Listen to the full episode, here.
John Norris (00:30):
Well, hello again, everybody. This is John Norris at Trading Perspectives, and now we have a brand new co-host, Mr. Chris Cooper. Chris, say hello.
Chris Cooper (00:38):
Hey John, how are you doing?
John Norris (00:38):
I’m doing well Chris. I’m doing fantastically. Thank you for asking. Now, Chris, I got to tell you, you’re a younger guy, you’re younger than I am, and you’re not quite my kids’ age, but you’re much closer to my kids ’age than you are my age. Is that fair enough?
Chris Cooper (00:52):
That’s fair enough.
John Norris (00:53):
Is that more than fair enough, I’m thinking?
Chris Cooper (00:55):
A couple of decades.
John Norris (00:58):
And watching my daughter, watching my son come out of college, get their first career-type jobs and all that stuff, and really just trying to get ahead in life as it were. And it kind of made me think back on when Beth and I had first gotten married, got out into the workforce, and just all the dreams and aspirations that we have. And right now, I’m not exactly sure if I would say any of them are really concrete in my head, but there’s that one that kind of keeps coming back and it’s kind of loosely defined a little bit, I guess, as the concept of the American dream. It’s like, if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. You’ll do better than your parents. We can talk about it forever, we could try to define it. I think those would be a couple of the common characteristics.
(01:43):
You work hard, you get ahead, live a comfortable life, and you arguably live a little bit better than your parents. You fair about that? Are you okay with that one? Do you think that’s okay?
Chris Cooper (01:51):
No, absolutely. When I think about the American dream, at least for previous generations, I think it was really tied to this idea that you’re speaking of is you work hard, you get rewarded. It’s just this equals that. If you work hard, you get rewarded. If you worked hard, you stayed the course, you did things the right way, you played by the rules. There’s this expectation that you could build a good life for yourself. You could own a home, support a family, save some money and feel like your effort was rewarded. So not too long ago, you could buy a house and maybe even live off of single income if you did really well. It just doesn’t feel like that’s the case anymore.
John Norris (02:27):
Well, I mean, you bring up some pretty good points. I would say that if you were to ask people my generation, and I guess I am one of the previous generations that you talked about, the sense of fair play would certainly be part of it. I would tell you that there was a dream of the little house with the white picket fence around it. I never wanted a house with a white picket fence. I never wanted a little house. I always wanted a bigger house. But being able to drive a decent car, being able to put steak on the table once a week, just all these things. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I wanted to live as an American as loosely defined as that was, but I could work hard. I could live a comfortable life. I would be free from what? I would be able to live a nice life better than my parents, all that stuff.
(03:12):
And I think that’s fair. I think that’s previous generations of what you said, what you’ve looked up, what I’ve just said, how I experienced it. And I guess I am one of the previous generations. I would say by and large, of course, not everyone was able to achieve that. I mean, of course, not everyone’s going to be able to do that for whatever reason, whether it’s self-inflicted or otherwise, they were not able to do that. However, I think if you were to poll a number of people, my generation, certainly my parents’ generation, they would tell you that, yeah, there was an American dream and you could obtain it if you, just as you said, played by the rules, worked hard, you would be able to do it. Now, fast forward to today, 2026, what do you think the American dream is today to people of your generation?
(04:01):
Even the people, the generation behind you coming on up. What is the American dream to them? Has it changed in any significant way? And do you think you’re able to achieve this?
Chris Cooper (04:12):
Well, for me, I’ve always thought of the American dream as being able to leave your children with a better life than what you had.
John Norris (04:19):
Sure.
Chris Cooper (04:19):
And that doesn’t always mean that you become incredibly wealthy or you’re rich or you can fly on a private jet or drive a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea, but it does mean some sort of stability, right? It can mean more than just opportunity or more than just freedom. It can simply just mean the next generation has a better starting point than what you had.
John Norris (04:38):
I like it.
Chris Cooper (04:39):
But I think younger Americans still want the same things that previous generations had. They want the financial security. They want the home. They want the ability to raise a family, have some flexibility and enjoy a decent life. But they also watched older generations maybe sacrifice too much to get there potentially. Maybe a lot of them are asking whether that same bargain still exists for them. Millennials were told, “Go to school, work hard, make good grades, get a job, just follow this path and opportunities will be there.” But for many of these millennials, the outcome really didn’t match the promise. And so Gen Z, even younger than me, Gen Z has come up that they’ve seen this happen and their reaction has been, “Why would we play by the same rules if the rules no longer produce the same results?”
John Norris (05:32):
Well, I would tell you, and this is where I hear that and I’ve had people ask me that. I actually made a presentation last week down in Mobile, Alabama. I’m just teasing about that, all you folks down there, down in Mobile. And during the Q&A, someone asked me that. I mean, what happens when the younger generation says, “Hey, we’re not going to play by your rules any longer.” And I said, “Well, if that happens, society falls apart and we won’t have to worry about the American dream.” I would tell you though what I have perceived, and this is just my own perception, my own sort of analysis, taking a look at my children and what they want and what they talk about. And then what I perceive is happening with the younger generations. My children might not be the best examples of it, but I would tell you that while I had the concept of the American dream coming out, I didn’t necessarily have any expectations.
(06:23):
I bought my first house when I was 30. I drove my first car until it was….Chris, I think I had 250,000 miles on that car. And I’d already put one timing belt on it and already put a couple of sets of brakes on it. And then finally I got down to like, okay, I need a new serpentine belt. I need a new timing belt and I need new brakes on it. I said the heck with it. That’s when I got rid of it. I will tell you that I don’t know if it’s fair. Every generation looks at the younger generation and goes, you just haven’t—Chris, I went to school walking uphill both ways in the snow and the driving rain. But in all seriousness, we did struggle. It’s not to say the younger generations don’t, but I would say that the struggle is a little bit different with each generation and the struggle, while it’s great to the people that are feeling it, it might not be as great in absolute terms.
(07:25):
So the struggle, relatively speaking, is still great, but in absolute terms, it might not be as great. I hope that makes sense. For instance, you take my meemaw, my mother’s mother. Struggle for her was putting food on the table. Struggle for her was having more than a couple of dresses. Struggle for her was having enough gas. I mean, just all that stuff growing up in the Depression. I mean, that was struggle. For my parents, the struggle might be, okay, we have to hold off getting some furniture. For me, it’s just I can’t go out to eat every night. The struggles are a little bit different.
(08:00):
Let’s face it, even the United States, our struggles here are so much better than they are. Better, that’s a weird way of putting it. Our struggles are so much different than they are in so many other places in the world. You’ve heard the old expression, first-world problems. When I came out of college, I didn’t expect to buy my first home. I didn’t expect to buy a house. I knew I was going to have to live in an apartment. I think a lot of kids are coming out of college now expecting to buy a home and expecting to go from the beater car that they might have gotten in high school to drive a nicer vehicle. The GM, which is General Motors, it’s a big car company. You might not be aware of this. But back when I was growing up, their business model was entry-level vehicle was a Chevrolet.
(08:47):
And then you do a little bit better and then you move up to an Oldsmobile. Then you do a little bit better than that, you move up to a Pontiac. And then you do a little bit better than that, you get to a Buick. Then when you’ve really hit the home run, you know what you go to?
Chris Cooper (09:01):
I don’t know. A Cadillac.
John Norris (09:02):
A Cadillac. Now it seems like kids are coming out and not wanting to go through those steps, if that makes sense. They’re just jumping straight into the Buick or into the Cadillac. People my age and older will know exactly what I’m talking about. However, for your age group and younger, it’s wanting the stuff that maybe my generation worked a little bit harder for, not necessarily harder, but longer for expecting that stuff coming out of the gate. I would say a lot of that has to do with social media and just our consumption of entertainment because let’s face it, when you go on and watch movies, television programs, you go to Instagram, everyone’s got everything all the time and everywhere. And you sit there and go, “My Lord, I know what I make. I read the stats. I’m actually doing okay, and yet I can’t live as well as this person that doesn’t look like they know which end is up.” And that’s got to be very frustrating.
(10:00):
So I’d say some of the major differences between previous definitions of the American dream of today’s are being shaped by the media around us and by the social media in particular in that it’s kind of fooling, younger generations into thinking that you have to have it all now and it has to be really nice. That’s what my observations are. You could completely say I’m full of it.
Chris Cooper (10:25):
No, not at all. I wouldn’t say you’re full of it. I definitely think that’s one side of it.
Well, that’s a good thing. You might not like that.
Chris Cooper (10:31):
I never say you’re completely full of it.
John Norris (10:33):
I do have brown eyes.
Chris Cooper (10:35):
But in general, I think that’s good for the younger generation to keep their eye on. Obviously comparing yourself on social media, comparing yourself to anyone in life in general isn’t really fair to anyone, including yourself. Obviously, that’s not really going to help the younger generation get where they want to be if they’re not focused on working hard, doing the right thing, showing up day in and day out, obviously. I still think there’s this perspective from the younger generation that they perceive the older generations looking down on them saying that, “Well, if you would just drink less Starbucks drinks and cut your Netflix subscription, then you could buy a house like me.” And younger people may still want those things, but really there’s a priority in younger people’s lives of flexibility and family that maybe, again, we’re talking about an aggregate here, maybe some stereotypes maybe in play here, maybe previous generations didn’t necessarily fully play into certain priorities that younger generations want to hold and there’s just a mismatch of prioritizations.
(11:38):
And so we’re talking about quality of life. Well, wanting to spend time with your family is an aspect of a good quality of life, but you might be trading off certain levels of income or possessions or wealth if you want to make that trade-off.
John Norris (11:51):
Chris, I think you bring up a very good point. Back when I was coming out of college, again, my first job during the interview process, I would have rather eaten my eyeballs than ask questions about work-life balance. They would have shown me the door. They wouldn’t have known what I was talking about probably. They all knew what it was, but they wouldn’t have brought that up in an interview. I’ve never worked for anyone that wouldn’t let me go to the doctor when I was sick or my child was sick, not allow me to do that. I mean, I coached T-ball and all that stuff. So that’s all part of the work-life balance, but it was always assumed that that was going to be something that I would be able to do, whereas being without a doubt part of the work interview and having it kind of written in stone and what have you.
(12:39):
So you’re right about what you said, but I would say it really kind of go back to a point that I tried to make and I did a very bad job with it in terms, of just what the expectations are and what are the priorities are with each generation. I’ve talked with people my children’s age and other people saying, “It’s not that you’re frivolous or anything like that. It’s just the base definition of living has just simply gotten a little bit bigger.” You’ll love this one. After Annie was born, it would have been like 2000. She was born in 1999, so you’re maybe what, four or five, something like that?
(13:20):
Around there? Yeah, around there. My goal when I was working downtown for S&P 500 company was to eat lunch for $2. I mean, you’re laughing, but that’s what I was trying to do. I tried to eat for lunch for $2, and that was not undoable. It was going to be tough. I mean, I would have to go get a couple of chili dogs from Jimmy’s or something like that, but across the street in the AMSouth Harbert building, there was a Taco Bell and Taco Bell used to make bean burritos for like 79 cents. These bean burritos are in their burrito show. I mean, they were big burritos. I’d get two of them and I’d just drink water out of the water fountain, out of the bubbler if you’re listening in Wisconsin. I would get two of them and they’d put them a little plastic sack. You know when you get Chinese food, how you generally judge the quality of the Chinese food by the quantity?
(14:18):
I mean, if you pick up the bag and it’s heavy, you’re going, “Hey, this is pretty good.” I was like that with the Taco Bell. I’m thinking to myself, I’m being so clever because Beth and I would occasionally eat bean burritos for dinner with some Corona Lights and think that we were being pretty clever because like the old El Paso refried beans aren’t that bad for you, really.
(14:42):
At Taco Bell, they actually fry them in lard and they put cheese, sour cream, all this stuff on it. I tell you all that because yeah, I was eating lunch for two bucks. I mean eating bean burritos every day. Massive ones. I started packing on some weight and I couldn’t understand it because I knew the bean burritos I had at the house weren’t all that calorie-dense. Then, I looked at one of Taco Bell’s nutrition guides. Each one of those bad boys at the time had about 500 calories, like 600 calories. I’m putting down like 1,200, 1,300 calories a day in bean burritos and then going home and eating a full dinner and drinking a couple of beers. I was packing it on. I mean, that’s one of those deals that for me; here I was trying to live the American dream, trying to play by the rules and it made me fat.
(15:35):
That’s the point of that. You play by the rules, you get fat. But I’ll tell you, what do you think is keeping younger kids today from achieving the American dream outside of maybe the baseline, the definition of what the minimum is, has maybe changed a little bit. Is there anything else out there?
Chris Cooper (15:53):
Wow. How much time do we have? That’s a loaded question. I mean, in obvious ways, life is. We’ve kind of touched on this, but life is easier than it was in the late 1900s. Technology has made daily life faster, more convenient, more comfortable. You can get anything you want, information, entertainment, anything on demand.
John Norris (16:15):
Chris, I’m sorry to interrupt you. I used my phone last night to order a pizza from Papa John’s. My grandmother would not be able to understand that concept.
Chris Cooper (16:25):
So all these years later, you’re telling me you moved from Taco Bell to Papa John’s?
John Norris (16:28):
Well, can you believe it? I didn’t eat it. I got that for Beth. John’s with us for a little while.
Chris Cooper (16:35):
No, it’s very convenient. You can pick up your phone and, I mean, the Amazon shipments have gotten out of this world. I’ve ordered something at 10:00 p.m. at night; it’s there on my doorstep the next morning. The shipping has gotten incredible. You can get whatever you want whenever you want it. And at the same time, things in life are more convenient, but talk about the trade-offs again. Maybe we’re letting go of some of these big milestones, especially homeownership. Those things can feel harder for younger generations, even though the quality of life has improved with convenience and access to information and entertainment on demand. Homeownership certainly feels like it’s out of reach. So you can have a better phone, a better access to information, more convenience in your life, but you still feel like the foundational pieces of the American dream are moving further away because there’s this one big aspect, which is homeownership, and that’s what’s affecting many Gen Zers and millennials right now.
John Norris (17:31):
I would tell you, I think there’s a lot going on. People will blame institutional ownership of new homes and that gets it, some of it. Lack of new supply, that’s some of it. Old folks won’t leave their homes, that gets some of it. And then there’s just simple population growth. That doesn’t probably get as much of it, much of the blame. I live in Mountain Brook, Alabama. I grew up in Mountain Brook, Alabama. When I lived there when I was growing up, I’d say the population wasn’t terribly different from what it is now. About 19,000, 20,000 people, maybe let’s call it 20,000 people, give or take a thousand or two. And that’s the way it’s been since, I mean, what, the 1970s and 8’0s.
(18:17):
Even so, Birmingham has grown, not as much as Charlotte and Nashville and some other places. Birmingham has grown. Mountain Brook hasn’t because it’s constrained geographically. Same thing largely with Homewood and with Vestavia Hills to a degree, although they’ve expanded a little bit, Hoover’s expanded a little bit, but it’s now constrained. And so you take a look at these places, these places where a lot of people, where the kids grew up in these communities, want to live there as adults because it’s really a nice way of life. Over-the-mountain Birmingham, it really is. They go to try to find a house in their neighborhood, and they find Birmingham has grown, but their neighborhood didn’t. And so almost by definition, you have more people trying to buy the same number of houses in a lot of these communities. Chris, you remember your Econ 101 demand curve shifting out to the right and the supply curve hadn’t moved at all.
(19:11):
And so as a result, you’re seeing prices go up. And so there’s a lot going on against these kids these days when they’re trying to do everything that we mentioned. Institutional ownership of houses, that’s some of it. Higher mortgage prices, that’s some of it. Home builders being able to get a better margin on really expensive houses, that’s some of it. I mean, all of it is some of it to where all of a sudden it’s an ingredient here, it’s an ingredient here, it’s an ingredient here. And then you have the whole recipe, if that makes sense. Kind of like you need eggs, flour and butter to make cookies. So with this, okay, the growth in the metropolitan area, okay, that’s the eggs. The mortgage rates, that’s the butter and all that stuff. It all goes into it. So where you have areas of town where people want to live, the home prices are absolutely through the roof and you’re experiencing that now.
(20:11):
Whereas if you went to Tarrant, went to Clio, Alabama, went to Selma, you follow some of these other towns of people who are outside of their area you would have trouble finding on a map. Do you know where Clio, Alabama is?
Chris Cooper (20:26):
Never heard.
John Norris (20:27):
Okay. Don Sutton was from Clio, Alabama. You know who Don Sutton is?
Chris Cooper (20:32):
I’m nervous to say I’ve never heard of him.
John Norris (20:34):
Okay. Don Sutton was a Hall of Fame pitcher for the Dodgers primarily, and then used to be a Braves announcer. I though that you might have known that because you’re a Braves fan. So in any event, it all depends on where you want to look, but when you’re looking at those places where people want to live, that’s where you’re seeing it. I would say there is some truth to this. The homeownership is definitely harder for a number of different reasons. It’s a perfect storm. However, there are some things that the old fart in me has to tell you, quit drinking the Starbucks.
(21:15):
We went out with another couple down to a restaurant on Morris Avenue called La Fête. Love the place. It’s a nice night out for me. It’s not someplace I’m going just casually, just generally have a reason to go there with some friends or something like that. There are tables of people there in their mid to late 20s and all that stuff. That kind of a big night out or it should be a big night out. I tell you that because for me, my generation, let alone my parents’ generation going, “Look how wasteful these kids are being with their money.” However, for the younger generation, that’s not being wasteful. The definition of getting by, the definition of living, the definition of a minimum has simply increased like it has with my generation and for my meemaw’s generation. For me, I would go to Brookwood Village and spend a bunch of money on video games to my parents and to my meemaw, certainly I was wasting money, all that stuff.
(22:10):
So the definitions have changed right there. So bringing things full circle a little bit. Do you think there’s anything we can do to ensure the potential for the American dream is available for everyone?
Chris Cooper (22:23):
Well, there’s something we could do. It’s definitely not a simple issue, obviously. I don’t even think we can put it just in one bucket and apply some kind of answer to it. On one hand, you have the personal responsibility side, which you’re talking about. Income matters, decisions matter, your work ethic and saving career choices, all that matters. On the other hand, young people are also dealing with a much more difficult economic and political environment than they themselves created really. So the real question is, does hard work still pay off the way that people told them it would, or does more of that hard work now end up flowing through to asset prices and shareholder equity and benefiting those who already own assets. When you’re young, you don’t own assets yet, you can certainly feel like you’re getting behind. So you look at the bigger headwinds, housing demand, we mentioned potentially immigration pressures on that area of the market, government spending, student loans, rising tuition.
(23:23):
The policy choices have definitely helped create these conditions. So at that point, that’s out of young people’s control, but are fiscal and monetary policy choices going to actually change? Fixing those political aspects, that would require so much political capital and more than our four-to-six year election cycles can handle. So quite frankly, on that side, no. The other side is you’ve just got to hustle and find a way and work hard and do the right thing and keep showing up. Previous generations did it and they saw the reward. So honestly, it just takes a willingness to do what’s right.
John Norris (24:01):
Chris, if you could step off the soapbox because I want to get on it right now because I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to tell you. I think one of the best things we can do is actually take education a little bit more seriously in the country. Recently, the PISA test scores came out. The OECD came out with their test scores and it appears as though today’s kids are falling behind in terms of basic levels of literacy and just overall levels of educational attainment. I would tell you that, we’ll leave that aside. I’ll tell you the thing to ensure the potential for the American dream is available for everyone. You’re absolutely right what you had to say about policies, and I don’t think we have any leaders up in our halls of power, whether it be at the state level or national level, really anywhere, who are willing to make the hard decisions and truly be leaders.
(24:55):
I mean, it’s difficult. I would tell you that the best thing we can do is to get rid of social media. I got to tell you, I’m not kidding with you on that. That really is warping people’s definitions of success. When I was coming out, my first job was at a place called Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust Company in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s no longer around. It’s now part of PNC, I think.
(25:22):
I had no clue how the CEO of the company, Furlong Baldwin, I had no clue how he lived. No idea what he ate for dinner, no idea what his life looked like, had no idea what the inside of the Maryland club looked like. I had no idea about his several-thousand-acre plantation on the eastern shore of Maryland. I didn’t know anything about it. I had no clue. I had no clue how the vice chairman lived. I didn’t know. I had no clue. Absolutely zero. And I had no clue how the people in Rucksdale, I had no clue how the people, all that stuff. I really had no clue. I had no way of peering inside. Now you can. And so now you can. I didn’t know what they made. I didn’t know what their stock options were. I didn’t know any of that stuff.
(26:16):
Sure I could plow into SEC reports and do it. Now it’s out there as a matter of public consumption. I can figure that out. I can go to Bloomberg and find out what a C-suite got for any publicly traded company, what they make for a living, all this stuff. So I tell you that our access to information has warped us a little bit and warped our expectations a little bit and caused a little bit of class warfare. There’s always been the super rich among us. We just didn’t know exactly how rich and we didn’t know exactly how much better they had it than the hoi polloi. So I would say the American dream, the potential for the American dream is available for everyone. Yeah, that’s why people are still trying to come here. I mean, that’s why people come here from all over the world to try to live the American dream.
(26:59):
They believe it. I’ll tell you, it would really benefit us if we didn’t have all of it, this conspicuous consumption of wealth being foisted in our faces at every step along the way to where people that are even making the money, what I make for a living are sitting there going, “Damn, really? You got to be kidding me.” And so when you have all that going on, there’s absolutely a very difficult way that people don’t have green eyes. We’re not supposed to have green eyes. We’re not supposed to be jealous, but unfortunately it’s human nature and the best thing we can do is turn it off. Turn off the social media, turn off the television, pick up a book, go for a walk, go for a run. I mean, go play with your kids, go do something else instead of seeing how other people are living their lives. It’s really none of your business.
(27:45):
There you have it. What do you think about that?
Chris Cooper (27:47):
I think you’re explaining a good principle of being grateful.
John Norris (27:52):
We’re all very blessed in this country. We’re all very blessed at Oakworth Capital Bank. Speaking of that, guys, we always love to hear from you all. If you have any questions or comments, please by all means, let us know. As always, you can reach us by dropping us a line at , or you can leave us a review on the podcast app of your choice. Of course, if you want to read more or hear more of what we got to say or how we think, you can always go to oakworth.com, O-A-K-W-O-R-T-H.com. Take a look underneath the Thought Leadership tab and find access to all kinds of exciting information, including links to previous podcasts, links to our newsletter/blog, Common Cents, a link to our quarterly analysis and magazine, as well as all the good stuff from our client advisors and Advisory Services team headed up by Mac Frazier.
(28:38):
All right, that’s all I’ve got to say about that. Chris, do you have anything else to add on this exciting topic?
Chris Cooper (28:44):
Always do your best.
John Norris (28:46):
I like it. All right. That’s all I’ve got today too. Y’all take care.
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