The American Dream

If people are looking to become rich, famous or powerful they'd better have some good skills or good looks to get there. The days of getting there with hard work on the back of a 9 to 5 are over forever.The fact is companies can do it cheaper elsewhere and you'd best believe they will in a heartbeat.

> Is the American dream dead? If it is, what killed it off? Was it deindustration? The end of the Cold War? the Rise of China?

i think its American Dream now is dead. There are many thing that kill it : Deindustrialization, collapse of labor union, cheapening of degree, offshoring, strengthening of wealth divide, etc

my definition of American Dream is those who want willing to work hard, can achieve middle class lifestyle. in the past it work through three stages, Getting Land in the frontier, getting good union work in factory, and getting office work through University education. All never easy, but achievable to a lot of people.

And U.S.gov in the past always support it through Indian Wars, Steadholding, Norris-La Guardia Act, NIRA , G.I.Bill and land-grant university. Sadly after Reagan, American government have abandoned helping people to achieve American Dream. Farmers destroyed by big Agribusiness, Union Factory work destroyed by offshoring and rights to work law, and University Education destroyed by its own success, with too many graduate, it no longer guarantee good work.

@OP: Yes, it is dead, though I prefer to say that it never truly existed.

This guy...

I'm extremely confused.

What planet does he live in? He seems to believe that not being able to make it to the top on hard work, perseverance and gumption is an occasional accident rather than the norm!

EDIT: Hm, after reading the full thing, I'm even more confused. The author doesn't pull punches when describing a corrupt, nepotistic education system. Which is very much at odds with his painfully, euphemistically, delusionally idealistic first paragraph. For context, see

edited 1st Feb '15 11:32:15 AM by TheHandle

You might want to add context to your post so it doesn't look like a poor necropost.

edited 1st Feb '15 11:26:17 AM by PotatoesRock

Another article from the same journal about how America's becoming a hereditary meritocracy.

Both articles make complimentary points explaining that the richest kids are the ones that get the best education; they're competent and qualified for the best-remunerated posts, but this reliable self-perpetuation means that those from middle classes struggle a lot, and those from lower ones will never ever get a shot. Upwards mobility is good for the country (less talent is wasted), while the perception of its disappearance opens the path to anty-system demagogues on the far right and left. Kind of like how the FN is growing ever more popular in France, while Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece are landsliding.

Mobility and stability for the proletariat prevents violence/revolt/opposition to the bourgeoisie. Marxist, but it does prove accurate, you oppress/break the worker class, they're not going to listen and thus support a radical political party/movement. U.S. hasn't had it because the US economy hasn't tanked nearly enough.

Marx was absolutely correct on identifying the problem, less so giving the solution.

There's ALWAYS been a wealthy class of people who inherit their wealth from their ancestors. Some can carry it on for several generations, but there's a brillaint tendency for those who didn't earn their wealth to eventually screw up and lose it all.

That's true in just about every society ever. Punishing the rich for being rich won't help anything. Taxing them, and making sure they gain the least ammount of undue influence possible should be the goal.

To me, the American Dream basically means "The ability to be a self-made man through sheer merit". Basically, even though there's a limited amount of people at the top of that pyramid, anyone can compete for that #1 spot at the top. For example, the child of an immigrant can invent something in his garage, go into business, and form a giant business from it. Every person allowed to explore their talents and attempt to profit from them.

The thing to keep in mind is that the American Dream exists in degrees. It is not something that either exists or doesn't. It has never been fully realized, nor fully gone throughout all of American history. Part of the problem is a tendency to fall into one "extreme" or the other.

To give extreme examples, the American Dream would have great difficulty existing in either One Nation Under Copyright or a Communist society. Both result in a centralized power controlling society and deciding who does and doesn't succeed for themselves. Of course, America never falls into either extreme, so it can be said that the American dream still exists.

As for today, things are a little rough for the Dream, but it's not gone, and the situation will probably improve shortly.