For generations, the promise of America was simple: work hard, play by the rules, and you could build a better life. But what happens when millions of Americans begin to question whether that promise still holds true?
On this episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone sat down with Pat Harrigan to tackle a growing concern: why more young Americans are expressing openness to socialism — and what that signals about economic opportunity in the United States. Their conversation revealed not just ideological disagreements, but deeper worries about housing affordability, entrepreneurship, and whether today’s middle class faces steeper odds than previous generations.
A Troubling Poll and a Generational Shift
The discussion began with new polling data showing that while a majority of Americans still view a move away from capitalism negatively, support for socialism is rising — particularly among younger voters.
According to Harrigan, this shift cannot be dismissed as purely ideological.
He argued that many Americans feel the economic system is no longer delivering the opportunities it once did. Rising costs, stagnant real incomes, and the difficulty of achieving traditional milestones — especially homeownership — are shaping political attitudes in ways that policymakers can’t afford to ignore.
The Reality of Working Harder for Less
One of the most striking points in the conversation focused on the economic pressures facing modern families. Harrigan noted that when adjusted for inflation, the average household income today is not dramatically higher than it was nearly a century ago — despite the fact that dual-income households are now far more common. The perception that people are “working twice as hard for half as much,” he said, reflects real frustrations. For many Americans, the dream of stability and upward mobility feels increasingly out of reach.
Homeownership as a Measure of Opportunity
Housing quickly emerged as a central theme in the discussion. Homeownership has long been viewed as a cornerstone of financial security in the United States. Yet younger Americans are entering the housing market at far lower rates than previous generations.
Harrigan pointed to multiple factors contributing to this trend, including higher borrowing costs, rising home prices, and the growing role of large investment firms purchasing single-family homes. When properties that once might have gone to first-time buyers are instead held as long-term investments, he argued, the result is fewer opportunities for families to build equity and wealth.
Barriers to Entrepreneurship
The congressman also reflected on his own journey — starting a business with his wife in a modest trailer before eventually growing it into a large manufacturing operation. While he emphasized that success is still possible in America, he questioned whether the same path would be as achievable today.
Higher capital costs and increasing regulatory complexity, he suggested, have raised the barriers to entry for aspiring entrepreneurs. For policymakers, the challenge is not simply redistributing wealth, he argued, but creating conditions that allow individuals to pursue opportunity in the first place.
A Debate That Goes Beyond Politics
Throughout the episode, the hosts and their guest returned to a shared concern: the widening gap between economic expectations and lived reality. Whether the solution lies in policy reform, better communication from Washington, or broader structural change, the conversation underscored a growing urgency.
If younger Americans lose faith in the system that has historically driven growth and innovation, the long-term implications could reshape both the economy and the political landscape. The question now is whether leaders can respond in time to restore confidence in the American Dream.
Transcript
**Chuck Warren: **Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our guest today is Pat Harrigan. He is congressman from North Carolina, a great member of the U.S. Congress. there is right now, there was a poll yesterday that concerns me. It a Fox News poll. And the question was, would it be a good thing or bad thing for the U.S. to move away from capitalism and more towards socialism? Now, there’s still clearly a majority, 61 % bad thing.
But that’s a low number, it should be 80%. So 61% think it’s a bad thing to move towards socialism, but 38%, a record high, think it’s a good thing. And as I looked at the demographics, between the ages of 18 and 44, it was 52% thought it was a good thing. That is alarming. And part of me thinks that’s partly because they can’t afford homes, they can’t buy a home.
They have been miseducated. Teachers unions have been a disaster. What do we need to do congressman because a socialist America is a bad America it’s bad for the world. What do we do?
Congressman Pat Harrigan: Yeah, it is a scary poll and I totally agree with you the number that should be opposed to socialism in this country we would hope would be a lot higher than what you say 61%?
Chuck Warren: Yes.
**Congressman Pat Harrigan: **That’s that’s a really really big problem and I agree. I think part of its education. We’ve had a very long slide into socialistic education since really World War II in this country. If you look at it, I mean, you had all fighting age males kind of leave and head out to fight the fight. And it left a lot of people that got a lot of leftist type of tendency and ideas left in our universities. And that’s trickled down into our primary education.
And look at the outcomes that we’ve had there. So that’s certainly part of it, but the other part of it is a practical outcome in the way that people see the ability to actually make it in life. And I do think that we have to understand that it is getting a little bit harder to make it in the United States.
If you actually go back, I made a post on this like a year and a half ago, so I’m gonna have to kind of remember, but the gist of it was, if you actually took the single family average household income in the United States of America back in 1930, which is roughly 100 years ago, and you compare it to today in real dollars, it was like $76,000 back in the day in real dollars today. And the problem is today it’s at like $81,000. And the difference between where we were in 1930 and where we are today is that almost no family had dual income back in 1930.
Today, that number is almost 70% of Americans have dual income. So, the wife is now in the economy and she’s out there working and you’re working super hard to bring in not much more than people brought in back in 1930. So when people look out into the economy and they say, man, it feels like I’m working twice as hard for half as much, like they’re actually right about that.
Chuck Warren: Yeah, they are.
Congressman Pat Harrigan: We’ve got to be extremely cognizant of the outcomes and the conditions that we’re setting for the average middle-class American to go out and achieve the outcomes that we’ve historically prided ourselves on our middle-class achieving. And that, I think the most significant way that that shows up is in owning a home. And you’ve got a lot of folks right now that are under 30 years old and under 35 years old that that can’t buy a house. And, and I think that’s a really, really, really big problem for our country. If you look, uh, just, uh, today, 30% of Americans under 35 own a home today, a generation ago, that number was 60%.
So as a measure of opportunity, does appear that opportunities are decreasing for the middle class. I’m a guy, look, I started my business in a double-eyed trailer with my wife when we were in the military. And now we’ve got 120,000 square foot facility, sits on 80 acres. We’ve got millions upon millions of dollars inside of that facility with production equipment. We live on a great home on a lake. I do not think where I came from with what we have done over the last 10 years I could do if I started today.
That’s a problem for people and we’ve got to admit that.
Chuck Warren: And I appreciate you recognizing that. I mean, I just looked at the number. 57% of renters earning over $100,000 do not think they can buy a home. That is a real problem. And I think part of the problem is too, and look, and I think both sides want people to have a good life generally. I mean, I think you can all agree on that in DC. How do you get there is the problem, right?
But I think sometimes too in Washington, we talk over the heads of people. It reminds me of the great Seinfeld scene where Kramer told Jerry he can get a tax write-off. And Jerry goes, no, I can’t. And he asked Kramer, well, do you even know what a write-off is? And he goes, I don’t, do you? And he goes, no. And I think we talk in those terms, like, what’s a tax credit do for a family? What do these government programs do for I don’t think they understand it.
And somehow we have to have a communication strategy saying that these are the things that are out there for you that we’re doing right now. I don’t think people understand it. And I think that’s part of the problem. But when you have 57% of six-digit earners saying they’re pessimistic about getting a home, that is bad. That is bad. We got to clean it up. And I don’t think Democrats have no ability to clean it up.
**Congressman Pat Harrigan: **No, and this is where President Trump has come out and said, look, we just got to have Wall Street backed landlords.
**Chuck Warren: **Right.
**Congressman Pat Harrigan: **Stop controlling single family homes. Correct. Right. Correct. I mean, this is an issue that we’ve got in North Carolina. It’s an issue that we’ve got all across the country. But just in Charlotte alone, 18% of the the single family rentals on the market are owned by Wall Street. And in Raleigh, that’s 13 percent. And those numbers are absolutely going through the roof. And those are homes where families should be building equity and not sending rent checks to investment firms in New York.
**Sam Stone: **Well, and there’s another sort of dark little secret to what’s going on with that, because we have the exact same problem here in Arizona. Similar numbers. It’s about 18%. But about a quarter of those are empty at any given time, because if they can’t lease them for enough, they’re just sitting on them as long term investments, which an individual investor would never be able to do.
Chuck Warren: Correct.
Congressman Pat Harrigan: That’s exactly right. And they’re locking down certain zip codes and they’re actually affecting the overall pricing structure in those zip codes and keeping in some instances pricing, boxing people out of even entering the market. We’re not even talking about, you know, what that investment is actually going to do for that up and coming middle class home buyer. They’re not even able to get into it right now. And that’s a problem.
Chuck Warren: You made a very interesting point that you don’t think you and your wife could start a business today what you did. What do you think the prohibitions are today versus what you had to deal with when you first started your business?
Congressman Pat Harrigan: Look, the high cost of capital and how much things cost. If things are more expensive and the cost of capital is high, the barrier to actually becoming successful because look, when you go borrow money, you get to pay that money back with post-tax dollars, not pre-tax dollars. So you got to go make even more money today in profit than you would have 10 years ago to actually satisfy those debts that you’d be leveraging to create your version of the American dream if you don’t come from money like my wife and I don’t.
And so we’ve got to be cognizant of this and we’ve got to be cognizant of the gap between the haves and the have-nots in this country. And we don’t need to fix that by taking money from one side and giving it to the other. We have to be very conditions focused in Washington, DC. We’ve got to set the conditions for people to go out and be successful. Now, can people still be successful today? Yes, 100%. There’s an unbelievable amount of opportunity.
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