Nostalgia?

Before joining the Archbridge Institute, Dr. Routledge served as the Arden & Donna Hetland Distinguished Professor of Business at North Dakota State University and a faculty scholar at the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth. He also worked with the Archbridge Institute as a Senior Research Fellow and Co-editor of Profectus Magazine. In his time as Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Routledge conducted original research and authored several reports including, Why Meaning Matters For Freedom And Flourishing, Existential Agency in America, and Patriotic Progress: National Pride and Optimism about the Future.

On his joining the Institute, Archbridge President and CEO Gonzalo Schwarz said:

I’m very excited to have such a renowned scholar and expert joining our team. It is not every day that a tenured professor decides to leave academia. But Clay is not just any professor, he is a scholar on a mission. The breadth and nuance of Clay’s work is extraordinary and exemplifies how scholarship can be more holistic and humanistic. As a psychologist he strives to find ways to improve on the human condition and as a human he exemplifies a life full of purpose and vision. It is very fitting that as one of the world’s leading experts on meaning, he wholeheartedly shares our mission and purpose at Archbridge of lifting barriers to human flourishing, and helping others remove the barriers that stand in their way of finding their own meaning in life. The Archbridge team couldn’t be more excited and honored to have Clay on board.

You can follow him on Twitter @clayroutledge.

Upon joining the Institute, Dr. Routledge sat down with the team to talk more about his new role, why he decided to transition out of academia, and what he hopes to achieve with the newly minted Human Flourishing Lab.

To kick things off, why did you decide to join an organization with lifting barriers to human flourishing as its central mission?

I am an existential psychologist and have spent the last two decades studying humans as a uniquely agentic and meaning-driven species and I would like to spend the rest of my career using my expertise and continued research to help people understand and use their inner existential resources to overcome barriers and reach their full potential in the service of their own individual as well as broader societal flourishing. Archbridge, with its emphasis on freedom, social mobility, flourishing, and the American Dream is the perfect institute to do this work. I am honored to be joining the team.

You’ve been very successful in academia for large parts of your career, what made you decide to make the jump to an organization outside of it?

I have been very fortunate to have an intellectually stimulating and successful research career in academia but I believe I can do more innovative and impactful work outside of the academy. There are definitely many great scholars still working in academia, but the culture is becoming increasingly bureaucratic, conformist, pessimistic, and antagonistic to ideas that I think are crucial to human progress, social mobility, and flourishing. I plan to continue to collaborate with, mentor, and support academic scholars doing important research but believe I can be more effective doing this from an institute outside of academia.

As part of your new role with the Archbridge Institute, you will be directing its new Human Flourishing Lab. Can you talk a bit about your goals for the lab and what we can expect from it over the next few months?

I have been conducting research on human motivation and wellbeing and the psychology of flourishing more broadly for two decades and I plan to expand on that work with Archbridge, but with a stronger focus on making my expertise and research accessible and helpful to the public as well as policymakers, cultural influencers, and business leaders. A big part of lifting barriers to human flourishing is influencing the cultural narratives that people look to for guidance and inspiration. Currently, there is a lot of pessimism, perceived victimhood, outrage, and cynicism in our culture, and a lack of emphasis on the study and promotion of human agency, potential, and progress. So a big goal of the lab is not just to conduct research but also to kickstart a broader flourishing movement, one that appreciates the advanced cognitive, emotional, and motivational psychological resources that drive humans to explore, discover, create, innovate, build, and inspire. Therefore, in the coming months, in addition to conducting and publishing research, I plan to start building collaborative research groups, planning workshops, and commissioning papers on topics that will advance our understanding of what helps individuals reach their full potential and make meaningful contributions to their families, communities, and the broader society.

In addition to the Human Flourishing Lab, what are the key accomplishments you are hoping to achieve in your new role with the Archbridge Institute?

Think tanks that have traditionally focused narrowly on economic policy are starting to do a better job appreciating the importance of social and cultural variables but I think much more attention needs to be paid to the psychological underpinnings of human behavior and how that connects to broader trends and challenges that influence individual and societal progress and flourishing. I am hoping to help Archbridge become a think tank leader in this space. More broadly, I want to help Archbridge expand its interdisciplinary research portfolio on topics that are important to social mobility, progress, and flourishing.

To keep up with Dr. Routledge and the rest of the Archbridge team, sign up for our monthly newsletter, the Archbridge Connector or follow us on Twitter @archbridgeinst.

The Archbridge Institute Welcomes Dr. Clay Routledge was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Gary Hoover

I often hear people say that they dislike chain stores or chain restaurants, “big box” stores, or franchises. America has long had a love-hate relationship with the big chains. Understanding the chains, their role in society, and whether they are good or bad requires some context.

Hating Chains: A History

Business organizations with multiple locations date back to the Medici, Fugger, and other families in Europe hundreds of years ago. The first major retail chains in America evolved in the grocery store business in the late nineteenth century. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (the “A&P”) had 200 grocery stores by 1900 and more than 14,000 by 1925, remarkable in a world without computers and a national paved highway system. In 1929, A&P was one of only a handful of billion-dollar companies in the world. Other big chains included JC Penney, FW Woolworth, SS Kresge, WT Grant, Kroger, and Safeway. The two big mail order houses, Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck, also started opening physical stores in the 1920s.

The rise of chain stores created a great amount of controversy in the 1920s and 1930s. State legislatures and Congress began investigations into the “chain store evil.” Opponents argued that chain stores drove independent, local stores out of business, competed unfairly by selling things below their cost, sent the profits to fat-cat capitalists, and tended toward monopoly. The nation’s multitude of small merchants — “a nation of shopkeepers” — rallied behind these complaints.

At the peak of the movement, some states proposed very high taxes on chain stores, and measures along those lines moved through Congress. In 1923, Missouri was the first state to consider anti-chain legislation. In one year, 1933, 225 bills were introduced in forty-two state legislatures to tax or regulate chain stores. By 1938, Texas Congressman Wright Patman unsuccessfully tried to enact laws that would have taxed the chains so heavily that they would have gone out of business. His proposal dramatically increased the taxes per store based on how many stores were in a chain, so that taxes would have risen geometrically for the largest chains.

The arguments of the small merchants were similar to some of those heard today. North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye called the chain store organizations “a juggernaut of greed…..a cancer, spreading and devouring, as it goes, the whole tissue of the Nation’s economic body.” A small-town banker wrote Nye that “Chain stores infested our nation like a plague…these giant octopuses from the financial centers of the East…were extending their slimy tentacles into most every state in the Union.” Others, including Louisiana’s fiery populist Huey Long, used even more inflammatory rhetoric. (Abolishing chain stores was also a top campaign promise of Adolph Hitler, but he became busy with other priorities and never achieved that goal.)

The political reality ultimately had to reflect the position of the American people. By their spending patterns, the people voiced their love of the chain stores and the utility they provide. The battle against the chain stores died down and the big chains continued to expand and prosper up through the present day.

The Social Benefit and Economic Role of Retailing

Understanding retailing starts by asking, “Why does retailing exist? What is the economic function of retailing?”

The first purpose of our distribution system — including retailers and the wholesalers and distributors that often supply them — is to “break bulk.” Simply put, fifty thousand candy bars or smartphones at the factory dock have little value to consumers. Only by moving them from the factory to our homes and offices do products become useful. Companies in the distribution system try to figure out who needs what, how many, where, when, and at what price. And then how to get the products where they are needed (“logistics” or “supply chain”).

The Soviet Union and other Communist states proved that top-down planning by “experts” cannot achieve this task competently. There are too many variables in who needs what when. In the modern consumer economy, consumer wants and needs change daily. Effective distribution requires flexibility, adaptability, creativity, and tremendous effort.

The distribution of goods and services (including foodservice, lodging, and transportation) is an extremely complex process. The typical Walmart supercenter carries well over one hundred thousand different items from tens of thousands of suppliers. Having the right quantity of each item in every one of over four thousand U.S. Walmart stores is a massive task. Every chain retailer faces the same issues.

Retail Evolution

Until the late nineteenth century, retailing was entirely a “mom and pop” industry. In each town, the general store, sometimes owned by the town’s main employer (as in a mining town), served “all the needs” of the community. The process was labor intensive: you told the clerk what you wanted, and he fetched it from the shelves behind the counter. (Usually “he,” not “she,” back then.)

Product selection was limited and varied from store to store. Food like pickles and crackers were often sold out of unsanitary and sometimes insect-infested open barrels. Products went through multiple “middlemen” enroute from the factory to the consumer, increasing the costs of distribution and thus the selling prices of merchandise.

Ambitious entrepreneurs developed better ways of distribution, with less waste, better quality, more uniform products, and lower prices.

Alexander Turney Stewart led the development of the big city department store in nineteenth century New York City with his “Marble Palace.” This new idea brought many different types of merchandise under one roof, sharing staff payroll and utility, advertising, real estate, and other costs. Haggling over prices was replaced by fixed prices. Customers could return items and get their money back if not satisfied. Prices came down, quality went up.

The Hartford family began to build more of their A&P grocery stores. Founded to sell tea from China at low prices (by eliminating middlemen), the A&P soon entered the coffee and other food businesses, expanding their selection. Early in the twentieth century, A&P developed the “economy store” with much lower prices due to offering more self-service: the shelves full of goods allowed consumers to choose for themselves. More than fifteen thousand A&P economy stores were built.

Then, in the Great Depression of the 1930s, food retailers sought ways to lower prices even further. Credit for invention of the supermarket usually goes to Michael Cullen, whose King Kullen store in Queens, New York, broke sales records with its very low prices. The new supermarkets often leased old factory buildings or other under-utilized real estate. The stores were “bare bones” in order to keep expenses low. Existing big grocery chains including A&P and Kroger soon reacted and built their own self-service supermarkets across the nation.

While the grocery store industry was evolving, JC Penney figured out how to provide clothing and linens at low prices through his chain stores and FW Woolworth and other dime store operators made basic staple merchandise available in every town in the nation. Sears’ and Ward’s catalogs served farmers, ranchers, and small-town residents with better quality products at unprecedented low prices. (There was a political effort to limit the two big mail order houses, but farmers realized they had been overpaying at the local store and were happy to buy from Sears and Ward’s.)

The 1920s saw the rise of restaurant chains. Some of the early chains including A&W, Steak N Shake, and White Castle are still with us. By the 1960s, Howard Johnson’s became a huge chain with over 1,000 restaurants. Especially after World War II, when Americans began to travel around the nation in greater numbers, lodging chains including Best Western and Holiday Inns rose to prominence.

Many of these organizations adopted the franchising business model. Franchises were first created to distribute “capital goods” and heavy equipment by the McCormick reaper works, the Singer sewing machine company, and then the automakers with their local dealers. By combining the marketing and reputation of a powerful recognized brand with local investment and ownership, franchising proved an ideal vehicle for a business to grow. Today it is pervasive in lodging, foodservice, and some types of retailing like gasoline. The franchise system allows independent businesspeople to profit from the systems and marketing of big national or global organizations and brands. By applying proven business models, the franchise system also gives the local entrepreneur more chance of success than they might experience by “going it alone.”

More recent decades have witnessed a continuous flow of new retail concepts. The convenience store started as Texas ice houses. The general merchandise discount store took the low overhead, “no frills” concept of the supermarket and applied it to non-food merchandise of all types. In 1962, Kmart, Walmart, and Target were founded, Kmart going on to lead the industry for the next twenty years. The wholesale club (Costco, Sam’s, BJ’s) was pioneered by Sol Price in San Diego in the 1970s. Superstores or “category” killers then took the basic supermarket idea and applied it to specialty categories of merchandise, starting with Toys R US, then followed by Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, Staples, Barnes & Noble, ULTA, and others.

And today we see Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Casper, Dollar Shave Club, Warby-Parker, and many other companies that arose with the digital age. The most successful offer even lower prices and bigger selections than even the chain stores. In general, they do not create as many jobs (for the same revenues) as bricks-and-mortar stores.

And so, the trend of new retail models and concepts with lower prices has repeated over and over. That trend is unlikely to come to a sudden stop.

Death of the Independents?

All those retail concepts had one thing in common: they eliminated waste, used less resources, and thus delivered better products at lower prices to the end consumer. In effect, everyone in America got a raise, an increase in their disposable income, due to these retail innovations. Few consumers resisted and most loved the results.

In the process, the old, outdated methods of distribution went into decline. The country general store virtually disappeared. While independent drugstores and grocery stores still number in the thousands across America, their numbers and market shares have shriveled compared with fifty years ago. Big chains are not immune from the onrush of innovation and the “creative destruction” that results: just look at Kmart, Sears, Ward’s, JC Penney, Woolworth’s, and Grant’s, all gone or in bad shape.

The “bottom line” here is that Walmart, Home Depot, Kroger, and Walgreen’s were not individually responsible for the demise of so many local, independent stores. The decline of local stores has been going on since the 1870s and is a natural, organic evolution from wasteful, expensive distribution methods to more efficient ways of getting things from the factory to the customer.

The process is conceptually similar to Toyota beating General Motors with better, more efficient cars; Apple and Microsoft beating IBM with better, cheaper computing power; or the spreadsheet replacing the calculator replacing the slide rule replacing the abacus.

Independent merchants can survive these changes and prosper if they pursue one of these strategies:

· Sell products which are unique, such as locally made or luxury products not available in the big retail chains. Do not try to compete head-to-head on price with the more efficient big stores.

· Offer service levels that go beyond what the “supermarket” self-service type stores can offer.

· Serve markets such as small towns or urban neighborhoods which are not well served by the chains.

· If the market is big enough (in a large city or globally on the Internet), focus on a narrow customer or product niche. Especially effective for online retailers.

Some studies indicate that retail employment outside of Walmart actually rises when Walmart comes to town. More people visit the town to shop Walmart. Those specialty retailers who offer something different can prosper on this increased traffic.

As we continue along into the twenty-first century, the outlook for small stores and boutiques is positive. The rise of wealth in America and around the world means more people are able and willing to pay higher prices for higher service levels of independent stores. Our economic rise also allows more people to spend more money on niche products and interests. Digital technology (including services like Shopify for small sellers) makes it easier than ever for small firms to serve a global online market.

While the “rich” and “elites” can afford the more expensive independent stores, the low-cost chains are there to serve everyone else, especially those on a tight budget. It is also likely that people, rich and poor, save money on basics by shopping discount stores and websites. They then use those savings to finance their luxuries, large and small, from travel to dining out, from housing to automobiles.

In some communities, activists have stopped the construction of a Walmart or other big stores. These people seem to want to pay higher prices and to have little empathy for the less wealthy.

Our retail world is enriched by the presence of big chains, franchises, and independent stores. Yet only the best will survive. Retailers must stay on their toes and offer the public engaging in-store or onsite experiences if they are to survive and grow. As always, they must offer the consumer a “better mousetrap” than the competition.

Responding to Other Complaints About Chain Stores

The biggest charge against the chains has always been that they drove the independents out of business and hurt the local communities, as described in the preceding paragraphs. But other charges have been levelled at them; here are some of the most common ones.

Some say that the chain stores are the cause of the rise of Chinese imports and the loss of American manufacturing jobs. They are not.

The cause of the rise of Chinese manufacturing is that one billion people were not contributing to the global economy under Mao. Deng, who became leader of China in the late 1970s, then freed up the people, allowing them to find their “best use” in the global economy. “All of a sudden,” Chinese manufacturing skyrocketed. Every retailer, no matter how big or small, took advantage of this new, more affordable source. Today China as a major source of merchandise has been joined by South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, and many other countries.

Ironically, some of the people most vocal about the evils of chain stores were also among the first to buy Asian automobiles, contributing to the decline of one of our biggest domestic industries.

Walmart is often the prime case of “moving to China.” Yet Walmart, over the last thirty years, has shifted from being a non-food store to generating over half of its sales from groceries. Now the world’s largest food seller, Walmart buys less from China than it otherwise would have, since relatively few food and grocery store products (like toothpaste and toilet paper) come from China or other distant lands.

Others claim that the chains depress retail wages. That is also not the case.

Retailing, restaurants, and lodging have always been the place where people have their first job, where they learn to show up on time and handle responsibility. Waiting tables, stocking shelves, and operating cash registers are among the most common and easiest-to-learn skills, not requiring a college or more advanced degree. On any given day, millions of people work in these industries.

The labor market is a market, set by the supply of and demand for the relevant skills. When Walmart enters a new market, one of the first things they study is the labor market. Pay levels differ substantially from the Bay Area of California to rural Mississippi. There is nowhere where Walmart is the only employer in town.

As the economy has grown, wages have risen. Thirty years ago, something like 15% of all the Americans who were paid by the hour earned the federal minimum wage or less. Today that percent is down to 2%, as wages have risen while the federal minimum wage has not. Many big retail chains are now starting their employees at $12–15 an hour, about double the federal minimum wage. Continued increases in real wages can be expected in 2021 due to inflation in general and shortages of qualified labor.

Walmart is the biggest private employer in the world, with 2.3 million workers, most of them in the United States. Many of those retail workers left independent stores to go to work for Walmart. The reasons are many:

· Big companies are less likely to abuse employees because they are so visible and open to attack and because lawyers and regulators have more clout and oversight of big companies. That does not mean it never happens in a giant chain, but the chains work to stamp out misbehavior and “bad apple” managers.

· Big retailers offer far better benefits than most independent stores, using their size to get better deals from health insurance and other companies.

· The large chains offer people the chance to grow, to learn, and to move up. At most independent stores, there is no way to move up, and often the owner’s family (nepotism) takes precedence over other employees.

· The best retailers offer their employees the opportunity to buy stock at a discount or have stock option plans. Sears led the way in the early twentieth century when owner Julius Rosenwald gifted all employees a meaningful chunk of the company’s stock. Sears, JC Penney, and Walmart have created many millionaires, even among administrative assistants and frontline workers. Franchisors like McDonald’s have also created thousands of millionaires through their franchising systems. Many of those franchisees started “at the bottom,” working in a McDonald’s.

Most retail workers do it for a short period of time, or seasonally at Christmas. But a substantial minority actually love the work, and their “upside” is unlimited, especially in a chain that is big and growing. Unlike Google, Facebook, or Goldman Sachs, people do not have to hold an Ivy League or advanced technical degree to get ahead. Race, religion, sexual preference, national origin, and age do not matter to retailers. The only requirements for success are hard work, a desire to please the customer, honesty, and common sense.

A look at the common lists of “best places to work” such as the list compiled by Fortune magazine is always informative. It is easy for Google or Goldman Sachs to pay high salaries and offer comfy jobs and free lunches. Yet those lists also include Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Wegman’s food stores, Whole Foods Market, Publix supermarkets, Costco, and many other companies which employ hundreds of thousands of workers. Creating great places to work in the big service industries is a major accomplishment.

Few things are more important to our future than job creation. Walmart has on average created something like 100 jobs a day, 365 days a year, for over fifty years. It is possible that the company has created more jobs paying over $60,000 a year than any other company has created total jobs.

Aside from moving production to China and depressing wages, numerous other charges are levelled at the big chain stores. They pollute, they get special tax breaks for their new stores, they have ugly buildings, they leave no money in the local community. In none of these cases is the chain store itself the problem. Each trend was in place long before the rise of Walmart and Home Depot. Each of the challenges is also true of other industries.

As to local communities, chain stores make important contributions through job creation and lower prices. Every store also generates sales tax revenue for the states and localities that have sales taxes. Every store pays property taxes. Every store buys local utilities and a multitude of local services. The profits your local store generates often return to the community in terms of remodeled and expanded stores, more jobs, and a greater variety and quantity of goods on the shelves. Compare that to online sellers, who rarely contribute anything to your local economy (unless they are based there) beyond lower prices.

Every big retail chain is a potential customer for other companies in the community, like those which produce software, website services, and legal and other services. Many smaller businesses depend on big businesses as the customers.

Summing Up

Chain stores, discounters, and franchise organizations are among the great blessings of the modern age. Whether we study the Sears catalog in 1900, supermarkets in the 1930s, Kmart in the 1970s, Walmart at the turn of the century, or Amazon today, consumers love to save money. Great merchants will always find ways to better serve the public, to lower prices and improve quality. They innovate every day, with new concepts from Tractor Supply to Five Below springing up. In 2021, Dollar General will build and open three new stores every day, seven days a week. TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Ross Stores, Target, and Home Depot are other chains which are booming even in the age of Amazon.

The only constant is change.

We will all be better off and have a better understanding of the way the world works, if we can recognize the wonders of our distribution system, taking a wider and longer view of the chains and franchises and their role in society and the economy.

Gary Hoover is an entrepreneur, business historian, and frequent contributor to the Archbridge Institute. Read more about America’s most pioneering entrepreneurs in his American Originals series.

The Wonders of Chain Stores and Franchises was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Ben Wilterdink

Introduction

Over the past several decades, trust in many of America’s institutions has been on a steady decline. However, this decline has not been equal among all of these institutions and the media interpretation of these changing attitudes has not always been an accurate reflection of what communities closest to them actually think.

To gauge Americans’ actual views on various institutions, the Archbridge Institute commissioned a survey asking Americans’ views on eleven different social, cultural, and economic institutions. In some cases, the survey results suggest that there is cause for optimism about reforming institutions to preserve Americans’ trust in them. In other cases, Americans’ attitude toward them reveals a deep mistrust that will require deep changes to meaningfully rebuild that trust over time.

For this survey we partnered again with NORC at the University of Chicago and its AmeriSpeak® panel. AmeriSpeak® is a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the US household population. Randomly selected US households are sampled using area probability and address-based sampling, with a known, nonzero probability of selection from the NORC National Sample Frame. The nationally representative sample consisted of 2,005 respondents. The survey was conducted June 24–28, 2021.

Key Findings:

1) Americans have generally positive views on small business and entrepreneurs but had much more neutral or negative views when it comes to big business.

2) More Americans view Free Enterprise positively than neutrally or negatively, but a plurality of respondents reported neutral feelings toward Capitalism.

3) Nearly half of Americans had a neutral view of the federal government with more than twice as many Americans reporting a negative view of it than a positive one.

4) More than eighty percent of Americans viewed socialism either neutrally or negatively, with only fifteen percent reporting a positive view.

5) The vast majority of Americans reported either positive or neutral views of colleges and universities, with only a slight majority of those with a bachelor’s degree or more reporting positive views.

6) Almost half of Americans have a positive view of the police, but significantly fewer blacks and younger Americans report having a positive view.

7) More Americans have a negative view of the media than report having either a positive or neutral view. Only twelve percent of Americans report having a positive view of the media — the lowest percentage of positive attitudes included in this survey.

8) Almost half of Americans report having a neutral view of organized religion with nearly equal numbers reporting positive and negative views.

Survey Results:

Small businesses account for more than half of all employment opportunities in America. Given the number of small businesses and how often Americans’ interact with them, it’s not surprising that a strong majority of Americans have a positive view of them. However, despite the generally positive view, fewer Americans with no high school diploma (although still a majority) report having a positive view of small business.

Given the overwhelmingly positive views of small business, with more than three in four Americans reporting a positive view, the drop in positive views of entrepreneurs is somewhat surprising. Less than half of Americans with no high school diploma, those earning under $30,000 per year, and those between the ages of 18 and 29 reported having positive views of entrepreneurs. Despite the decline in positive views of entrepreneurs compared to small businesses, a substantial majority of Americans (sixty percent) still reported having a positive view of entrepreneurs.

Although just slightly fewer than half of Americans reported positive views on free enterprise, only a small minority (five percent) reported having negative views of it. Americans with no high school diploma and those between the ages of 18 and 29 were the least likely to report having positive views of free enterprise and were much more likely than other groups to have a neutral view of free enterprise.

Interestingly, women were significantly less likely to have a positive view of free enterprise than men, with only forty percent reporting a positive view compared to nearly sixty percent of men.

Fewer Americans had positive views of capitalism than either small business, entrepreneurs, or free enterprise. Americans 60 years and older were nearly twice as likely to have positive view of capitalism than Americans between the ages of 18 and 29. Similarly, Americans earning more than $100,000 per year were more than twice as likely to have positive views of capitalism than those earning under $30,000 per year.

Finally, similar to the differences in views of free enterprise, women were significantly less likely than men to report positive views about capitalism, with only 27 percent of women reporting a positive view compared with 47 percent of men.

More than half of Americans reported having a neutral view of big business, and 35 percent reported having a negative view — more than double those that reported having a positive view. This general distribution of positive, neutral, and negative views on big business was relatively consistent between all of the groups included in this survey.

While almost half of Americans had a neutral view of the federal government, more than twice as many reported having a negative view than a positive one. Attitudes on the federal government were very similar to those of big business, with slightly more Americans reporting both positive and negative views. Interestingly, four times as many Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 reported having negative views of the federal government than reported having positive views.

In total, the same percentage of Americans — 42 percent — reported having neutral and negative views of socialism, with just fifteen percent reporting a positive view. More than half of Americans aged 60 or older reported a negative view of socialism but only 23 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 reported having a negative view.

While the percentage of Americans with positive views of socialism was consistently low across surveyed groups, Americans between the ages of 18 and 29, blacks, those earning under $30,000 per year, and those with a high school diploma or less consistently reported more neutral views on socialism than negative ones.

A majority of Americans reported either positive or neutral views of colleges and universities with Americans that had at least some college more likely to report having positive views than other groups. Americans age 60 or older were least likely to have a neutral view of colleges and universities, having both the highest percentage of positive views (47 percent) and the highest number of negative views (19 percent). Additionally, men were almost twice as likely as women to have negative views of colleges and universities, with 20 percent and 11 percent reporting negative views respectively.

Although almost half of Americans have a positive view of the police, significantly fewer blacks and younger Americans report having a positive view. However, even among these two groups, only 30 percent reported having a negative view of the police. Americans age 60 or older and those earning more than $100,000 per year were most likely to report positive views of the police (61 percent and 51 percent respectively) and other, non-black, non-Hispanic Americans were most likely to report having negative views of the police (33 percent).

Of all of the institutions asked about in this survey, the highest percentage of Americans viewed the media negatively (45 percent) and the fewest viewed it positively (12 percent). Although just 17 percent reported having a positive view of the media, Americans with a bachelor’s degree or more were the most likely group to have a positive view. Conversely, whites were the most likely group to have a negative view of the media, with 52 percent reporting negative views.

Americans between the ages of 18 and 44, women, those with some college or an associate’s degree, and those earning between $30,000 and $100,000 per year were all groups in which fewer than ten percent reported having a positive view of the media.

Nearly half of Americans report having a neutral view of organized religion with almost equal numbers reporting both positive and negative views. This breakdown of views was mostly consistent across demographic groups.

However, Americans aged 60 or older and blacks were the most likely to report a positive view of organized religion, with 34 percent and 33 percent respectively. Conversely, those with a bachelor’s degree or more and those with some college or an associate’s degree were the most likely to report having negative views of organized religion with 33 percent and 31 percent respectively.

The group with the highest percentage of neutral views toward organized religion (60 percent) was Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.

Conclusion

Although many of America’s institutions are struggling to maintain public trust, declarations of total decline don’t yet fit the data. With the exception of the media, many of America’s institutions have avoided being viewed more negatively than positively or neutrally, and in the case of the media, this is perhaps due to the technological changes that have allowed an increasingly greater deal of audience self-segregation among a growing number of options across the media landscape.

However, these results clearly show that many institutions are not viewed nearly as positively as those inside them might prefer. The path back to greater amounts of public trust will be different for each of these institutions, but undertaking reforms to repair that trust is an important goal. Despite their flaws, these institutions serve important roles in our society. Tearing down institutions is almost always easier than creating new ones, and Americans might decide that the ones we have are preferable, defects and all, to not having them at all.

Ben Wilterdink is the Director of Programs for the Archbridge Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @bgwilterdink.

Survey on American Attitudes — 2021 was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Archbridge Institute is pleased to welcome Dr. Juan José Daboub to our Board of Directors. In our mission to lift barriers to human flourishing, we seek to collaborate with scholars and professionals with a wide range of experience in both conducting academic research and working with governments and nonprofit organizations to translate scholarship into action.

For this reason, we could not think of a better addition to the Board of Directors than Dr. Daboub. We are very excited to work together in developing a consensus on the primary barriers to human flourishing and social mobility and advocating for policy changes that lift lives. Throughout his career, Dr. Daboub has worked tirelessly to boost economic development and secure liberty across the world.

On his joining the Board of Directors, Archbridge President and CEO and Gonzalo Schwarz noted:

At the Archbridge Institute we feel deeply honored and privileged that Dr. Daboub has agreed to join our Board of Directors. His diverse range of experiences in the private, public, and non-profit sectors are world-class and we think that adding his leadership and expertise to the Board of Directors will be an immense contribution to our mission of lifting barriers to human flourishing and to our vision of highlighting the value of culture, character, and personal agency in societies that prize entrepreneurship and innovative thinking as the primary means to climb the income ladder.

Dr. Juan José Daboub is the Chairman and CEO of The Daboub Partnership, an initiative of ARCIS, LLC, dedicated to delivering results for public and private organizations around the world. He is also the Founding Chief Executive Officer of the Global Adaptation Institute (www.gain.org). He has taught at Princeton University and is a member of several Board of Directors, including in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. As Managing Director of the World Bank from 2006 to 2010, Dr. Daboub oversaw operations in 110 countries throughout Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America. He was also responsible for the oversight of the Human Development and Sustainable Development Networks, the Information Systems Group, the World Bank Institute, and the Department of Institutional Integrity.

From 1999 to 2004, Dr. Daboub served concurrently as El Salvador’s Minister of Finance and as Chief of Staff to the President. In these high-profile, dual roles, Dr. Daboub helped to navigate his native country through several regional economic challenges including securing and sustaining El Salvador’s investment grade rating, “dollarizing” the economy, and completing a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. During this period, he also oversaw the emergency reconstruction of El Salvador after two major earthquakes in 2001. Dr. Daboub’s leadership began in the private sector, where he led his family-owned businesses for nearly a decade before joining the Board of CEL, El Salvador’s electric utility, and presiding over El Salvador’s electric distribution companies.

Subsequently, he was named President of ANTEL, the state-owned telecommunications company, which he re-structured and privatized through a competitive and transparent process that also de-monopolized that strategic sector. He held high Government positions in El Salvador for 12 years (1992–2004), working for three different Administrations without belonging to any political party. Dr. Daboub holds a Bachelor’s of Science, Master’s of Science and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University.

“I’m very eager to start working with the Archbridge Institute team because I believe it’s a great opportunity to combine research, knowledge, education, and the impact of the private sector in human flourishing,” says Daboub. “I have learned from personal experiences in all those fields, and I would like to contribute to making the Archbridge Institute’s ideas become a reality — a reality that transforms the possibilities of people to take destiny into their own hands, for people to always move upwards and achieve their fullest human potential.”

Chairman of the Archbridge Institute Board of Directors, Ingrid Gregg also welcomed Dr. Daboub to the Board, adding:

Thanks to the generosity of its supporters and the dedication of Gonzalo Schwarz and his team, the Archbridge Institute is recognized as a leader in advancing understanding of social mobility and human flourishing. The Institute is at an exciting moment of growth and opportunity. This makes the Board especially delighted and grateful to welcome Dr. Juan Jose Daboub as a Director. He is an international leader of exceptional experience, whose wisdom will be invaluable to Archbridge as it continues to connect ideas with action.

The Archbridge Institute Welcomes Dr. Juan José Daboub to the Board of Directors was originally published in Archbridge Notes on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.