What is the most important single thing that you can do to heal our national divides and to improve the social and economic mobility of your struggling neighbors?
I’d submit that it’s not voting for the right candidate (though you should certainly do that), nor is it engaging in activism to raise visibility for a worthy cause (though I endorse that as well). Instead, it’s something that is at once much simpler but also much more difficult.
Make a new friend.
The story of modern America — especially for working-class Americans who did not go to college — is a story of declining connections, declining friendships and a loss of a sense of belonging. That sense of isolation makes people miserable, and as the misery spreads, it affects our economy and our culture. The data, quite frankly, is horrifying.
Last month, the American Enterprise Institute released its 2024 American Social Capital Survey. It exposes a stark social divide. People with high school diplomas or less spend less time in public spaces, less time in hobby groups and less time in community groups or in sports leagues than those with college degrees and higher (for simplicity, I’ll refer to the two groups as high school graduates and college graduates). And they’re less likely to host friends, family and neighbors in their homes.