How America Has Regressed Since the 'Mad Men' Era

Like the dark-suited figure tumbling through a forest of skyscrapers in the show's opening sequence, the characters of Mad Men seem both entrapped and possessed with endless possibility.
They live in an era that promised Americans, especially white men, that they could decide their geographical and economic destinies. Federal investment in education and housing allowed millions of Americans to go to college and purchase their homes. The world of mobility Mad Men captured, however ambivalently, is a far cry from our current era. In some ways, of course, Americans are more mobile than ever before. Much of the globe has been opened to air travel. But in more material ways, Americans have fewer avenues for advancement. No woman or man could possibly get a copy job at a New York advertising firm without a college degree. Children whose parents with limited resources to pay for higher education are not only less likely to go to college, they are less likely to graduate if they enroll. The cost of an undergraduate diploma, now a basic requirement for a financially comfortable life — but no guarantee of a job after graduation — is soaring.