Wake up: the American Dream is over

Even America's richest think they're getting too many tax breaks from a government determined to keep the poor in their place. As poverty in the US grows, Paul Harris wonders what happened to the Land of Opportunity

There is a common response to America among foreign writers: the USA is a land of extremes where the best of things are just as easily found as the worst. This is a cliché. But it is often hard to argue with when surveying America's political and cultural landscape

Such a yawning chasm is just the American Way, it would seem. Besides, the American Dream offers a way out to everyone. All someone has to do is work hard and climb the ladder towards the top. No class system or government stands in the way

Sadly, this old argument is no longer true. Over the past few decades there has been a fundamental shift in the structure of the American economy. The gap between rich and poor has widened and widened. As it does so, the ability to cross that gap gets smaller and smaller. This is far from business as usual but there seems little chance of it stopping, not least because it appears to be government policy.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/columnists/story/0,,1792399,00.html

Did the american dream ever exist really?

I don't think so.

In a very few cases, a person goes from rags to riches. That can still happen. It can also happen in many other countries. But such cases are rare, and I believe they always have been rare.

If you're referring to the idea that a person can work hard, steadily move forward economically, and maybe move up a notch or two on the food chain above where their parents were, I'd say that was an anomaly of the post WWII era in the US, from 1945 to about 1970. Some people still do this, but it's a hell of a lot harder to do it now than it was in the glory days of the Empire, the dates mentioned.

From the article:

"There are now 37 million Americans living in poverty, and at 12.7 percent of the population, it is the highest percentage in the developed world."

And that's just the OFFICIAL poverty figures. Which are way understated.


"The effect of all this has been to scotch that long-cherished notion of the American Dream: that honest toil is enough to reap the rewards and let even the poorest join the middle class, or maybe even strike it rich. A survey last year showed that such economic mobility (a measure of those people trying to make the Dream come true) was lower in America than Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland..."

Bet our MSM "media" wouldn't touch that one.

They aren't common, at all. For every Horatio Alger peaches-and-cream tale, there are about ten thousand cases of a person doing everything they were told to do, doing everything right, supposedly making all the right moves and for whatever reason it just doesn't happen for them.

And if this estate tax gets axed, look for the wealthy side of the economic balance to have an additional two hundred tons dropped on it.

My thought is they aren't/never were, any more common in the US than in many other countries.

similar results in all of western Europe so can't be seen as specifically American Either. Just western economic dominance i suppose and a bit of post war emancipation

that EVERYONE has the ability to get ahead if they just work hard.

They are working overtime at pulling the rug out from under the middleclass and creating a permanent underclass. Very few of these people are "getting ahead". Most of them are barely treading water. Once the interest rates start rising, and they will in the near future, many of these people are going to drown.

America definitely needs to wake up.

It seems the Boomers were the last generation of having a decent shot at attaining the American dream. I was born in '76, so I'm not sure if I'm Gen X or Y, but people my age are a lot worse off than our parents were at our age. My parents, and most of my peers parents already owned homes by the time they were 30. I don't own one and maybe only one of my friends does. Also, it used to be that if you got a college degree, that would pretty much be your ticket to the middle class. Now, you have increasing numbers of college graduates competing for crap jobs ($8/hr. w/no benefits), and graduating with 5-figure student loan debt.

What needs to happen is a real progressive movement in this country and in the world. If instead of the government rewarding a few wealthy people it's purpose was to promote the common good.
I think part of the problem is a defeatist attitude among many people.

I read someplace (I don't recall where) that children of the Baby Boomers (now about age 40 to 60) will probably be the first generation to have a standard of living below that of their parents.

Looking around and making a broad generalization, that is due entirely to corporate greed and the disparity of wealth.

Or is it something worse? ~ Bruce Springsteen

One of my favorite quotes from the Boss.

The "American Dream" was an ad ploy perpetrated upon the American population after WWII to compete with the Soviet Union. If there was a dream it was the U.S. Gov'ts need to put on a show of how successful we Americans are in response to the Soviet collective.

Reality is: everything in our lives that appears as a product of the American dream would never have been possible without cheap oil. Remove oil, you remove our life style. You remove the "American Dream".

If you want to hang onto that "dream", knock yourself out with that.

Me, I enjoy living in reality. Learn to live lean, very soon you be thankful for it.

When did women get the right to vote? When were black people finally considered actual human beings? Well into the 20th century(especially for the latter), decades after the discovery of oil.

If there isn't another source of cheap energy(that can power this machine), a lot is going to change.

exactly what I meant by my last line, "Learn to live lean, very soon you be thankful for it".

Yes, indeedy, things are going to change and there is a huge segment of our current earths population that either don't have a clue or are woefully unprepared for it.

In a very morbid sense, I find myself judging those various people whom I deem non-survivors. Massive SUV driving, tremendous house owning (in middle of no where places-added bonus), shop-aholic, cell phone chattering, energy sucking, no practical skills, disconnected, space fillers. Yeah, that is very harsh, but in the world we are quickly approaching, unless these people have something to contribute, they won't last.

Many of my friends ask me, "what can I do now to help?" basically, I tell them, "learn how to make something from scratch and get good at it, talk to your neighbors - get to know them, replace all your light bulbs with florescent lighting and take public transportation as much as possible.

Which will drive even more people into poverty...Then you will have the perfect storm.

Financial advisers are telling people to save an additional $200K for medical costs in retirement!!! That's today's estimates...

Even if I save $1 million for retirement, over the next whatever years - of course there is no pension, or health care coverage from employers - so I get to $1.0 million and get happy that "I MADE IT." Then my wife, kid, or myself have a serious medical problem, costing what? $100K, $200K, $500K? (seems like the sky is the limit on these things), then you are wiped out and moved back into the poverty level after you have done all the Right things.

IMHO, health care for all should be the nation's #1 priority.

All the things I was brought up to believe about our country as it turns out are not true.

They've made it so a man and his wife have to work 80 hours a week just to break even don't have time to spend together as a family and then they wonder why kids have problems.

Don't think about the problems and what causes them. Get back to work!

The American dream may have always been a joke to those of us living here, but its still being played up big time in the 3rd world. They have "God Bless America" and the stars and stripes forever blaring over PA syatems into every ghetto. Got to keep em coming; come join our military and slave in our sweatshops ... America the grand

live in the US from movies and TV shows. Because of that, they think everybody in the US is upper-middle class or rich.

Because we sure won't see THIS printed in the U.$. Pre$$.

I've almost bitten through my tongue the number of times I hear on TV/Radio that "the economy's doing well!" For 80% of the citizens, it's complete Bullshit!!

n/t