An Army of Normal Folks - What 40 Million Tax Returns Reveal About America

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Researchers at Harvard analyzed the tax records of 40 million American children to answer one of the most debated questions in the country: does the American Dream still exist? The good news is that the dream is alive, but where you grow up dramatically shapes your odds of reaching it. In this Shop Talk, Bill breaks down the four factors researchers found that consistently predict whether children will flourish. Turns out, three of them aren't programs or policies. They're things ordinary people build every day without even realizing it. ARMY ACTIONS Subscribe to the podcast and rate & review us! Signup to join the Army, visit NormalFolks.org Follow us on social media @ArmyofNormalFolks Join or start an ANF local service club at https://normalfolks.org/service-clubs/ Take The 10 Level Challenge, "the hero's journey for service" at 10LevelChallenge.org Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an Army of Normal folks. Welcome into the shop for shop talk. Alex, how are you? I'm doing well, Bill. Normally, we just kind of play with the haven't seen you, but like I haven't seen you in five or six days. How you doing? That sounds so pathetic. It is usually when people say that, it's like, you haven't seen you in a month or in three months. Like, I haven't seen you for five or six days. Well, I haven't. And you normally are in the shop every day looking at. our sundries. Yeah. It's nice not to drive three hours

around trip. That's true. Good gosh, it's true. How are you seriously? Good. Actually, going with the kids all next week or we're going to Chicago. Really?

So doing a bunch of fun stuff all there, and I still have a ton of family there. I was going to say, I know your family moved to Florida, but you used to have lots of Chicago up there. It's still probably got at least 15 people there. Are you all Bears fans? Yeah.

Ugh. Okay. All right, everybody. This shop talk number 1114, what 40 million tax returns reveal about America. Actually, I know a little bit about this because we've talked about it in the past. I think you guys are going to really dive into it and like it. Hold on.

But first, there you go. But first, in honor of Shop Talk 114 and our lovely history lessons we like to play with, Alex, what happened 114 years ago today. Well, first bill, what year was 114 years ago? Well, that would have been 1890. 1912, doofus. Right. Yeah. You own a business, whatever.

Yeah. I've been here since 4 this morning, so piss my butt. The Titanic sank. Really? April 15th, 1912. Well, isn't that hilarious? We shouldn't be laughing about... I know.

people dying. You just did it this way. The Titanic's sake. That's great. It's not great, Bill. It's too soon. I mean, that's how he said it. It's so funny.

Okay, let's... We're both going and saying this morning. But it is interesting. 114 years ago, the Titanic's sake. It's a good. I may have mentioned this before. That was my dad's birthday. Also, the day Lincoln was assassinated and also tax day.

It's quite a day in American history. It's incredible. All right. The other thing, the modern Oreo cooking. was introduced. Really? Yes. Oh, that's a huge thing.

Does anybody like to freeze the horios? I didn't know that was the original name of Nabisco. Nabisco. National biscuit company. Do you, Lisa introduced me this. She makes homemade chocolate chip cookies, and she does it with the Oreos, and she puts them in the freezer, so they're really cold and hard. And then she puts a glass of milk in the freezer for like 15 minutes, and then gives me

the glass of milk with the hard and frozen. and cookies. Oh, man. I never thought, oh, my gosh, this grace thing in the world. So the Oreo thing is important. Have you ever had, my mom taught us

and we do with the kids, like white chocolate-covered Oreos? Oh, my gosh. They are ridiculous. And then you put it in the freezer. They are ridiculous. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Parents' Wrap.

Yeah. The Lindsay Lohan version, the more modern one where, do you know what she does with the Oreo? Uh-uh. She dips it in peanut butter. No kidding. Have you had it?

No. It's true. You got to do that. Is it really good? Is it really good? But you got to have milk for something like that. You don't have to be good. You have to.

It's a moral imperative as an American to have very cold milk when you eat stuff like that. All right. Let's get rolling. Okay. Coming up on Shop Talk number 114, where Oreos were invented the same year that the Titanic sank, which is interesting in it of itself, what 40 million tax returns reveal about America coming up right after these brief messages from our general. sponsors. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free IHard radio app. Make some noise. Wooee! Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas and Las Culturistas. Now with full

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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the shop. Shop talk number 114, where Alex and I try to be exceedingly interesting. what 40 million tax returns revealed about America. A few years ago, a group of researchers asked a question that gets argued about all the time. Does the American Dream still exist? Oh, my gosh. How many times have we heard that the last decade?

Does the American Dream still exist? Before I even read this, I believe the American Dream not only exists, but is more readily available today than it has been in the history. of our country. The problem is social media and all of it we've got has created all kinds of longing for what some might say is pretty unreachable for the vast majority of us. And then when we do reach what the quote American dream is, we're unsatisfied because we don't have the yacht. Okay, I'm just going to tell you, I think that's going on a lot in our culture day. But a few years ago, a group of researchers asked a question that gets argued about all the time. Does the American Dream still exist? Not on social media, not on cable news, in real life.

The lead researcher was Raj Chetty, then an economist at Harvard University, along with Nathaniel Hendren, and a team of researchers. They did not conduct a survey. They didn't interview a few hundred people. They analyzed the tax records of almost 40, million American children and their parents. 40 million. I would say this carries weight from a standpoint of the study. It's one of the largest studies ever conducted on economic mobility in human history. Their goal was simple. If you're born poor in the U.S., what are your chances of climbing the ladder?

What they found was both encouraging and alarming. The American dream, oh, they're saying what I think. The American dream is still alive. but where you grow up dramatically affects your odds of reaching it. For example, they found a child born to parents and the bottom 25% of income earners had about an 11% chance of reaching the top 20% of earners if they grew up in Salt Lake City.

Holy moly, let me read that again. They found that a child born to parents and the bottom 25% of income earners had about an 11% chance of reaching the top 20% chance of reaching the top 20% if they grew up in Salt Lake City. In Charlotte, that same child had a 4.4% chance. Same country, same economy, same generation, but more than twice the odds of reaching the top

simply because of where the child grew up. That's interesting. Now, that really is interesting. Well, you've got to keep going. It raises an obvious question. What is Salt Lake City doing that Charlotte, isn't. Were the kids smarter? No. Were the parents trying harder? No. Does one city have better slogans? I mean, it could be argued, but not really. So the research dug deeper. And they found

four things that consistently produced whether children would flourish. The first was family, not perfect families, not wealthy families, stable families. Places with higher percentages of children growing up in stable homes, regardless of income, had dramatically higher rates of upward mobility. The second was community. The researchers called it social capital. I might call it knowing your neighbors, churches, coaches, mentors, volunteer organizations, people who know your name, people who notice when you're struggling, people who simply show up. Communities with stronger social connections consistently produced better outcomes for children. The Third factor? My big one. Education. Not spending, not pretty buildings. Could kids read? Could they do math? Could they graduate? Were they being prepared for opportunity? The fourth was the neighborhood environment. Crime rates, trust, role models, the presence of working adults. So there's another big one.

meaning do children see people getting up and going to work every day the presence of working adults the researchers found that children surrounded by more employed adults were significantly more likely to become employed themselves really kids become what they see now here's the statistic that absolutely force me in a later study chetty and his team looked at families who moved this is going to speak to the thing we learned from the guy in sharp Charlotte, they found that children who moved from a high poverty neighborhood to a higher opportunity neighborhood before age 13 earned approximately 31% more money as adults. That is incredible. I'm going to say it again. They found that children who moved from a high poverty neighborhood to a higher opportunity neighborhood before age 13 earned approximately 31% more money as adults, 31% not because they suddenly became smarter, they didn't work harder, they didn't, you know, show up and somebody

started handing out money because their environment changed, the people around them changed, the expectations around them changed, the examples they saw every day changed, and it even gets crazy. the researchers found that every additional year of exposure to a better neighborhood before age 13 increased feature earnings by about 1%. One year, 1%, 1 more percent, another percent. I mean, think about that. If you earn 31% more by age 13, if you move at 3, now you're going to earn 41% more.

One year, 1%, 1%, 1 more per year. The effects compounding. Those children were also more likely to attend college, less likely to become single parents, less likely to experience incarceration, and more likely to build stable adult lives. That's not economics. That's flourishing. Three of our four biggest predictors weren't programs. They were relationships, family, community, neighborhood. The things we often overlook because they seem more. and who builds those things, who creates families, who mentors kids, who coaches Little League, who teaches Sunday school, who starts businesses, who engages in their community, who hires somebody trying to rebuild their life, who fosters children, who adopts them, who checks on the widow next door, who notices a struggling teenager, who organizes the block party or the potluck, Alex, who starts the service club, who becomes the trusted neighbor,

It doesn't happen at Harvard. It doesn't happen in D.C. It doesn't happen in Manhattan. It's not the billionaires. The people that do all that, normal folks. The research didn't set out to prove the philosophy an army of normal folks, but after studying 40 million Americans,

they accidentally proved the philosophy of an army of normal folks. Because what they found is the American dream grows best in healthy soil, and that soil was made up of family, community, neighborhood, education. The very thing's ordinary people help build every single day. So maybe the lesson isn't that we need bigger systems.

Maybe the lesson is we need stronger communities. Maybe the lesson is not that every one of us have more influence than we think. You may not be able to solve poverty. You certainly may not be able to fix Washington. You may not be able to reform the education. but you can mentor a kid, you can coach them, you can foster a child, you can adopt one, you can help somebody who has adopted a child, you can help a family who is fostering a kid, you can help a neighbor, you can strengthen a family, you can build community.

And according to one of the largest studies ever conducted, those things matter more than most of us even realize. The American dream doesn't just happen, but it is alive. It's cultivated. one family, one neighborhood, one community at time. See, that's what we mean when we say. Do what you can. That's stark, my friend. So Joe Woodward on a recent episode talked about this a little bit.

I thought we might as well dive deeper into it. Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, when you hear it laid out, it makes so much sense. And when we say it all the time, it makes so much sense. It's very nice to have the. largest study ever conducted by Harvard with 40 million tax receipts to look at and evaluated across the spectrum of our unit in the United States to prove what we're saying. An Army and normal folks is the answer. Community involvement, all of it. So when we say do

what you can, we're actually saying when you do what you can, you change lives. That's it. I mean, I guess I'll share one thought. It's been on my mind lately and trying to figure out their service clubs too just the whole idea of like doing life with people i heard somebody riff on this too like hey if you're going to go to the old miss baseball game bring them with you you know if you're having dinner at your house bring them with you like you don't need to be like doing some big grand crazy thing just include people who are less fortunate and all your activities that you would have done anyway right you could have exposed a kid to dc obviously exposing kids of your football team all the time but you know those kind of things right or bring them to the grisley's game or you know bring

about to dinner with you or hang out with you. I often, this is not to talk about myself, which I almost never, never, never do like this. But I've often wondered what effect coaching football really has, you know. But then I think about, you know, we raise money to get our kids on charter buses and we take them to eat at decent places when we're out. And by being good, we get to travel to other places. And a lot of kids that we've coached had never been out of Memphis. And so they're exposed to stuff, you know.

And when young men heard 30 or 35 or 40 come back and say, Coach, I remember when you said this, you know, it made me look at this differently. You know, it does make a difference just engaging in community, just engaging. And someone that may not be as fortunate. is you just getting to see a different look at stuff. It just matters. It's just an army of normal folks. It's just being a normal person and engaging where you might not otherwise engage

outside of your vacuum of people and family. And it does change lives. It does make a difference. I always think of this story of Jeffrey Canada is the founder of the Harlem Children's Zone. Like this great charter school network in New York that's the Harlem Children's Zone. The Harlem Children's Zone. Yeah, that's amazing. But one of his board members has been Stan Drunken Miller is one of the most successful investors ever.

But they would always bring the kids to his, you know, like penthouse, you know, part of it in New York kind of thing. Oh, gosh. But to see it and obviously spend time with, you know, him too. And I think, you know, Stan probably gave them hundreds of millions of dollars, like just an incredible philanthropist to them. But they talked about this line, like anything in life, you need to have a taste of it. Whether it's success or it's drugs or it's alcohol, you have to get a taste of. it somewhere, right? So if these kids, if these kids never have... You'll never become an alcoholic

if you don't first taste alcohol. You'll never have success if you first don't taste it. See what it looks like. If no one exposes you to it. Or what a stable family looks like, right? That is such a good point. Yeah. So just the taste,

just the exposure can light a flame that you didn't even know you're lighting. Your riff at the beginning too, talking about income and people's expectations, Daniel Kahneman and this other guy and Malcolm Gladwell have always talked about this, that really happiness plateaus after $100,000 worth of income. Is that right? So you actually do see happiness increased $100,000 and then there's no...

So money can buy happiness to a point. And Malcolm's original book was $75,000, and then there's been, you know, inflation cents. So yeah, the number now is supposedly $100,000. You get no gains after that. No happiness gains after that. You just buy more... stuff. Yeah. It's interesting. And obviously it can create other problems too. No, that's also true. Yeah. Okay, everybody, what 40 million tax returns are built about America. The American dream's alive.

People just need access. They need community. They need family. They need coaches. You better close this the right way. And they need you a taste. And then they need you. That's true. They do. They do need you. So that's shop talk. 114. Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, share it with friends on the social, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, join the Army at normalfox.us. Join the Army at normalfox. We'll join a service club, buy some merch. Until next week, do what you can, baby. Do it you can. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers.

Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I-heart women's sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka. out. Shout-houts to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Kishan Rock's boxing journey. She looks good. Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets

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