Far too many people have become spoiled, ungrateful, whiny wretches.

That’s the proper conclusion from a Wall Street Journal poll showing that barely more than a third of people believe “the American dream — that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead — still holds true.” Compared to the 36% who say it still holds true, 45% said it once was true but not anymore, and 18% said it never held true.

Only the 36% have it right. The rest are, to put it bluntly, pathetic defeatists. Likewise for the 50% who say life for ordinary Americans is worse than it was 50 years ago, against only 30% who say it is better.

The 50% in that latter question are woefully but not innocently ignorant. There is no good excuse in a free society for an utter lack of historical perspective and no excuse in such a prosperous society for such pessimism. Set aside the horrific levels of national debt that, thanks to Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden and to compliant Congresses, truly are cause for dejection and concern. By every other measure and every bit of commonsensical observation, opportunities are greater and lifestyles are easier in the United States than ever before.

Just look at the statistics (going back not quite 50 years because some of the indices go back only to the mid-1970s, or between 43 and 47 years ago — but that’s close enough for comparison’s sake). Today, we whine about the inflation rate reaching 8% in 2022 while unemployment was a historically tiny 3.5% and the prime interest rate was 7.5%. (The latter two numbers have risen only slightly this year, while inflation has been cut in half.) Compare that to the end of 1980, when unemployment (7.2%) was twice as high, inflation was nearly 13%, and the prime rate was an astonishing 21.5% .

Obviously, household economies are far better now than then. To which the naysayers claim that those numbers mask a much bigger problem with household debt today. They are wrong. They have no clue how inflation works. Average household debt in 1976 ( as far back as the numbers go ) was about $19,000. Adjusted for inflation since then, that’s the equivalent of about $105,000 now. Today’s average household debt of just over $103,000 is ever-so-slightly less burdensome than that of 1976.

Meanwhile, the actual standards of living and creature comforts, along with lifestyle efficiencies, have progressed by a huge amount since then in ways “official” government statistics don’t measure. Part of this is a result of technological innovation, and part because statistics understate wealth by taking no account of considerations such as the increased average size of living space and “greater efficiency and improved outcomes from new drugs and procedures.” As former Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, an economics Ph.D., explained in a 2019 column , “real” average hourly earnings and real median household incomes are up by 50%-68% while actual poverty has been cut by more than three-quarters.

Still, the complainers say, the quality of life is worse. For example, what about today’s high crime rates?

Nonsense. Crime isn’t anywhere near as bad as then. In 1980, the U.S. suffered 23,000 murders in a population of more than 225 million. Last year, with a population over 100 million larger, the U.S. suffered fewer murders, just over 21,000. Non-murderous violent crime numbers are down even more, even as the population rose, and robberies and burglaries have been cut by more than half.

And the U.S. is far better positioned to improve life now than then. Today, we are relatively energy-independent: We’re a net exporter of fossil fuels rather than a huge net importer. Today, we have better medicines, cure more cancers, and have access to what in 1976 would have been an almost unimaginably wider array of foods, goods, and services. And life expectancy rose steadily each decade until the anomaly of the coronavirus pandemic, and despite the virus, it remains three years higher now than then.

Indeed, all the elements (aside from the national debt) remain in place for those with the right attitudes and work ethics to live more comfortable lives with more avenues for personal fulfillment than ever before.

If the American dream is not alive and well, the fault is entirely with the would-be dreamers.