It has been a downhill run for quite a long time, had anyone taken the time to notice.
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Mark Manson's article, "The American Dream is Killing Us" offers some historic perspective and explanations for our failures. "Since the beginning, Americans have always seen themselves as exceptional. The United States’ meteoric rise to world superpower happened because of the confluence of four unique factors that it benefitted from greatly:
Unlimited Land – (As we know, the land was already occupied and required unlimited slaughter.) From the very beginning, the US enjoyed a constant state of expansion. Cheap and fertile farmland was always plentiful. And natural resources appeared to be endless, with massive reserves of oil, coal, timber, and precious metals that are still being discovered today.
Unlimited Cheap Labor – (As we know, slave labor is 'free' and the African continent possessed large populations.)
Unlimited Innovation – Perhaps the one thing the US system got right more than anything else is that it is set up to reward ingenuity and innovation. If you come up with the latest, greatest idea, it’s here, more than anywhere else, that you’ll get rewarded for it. As such, many of the great technological advances in the last few centuries came from brilliant immigrants that the US attracted to its soil. (As we know, today immigrants are bad and we want to keep them out or kick them out.)
Geographic Isolation – Civilizations in Europe and Asia were invaded, conquered, invaded again, conquered again, back and forth with the tides of history wiping cultures and peoples from the map over and over again.
But not the United States. It was just too bloody far away. I mean, if you’re Napoleon, why load up a bunch of expensive ships and sail for weeks, when you can just invade Italy, like, tomorrow?
It’s from this intersection of good fortune, plentiful resources, massive amounts of land, and creative ingenuity drawn from around the world that the idea of the American Dream was born. That you too can own a McMansion with a three-car garage…
Unlimited Land – (As we know, the land was already occupied and required unlimited slaughter.) From the very beginning, the US enjoyed a constant state of expansion. Cheap and fertile farmland was always plentiful. And natural resources appeared to be endless, with massive reserves of oil, coal, timber, and precious metals that are still being discovered today.
Unlimited Cheap Labor – (As we know, slave labor is 'free' and the African continent possessed large populations.)
Unlimited Innovation – Perhaps the one thing the US system got right more than anything else is that it is set up to reward ingenuity and innovation. If you come up with the latest, greatest idea, it’s here, more than anywhere else, that you’ll get rewarded for it. As such, many of the great technological advances in the last few centuries came from brilliant immigrants that the US attracted to its soil. (As we know, today immigrants are bad and we want to keep them out or kick them out.)
Geographic Isolation – Civilizations in Europe and Asia were invaded, conquered, invaded again, conquered again, back and forth with the tides of history wiping cultures and peoples from the map over and over again.
But not the United States. It was just too bloody far away. I mean, if you’re Napoleon, why load up a bunch of expensive ships and sail for weeks, when you can just invade Italy, like, tomorrow?
It’s from this intersection of good fortune, plentiful resources, massive amounts of land, and creative ingenuity drawn from around the world that the idea of the American Dream was born. That you too can own a McMansion with a three-car garage…
Along with all of this 'good luck', the 'dream' has created some 'mental problems' for the citizensof this country. The American Dream causes people to believe that people always get what they deserve; it causes us to believe that people are only worth what they achieve; indirectly, it encourages people to feel justified in exploiting others.
REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM is the definitive discourse with Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive, on the defining characteristic of our time - the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few.
Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality - tracing a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority. Chomsky provides penetrating insight into what may well be the lasting legacy of our time - the death of the middle class and swan song of functioning democracy. A potent reminder that power ultimately rests in the hands of the governed. The film is required viewing for all who maintain hope in a shared stake in the future. |  |
American Dream in Freefall:
It's This Bad
'Declines in absolute mobility have been a systematic, widespread phenomenon throughout the United States since 1940,' the authors of the new study write.
from Common Dreams by Andrea Germanos
Whither the American Dream?
It may not be totally dead, but a new study suggests that it is certainly on life support.
Published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science journal Science, the team of researchers led by Raj Chetty and David Grusky of Stanford University used data from federal income tax returns and U.S. Census and Current Population Surveys to look at trends of this "absolute mobility," or earning more than one's parents.
What they found was a dramatic decline over the past several decades. While nearly all—over 90 percent—of children born in 1940 were able to earn more than their parents, that figure drops to 50 percent for children born in the 1980s.
The authors write that the decline was particularly acute "in the industrial Midwest," states like Michigan, and hit the middle class hardest, though they note "that declines in absolute mobility have been a systematic, widespread phenomenon throughout the United States since 1940."
An infographic conveying results by Chetty et al., which reveal that the probability for children to attain a higher income than their parents has dropped dramatically -- from more than 90 percent for children born in 1940 to 50 percent for children born in the 1980s. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the 28 April 2017, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by R. Chetty at Stanford University in Stanford, CA, and colleagues was titled, 'The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940.'
(Image and caption: AAAS/Science)Intertwined with the ability to move upward is the inequality gripping the nation. They note: "Higher GDP growth rates do not substantially increase the number of children who earn more than their parents because a large fraction of GDP goes to a small number of high income earners today." Put another way, "Absolute mobility is highest when GDP growth rates are high and growth is spread broadly across the distribution."
Thus, a big part of reversing the trend means "more equal economic redistribution," the researchers conclude.
Noting the economic benefits that have been reaped most by those at the upper echelons, noted commentator Bill Moyers wrote months ago of "an ugly truth about America: inequality matters. It slows economic growth, undermines health, erodes social cohesion and solidarity, and starves education."
It was a major theme of the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who continues to rail against the country's "massive income and wealth inequality," and condemned President Donald Trump's budget blueprint last month as "morally obsence" for including "unacceptably painful cuts to programs that senior citizens, children, persons with disabilities, and working people rely on to feed their families, heat their homes, put food on the table, and educate their children."
It's This Bad
'Declines in absolute mobility have been a systematic, widespread phenomenon throughout the United States since 1940,' the authors of the new study write.
from Common Dreams by Andrea Germanos
Whither the American Dream?
It may not be totally dead, but a new study suggests that it is certainly on life support.
Published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science journal Science, the team of researchers led by Raj Chetty and David Grusky of Stanford University used data from federal income tax returns and U.S. Census and Current Population Surveys to look at trends of this "absolute mobility," or earning more than one's parents.
What they found was a dramatic decline over the past several decades. While nearly all—over 90 percent—of children born in 1940 were able to earn more than their parents, that figure drops to 50 percent for children born in the 1980s.
The authors write that the decline was particularly acute "in the industrial Midwest," states like Michigan, and hit the middle class hardest, though they note "that declines in absolute mobility have been a systematic, widespread phenomenon throughout the United States since 1940."
An infographic conveying results by Chetty et al., which reveal that the probability for children to attain a higher income than their parents has dropped dramatically -- from more than 90 percent for children born in 1940 to 50 percent for children born in the 1980s. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the 28 April 2017, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by R. Chetty at Stanford University in Stanford, CA, and colleagues was titled, 'The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940.'
(Image and caption: AAAS/Science)Intertwined with the ability to move upward is the inequality gripping the nation. They note: "Higher GDP growth rates do not substantially increase the number of children who earn more than their parents because a large fraction of GDP goes to a small number of high income earners today." Put another way, "Absolute mobility is highest when GDP growth rates are high and growth is spread broadly across the distribution."
Thus, a big part of reversing the trend means "more equal economic redistribution," the researchers conclude.
Noting the economic benefits that have been reaped most by those at the upper echelons, noted commentator Bill Moyers wrote months ago of "an ugly truth about America: inequality matters. It slows economic growth, undermines health, erodes social cohesion and solidarity, and starves education."
It was a major theme of the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who continues to rail against the country's "massive income and wealth inequality," and condemned President Donald Trump's budget blueprint last month as "morally obsence" for including "unacceptably painful cuts to programs that senior citizens, children, persons with disabilities, and working people rely on to feed their families, heat their homes, put food on the table, and educate their children."
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