I’m never quite sure how to respond to a survey question that asks whether America is “on the right track.” I hesitate answering because I’m not sure which alternative “America” is the comparator. Is it a regressive and exclusionary “America”? If so, then America is on the right, inclusionary, track. Or, alternatively, is it the “America” I believe we should be building? If so, America isn’t on my ideal track. So, I’m sympathetic with those who answer “Yes” and to those who answer “No.”

Despite my sympathies, and since Americans celebrate freedom during July, today I put aside my usual equivocation and stand with the “wrong track” crowd. Why? Because, while America extols freedom as a fundamental value it doesn’t sufficiently or broadly develop it across the entire populace — a core purpose of government. America’s current socio-economic track is so wrong and seemingly unalterable that I think it’s time America seek development aid from the World Bank. America needs foreign aid to fund projects designed to develop the freedom-boosting capabilities of the tens of millions of Americans ignored by a political-economy captured by the interests of capital and the opportunity-hoarding advantaged.

The Pew Research Center recently released a report on Americans’ perceptions of the “American Dream.” Among the questions asked was one on the possibility of ever achieving the “American Dream”—a central component being upward mobility. A full 60% of the youngest demographic (ages 18-29) as well as the lowest economic demographic held that achieving the American Dream was impossible. A majority of the next older demographic (30-49) opined similarly. Young and middle-age adults believe that one of America’s most fundamental promises — the American Dream — is mere myth. That’s the perception. What about the reality?

Among western nations America is one of the most upwardly immobile for children raised in low-income families (an increasing demographic), as well as one of the most downwardly immobile for children raised in wealthy families (also an increasing demographic). Americans boast of having established “equal opportunity,” prize “rags to riches” biographies, and demand citizens pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Unfortunately, this meritocratic, hard-work, opportunity-rhetoric bumps up against economic mobility data that demonstrate the persistence of advantage for the wealthy and the persistence of disadvantage for the poor.

While the mobility data generally evidences equal opportunity for middle income families (mind you, a shrinking demographic), it also shows that children of the wealthy are too likely to become wealthy adults (“sticky wealth ceiling”), and that children of the poor are too likely to become poor adults (“sticky wealth floor”). If hard work and merit rather than family history, luck, and (dis)advantage determined the economic outcomes of parents’ kids, then sticky floors for the poor and sticky ceilings for the rich wouldn’t exist. True equal opportunity—opportunity unaffected by inherited advantage and disadvantage—would yield a reality in which parents’ income didn’t predict their child’s income as a thirty-something.

Central Oregonians, the American Dream is quickly solidifying into economic immobility, turning the hopes of America’s youngest generations into disillusion and cynicism. We do need to properly fund the IRS so it can capture the funds wealthy tax cheats and corporate tax cheats fail to pay — estimated at $1 trillion annually. But more importantly, America needs foreign aid.

Development aid, properly executed, is about increasing life choices, about developing freedom, about cultivating and nourishing capability — broadly and deeply—across the entire populace. Aid to implement universal health care freed of corporate control; free child-care freeing parents to join the workforce; family leave freeing parents to care for loved ones; and, early education, lifetime career retraining, and free K-16 education, are all capability-growing, freedom-boosting practices America lacks, but that are found throughout Europe. Let’s emulate our enlightened peer nations who not only talk freedom but nourish freedom broadly and deeply amongst their people. Let’s put national pride aside and seek foreign aid to give Americans their freedom.