The American dream is dead. Or at least, that’s the bipartisan conventional wisdom among a healthy portion of our leadership class. Donald Trump said as much during the announcement of his 2016 presidential bid (“But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before,” he assured his audience). His “American carnage” narrative was mirrored by his counterparts on the populist Left: “For many,” Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted in 2016, “the American Dream has become a nightmare.”

But if a new Echelon Insights study commissioned by the Walton Foundation is to be believed, most of the country (or at least the ones who live outside of the Washington beltway) don’t see it that way. Most notably, young people and nonwhites (the very people who demagogues such as Sanders hold up as the most downtrodden victims of the system) are far more optimistic about their prospects than elite narratives would lead us to believe.