Decline Of The American Dream Analysis
An Analysis on the Decline of the American Dream Coined by James Truslow Adams in 1931 in response to the economic growth and prosperity experienced in the 1920’s following the end of World War I, the American Dream has served as a source of motivation for working American citizens and a pull-factor for those immigrating to America for decades. Defined as “the ideal that every American citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative regardless of social class or circumstances of birth”, the American Dream acted as an advertisement for democracy, serving as a contrast to other political and economic systems, as America’s free-enterprise system provided the circumstances possible for
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individuals to exceed meeting their basic needs and achieve self-actualization and personal achievement, unlike the economic climate in countries under the influence of communism. Though the appeal of the American Dream is perennial, a 2013 study conducted by a sociology professor at Bucknell University revealed that over 50 percent of Americans saw the American Dream as already dead or in the process of dying, with only 33 percent of Americans agreeing with the claim that America continues to offer an equal chance to get ahead. That same study showed that young Americans no longer set their sights on the very things that symbolize the American Dream (settling down and owning a home, a career, a family), but instead defined their American Dream as “achieving financial security” and “being debt free”, suggesting that, in the very least, the American Dream is changing. Furthermore, the study showed that the definition of “middle class” had shifted for many Americans, as only 43 percent of those surveyed defined being middle class as “earning more, buying a home, and saving”, whereas 54 percent of those surveyed defined being middle class as “having the ability to keep up with expenses and hold a steady job while not falling behind or taking on too much debt”. Similarly, another poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2014 showed that 55 percent of Americans don’t believe that the American Dream ever existed in the first place, a poll from February of 2014 conducted by McClatchy and Marist College showed 80 percent of people say it's harder to achieve the American Dream than it was before, and a CNN/Opinion Research poll from June of 2014 showed 59 percent of Americans said the American Dream was unachievable. Only a mere 31 percent of those surveyed said “individuals who worked hard had a good chance of improving their lot in life”. With a seemingly egalitarian economic system, why does the American Dream remain elusive to so many Americans? The study at Bucknell University showed that 35 percent of Americans don’t believe that there are any jobs available for them, and 1.8 million Americans have stopped searching for employment, one reason being the flagrant racial, gender, and homophobic discrimination within the workplace. An article on Workplace Fairness states that, “although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other anti-discrimination laws, there has been strong resistance to enforcement of existing laws and political opposition to remedial affirmative action. As discrimination has become more subtle and more difficult to identify and correct, many Americans continue to endure unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace.” In order to exploit this issue, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business conducted a study in 2003 in which they found that applicants with “white-sounding names” were 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with “African-American sounding names”, and that having a high-quality resume had a much smaller impact on African-American applicants than it did on Caucasian applicants (a disparity of 30 percent more likely for Caucasians as opposed to 9 percent more likely for African-Americans). The study concluded that racial discrimination levels were consistent across all occupations and industries, and that even federal contractors and companies that explicitly state that they are “Equal Opportunity Employers” did not discriminate less. A fact column on Workplace Fairness states that “white men are twice as likely to get management jobs as equally qualified black men, and three times as likely as black women.” This same article describes the glass ceiling for women as such, “More progress has been made for women, but most women continue to work in jobs stereotyped as female jobs, and women in nearly all job categories receive less pay than males in those job categories. Women face limits on promotion to high level management positions because of conscious and subconscious sex bias, and continue to experience sexual harassment on the job despite increased employer awareness of an employer’s obligation to take preventive and corrective action.” A study conducted by California State University in Hayward, California showed that Walmart, being the largest employer in the U.S., had a 72 percent female workforce, whereas only 33 percent of its managers were female. Comparably, in 2013, The Los Angeles Times cited a study conducted by the Williams Institute, which found that up to 43 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender workers have experienced being fired, denied promotions, or harassed within the workplace. David Cicilline makes a point to remind us that it is legal to fire someone based on his or her sexual orientation or gender identity in 28 states, telling USA Today that, “although you can be married Saturday, post your pictures on Facebook on Sunday, you could then be fired Monday.” Although there have been many legislations passed to reach towards equality both in and out of the workplace, equality is dependent upon American citizens individually exercising these egalitarian values, and for the 50.4 percent of Americans that are female, 17.3 percent of Americans that are Hispanic, 13.2 percent of Americans that are African-American, and 6 percent of Americans that identify as LGBT, we as a country are not sustaining an equal-opportunity environment for those chasing the American Dream. As Shirley Chisholm, American politician, editor, and author, once said, “In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing – anti-humanism.” Another key component to why the American Dream is dying is that even once an individual has procured a job, earning enough income to support yourself, and especially a family, is difficult in today’s economy. As of 2012, college costs had risen five-hundred percent since 1985, and continue to rise, and many career specialists, such as Penelope Trunk, are speculating that the cost of a college education is not worth its assumed benefits. In an interview with CNN in 2013, Trunk explained that, “[we] think of college as opening doors after graduation, but the debt closes those doors…In general, we are not learning in college anything that's useful…and companies are shifting how they hire people to focus more on what people do as opposed to where they’ve been educated,” and many people agree with her. Since 2007, healthcare costs have risen 52 percent, household costs have risen 73 percent, and in the same time period, Census Bureau figures show that the median household income has decreased by 8 percent. In 2012, roughly 5 percent of the U.S. working population was working more than one job, in some states, such as South Carolina, that percentage nearly doubles to 9.5 percent, these individuals making only an average weekly wage of $703. As of 2013, 47.5 million Americans are on food stamps (about 1 in every 6 Americans), because even at an average GDP of $44,000 a year, many Americans cannot afford the basic necessities of life, much less overcome debt and accumulate modest savings. For this reason, an estimated 25 percent of Americans who are nearing retirement age will not have saved for their post-working years. Benjamin Todd Jealous, venture capitalist, civic leader and former president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, makes the argument that “no person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.” Taking the increasing debt of the American people a step further, one can blame the death of the American Dream on the Federal Reserve System for its institutionalization of fractional lending- a process by which the Federal Reserve has the ability to create money (and debt) from nothing and lend it out to banks while charging interest. Unlike the silver-backed United States Notes of the late 20’s up until 1964, current American currency, or Federal Reserve Notes, is not backed by anything of intrinsic value. Instead, its value is determined by however much capital the Federal Reserve allows to be in circulation, meaning that the American citizen’s state of living is controlled by a privately-owned institution that has power over inflation and deflation within the American economy. As Thomas Jefferson warned, “the central bank is an institution of the deadliest hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution…If the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” According to the United States Secret Service, 99 percent of all the U.S. paper currency circulating since 1999 are Federal Reserve Notes. Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, once declared, “Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” Throughout history, many attempts have been made to dismantle the central bank, such as Lincoln’s Greenback, or President Andrew Jackson, who claimed his greatest accomplishment was that he “killed the bank”, an act which virtually erased America’s debt.
A mere five weeks before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy made an attempt to strip the Federal Reserve System of its power to print money and loan it to the United States Federal Government at interest. His Executive Order 11110 pushed for the elimination of Federal Reserve Notes and the wide-circulation of the silver-backed United States Notes. Had Kennedy not been assassinated, this order would have passed and spared the United States the nearly $9 trillion in federal debt accumulated after the discontinuation of United States Notes just six weeks after the Kennedy assassination in 1964. Just as Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee in the 1930’s, said, “This evil institution [ Federal Reserve System] has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the … corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control
it.” So what does this mean for the American people? This economic climate has led to the rise of pessimism within the United States. A 2001 poll conducted by NBC News showed that 49 percent of Americans said they were confident life would be better for their children. When asked this same question in 2006, 65 percent of Americans don’t believe life for their children’s generation will be better than it has been for them, and those numbers are only getting worse. Among those surveyed, 81 percent believe the current state of the American economy is “part of a longer-term decline and that things won't get better for some time”, with only a mere 12 percent believing the problems are short-term. Novelist J.D. Ballard wrote, “The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now.”
individuals to exceed meeting their basic needs and achieve self-actualization and personal achievement, unlike the economic climate in countries under the influence of communism. Though the appeal of the American Dream is perennial, a 2013 study conducted by a sociology professor at Bucknell University revealed that over 50 percent of Americans saw the American Dream as already dead or in the process of dying, with only 33 percent of Americans agreeing with the claim that America continues to offer an equal chance to get ahead. That same study showed that young Americans no longer set their sights on the very things that symbolize the American Dream (settling down and owning a home, a career, a family), but instead defined their American Dream as “achieving financial security” and “being debt free”, suggesting that, in the very least, the American Dream is changing. Furthermore, the study showed that the definition of “middle class” had shifted for many Americans, as only 43 percent of those surveyed defined being middle class as “earning more, buying a home, and saving”, whereas 54 percent of those surveyed defined being middle class as “having the ability to keep up with expenses and hold a steady job while not falling behind or taking on too much debt”. Similarly, another poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2014 showed that 55 percent of Americans don’t believe that the American Dream ever existed in the first place, a poll from February of 2014 conducted by McClatchy and Marist College showed 80 percent of people say it's harder to achieve the American Dream than it was before, and a CNN/Opinion Research poll from June of 2014 showed 59 percent of Americans said the American Dream was unachievable. Only a mere 31 percent of those surveyed said “individuals who worked hard had a good chance of improving their lot in life”. With a seemingly egalitarian economic system, why does the American Dream remain elusive to so many Americans? The study at Bucknell University showed that 35 percent of Americans don’t believe that there are any jobs available for them, and 1.8 million Americans have stopped searching for employment, one reason being the flagrant racial, gender, and homophobic discrimination within the workplace. An article on Workplace Fairness states that, “although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other anti-discrimination laws, there has been strong resistance to enforcement of existing laws and political opposition to remedial affirmative action. As discrimination has become more subtle and more difficult to identify and correct, many Americans continue to endure unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace.” In order to exploit this issue, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business conducted a study in 2003 in which they found that applicants with “white-sounding names” were 50 percent more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with “African-American sounding names”, and that having a high-quality resume had a much smaller impact on African-American applicants than it did on Caucasian applicants (a disparity of 30 percent more likely for Caucasians as opposed to 9 percent more likely for African-Americans). The study concluded that racial discrimination levels were consistent across all occupations and industries, and that even federal contractors and companies that explicitly state that they are “Equal Opportunity Employers” did not discriminate less. A fact column on Workplace Fairness states that “white men are twice as likely to get management jobs as equally qualified black men, and three times as likely as black women.” This same article describes the glass ceiling for women as such, “More progress has been made for women, but most women continue to work in jobs stereotyped as female jobs, and women in nearly all job categories receive less pay than males in those job categories. Women face limits on promotion to high level management positions because of conscious and subconscious sex bias, and continue to experience sexual harassment on the job despite increased employer awareness of an employer’s obligation to take preventive and corrective action.” A study conducted by California State University in Hayward, California showed that Walmart, being the largest employer in the U.S., had a 72 percent female workforce, whereas only 33 percent of its managers were female. Comparably, in 2013, The Los Angeles Times cited a study conducted by the Williams Institute, which found that up to 43 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender workers have experienced being fired, denied promotions, or harassed within the workplace. David Cicilline makes a point to remind us that it is legal to fire someone based on his or her sexual orientation or gender identity in 28 states, telling USA Today that, “although you can be married Saturday, post your pictures on Facebook on Sunday, you could then be fired Monday.” Although there have been many legislations passed to reach towards equality both in and out of the workplace, equality is dependent upon American citizens individually exercising these egalitarian values, and for the 50.4 percent of Americans that are female, 17.3 percent of Americans that are Hispanic, 13.2 percent of Americans that are African-American, and 6 percent of Americans that identify as LGBT, we as a country are not sustaining an equal-opportunity environment for those chasing the American Dream. As Shirley Chisholm, American politician, editor, and author, once said, “In the end anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing – anti-humanism.” Another key component to why the American Dream is dying is that even once an individual has procured a job, earning enough income to support yourself, and especially a family, is difficult in today’s economy. As of 2012, college costs had risen five-hundred percent since 1985, and continue to rise, and many career specialists, such as Penelope Trunk, are speculating that the cost of a college education is not worth its assumed benefits. In an interview with CNN in 2013, Trunk explained that, “[we] think of college as opening doors after graduation, but the debt closes those doors…In general, we are not learning in college anything that's useful…and companies are shifting how they hire people to focus more on what people do as opposed to where they’ve been educated,” and many people agree with her. Since 2007, healthcare costs have risen 52 percent, household costs have risen 73 percent, and in the same time period, Census Bureau figures show that the median household income has decreased by 8 percent. In 2012, roughly 5 percent of the U.S. working population was working more than one job, in some states, such as South Carolina, that percentage nearly doubles to 9.5 percent, these individuals making only an average weekly wage of $703. As of 2013, 47.5 million Americans are on food stamps (about 1 in every 6 Americans), because even at an average GDP of $44,000 a year, many Americans cannot afford the basic necessities of life, much less overcome debt and accumulate modest savings. For this reason, an estimated 25 percent of Americans who are nearing retirement age will not have saved for their post-working years. Benjamin Todd Jealous, venture capitalist, civic leader and former president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, makes the argument that “no person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.” Taking the increasing debt of the American people a step further, one can blame the death of the American Dream on the Federal Reserve System for its institutionalization of fractional lending- a process by which the Federal Reserve has the ability to create money (and debt) from nothing and lend it out to banks while charging interest. Unlike the silver-backed United States Notes of the late 20’s up until 1964, current American currency, or Federal Reserve Notes, is not backed by anything of intrinsic value. Instead, its value is determined by however much capital the Federal Reserve allows to be in circulation, meaning that the American citizen’s state of living is controlled by a privately-owned institution that has power over inflation and deflation within the American economy. As Thomas Jefferson warned, “the central bank is an institution of the deadliest hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution…If the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” According to the United States Secret Service, 99 percent of all the U.S. paper currency circulating since 1999 are Federal Reserve Notes. Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, once declared, “Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” Throughout history, many attempts have been made to dismantle the central bank, such as Lincoln’s Greenback, or President Andrew Jackson, who claimed his greatest accomplishment was that he “killed the bank”, an act which virtually erased America’s debt.
A mere five weeks before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy made an attempt to strip the Federal Reserve System of its power to print money and loan it to the United States Federal Government at interest. His Executive Order 11110 pushed for the elimination of Federal Reserve Notes and the wide-circulation of the silver-backed United States Notes. Had Kennedy not been assassinated, this order would have passed and spared the United States the nearly $9 trillion in federal debt accumulated after the discontinuation of United States Notes just six weeks after the Kennedy assassination in 1964. Just as Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee in the 1930’s, said, “This evil institution [ Federal Reserve System] has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the … corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control
it.” So what does this mean for the American people? This economic climate has led to the rise of pessimism within the United States. A 2001 poll conducted by NBC News showed that 49 percent of Americans said they were confident life would be better for their children. When asked this same question in 2006, 65 percent of Americans don’t believe life for their children’s generation will be better than it has been for them, and those numbers are only getting worse. Among those surveyed, 81 percent believe the current state of the American economy is “part of a longer-term decline and that things won't get better for some time”, with only a mere 12 percent believing the problems are short-term. Novelist J.D. Ballard wrote, “The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It’s over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now.”