The American Dream

[flashlighter]

Let's talk for a minute about the "American Dream"- a chicken in every pot, a car in every driveway etc etc. If you work hard, you can grow up to have a better life than your parents. Get an education and you can go far.

We don't have a aristocracy or rigid class system. People who grow up poor (like Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Barrack Obama) can grow up to become senators, presidents and governors, even if they didn't go to the right school, have the right accent, or the luck to be born in a wealthy family.

We've worked HARD to make sure that educational opportunities are available to everyone, regardless of class or race. I work in higher education- I've SEEN people who come from poverty raise themselves and their entire family to prosperity.

Obviously we have problems. Obviously there is a disparity between CEO's and workers. I'm not trying to say we live in a utopia, please don't respond with stories about poverty and injustice. I'm talking about the IDEAL, the POSSIBILITY, the HOPE that you can grow up to become a wealthy person.

Republicans say that Democrats hate the wealthy, hate prosperity, hate success. They blather about how we're all socialists, and want to tell people how to spend their HARD EARNED money.

Stop proving them right. Remember the American Dream. I can do whatever I want with my money. So can you.

[Neshanic]

1. Interesting. We do not hate wealth.

We hate the wastefull excesses that wealth creates.

Are there wealthy Democrats that drive energy efficient cars?
Are there wealthy Democrats that build LEED standard homes that are in magazines for their beauty in fitting in with the land?
Are their wealthy Democrats that donate land for parks and open space?

The answer to all the above is yes, and I know them.

Who cares whatever you do with your money, but don't think there won't be comments on a place like this on an Edwards manse type gaffe.

[flashlighter]

4. Are you pro choice?

Are you pro gay marriage?


Do you think these are personal choices that you don't have a right to be a part of?

I think you don't have a right to tell someone what type of house/car they drive, or what sort of charity they donate to.

Most people would be offended by the idea of a bunch of random strangers on the internets discussing the personal financial choices of people.

[Neshanic]

7. Uh, Sweetie I am gay, and pro choice.

People can do whatever they want with their wealth. You are on a progressive site. It is assumed generally speaking, that you would with your purchases, big ones at least, make some choices over how to build a house on 100 plus acres if you had it. Not a wattle hut up against a Edwards estate choice, but maybe, just maybe, things that in small ways help the bigger picture of our planet.

Seems the Edwards architect, interior designer, and landscape architect had a field day.

[Perky]

2. I agee completely

The America Dreamis not an inherently evil concept. The party that can speak to both the idea of entreprenuership and social justice and how they are both tied to quality education will win the heart of the middle class and most elections in the absence of an international crisis.

[OneBlueSky]

3. "I can do whatever I want with my money" . . .

well, that's one way of looking at it . . . in a larger context, however, when a nation representing 5% of the world's population consistently consumes 25% or more of the Earth's resources, the system that allows you to do whatever you want cannot long endure . . .

BushCo's declaration that "the American way of life" is not negotiable is flawed . . . because the American way of life is horrendously wasteful and exploitative of the other 95% of the planet . . . the only thing keeping it from collapsing is creative bookkeeping and the military might of the United States . . .

[nam78_two]

23. Thanks you for making sense.nt

[mondo joe]

5. Too many on the right and now, on the left, want to control what we do with ourselves.

I'm still interested in freedom.

[Warpy]

6. Hear, hear!

I don't hear too many people criticizing Teddy Kennedy for being too rich or living an excessive lifestyle, but then again, nobody's publicized the nature of his homes.

This stuff is utterly ridiculous, divisive, and is doing the right wing's bidding. One needn't take a vow of poverty to run as a Democratic candidate. That vow of poverty is usually involuntary for those of us who have been faced with it. No one with all his screws fully tightened would take it.

Oh, and by the way, both Clinton and Edwards were lower middle class, not poor. They were both exposed to poverty and they both realize they beat some pretty stiff odds as the New Deal was being dismantled around them. They know that but for a few doors that were opened for them, they'd be just as poor as the people they grew up with are.

THAT is the difference.

[etherealtruth]

13. Thank you Warpy!

[Jim Warren]

8. The American Dream

How completely without conscience this phrase is, an empty hollow hypnotist lullaby perpetrated by a ruling class to keep the peasants entranced.

It arose after WWII with the demise of the world manufacturing base in Europe and East Asia. The US had the means, IE the factories, the market to rebuild the world, and all that was needed was cheap resources. Much to the loss of course to those places that were exploited to obtain them.

We, the workers, supplied the labor in exchange for The American Dream.

To add insult to injury, the WTO/New World Order capital brokers have abandoned the American worker and their precious dream yet some are still sycophantic enough
to still be chanting the last stanzas of the free trade trance.

The fucking american dream, don't ya see, is one of if not the major causes of so-called terrorism today.

People the world over have gotten wise to what is going on.

[NotGivingUp]

14. you are so right. the american dream what a joke.

an excuse for exploitation

it's one big pyramid scheme..just don't be stuck at the bottom

[CJCRANE]

9. Bushco are an American Nightmare.

Democratic administrations are statistically proven to be better for the overall economy (and that includes the haves and the have-mores).

[alittlelark]

10. Hope and hope and hope.... then look at reality -

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070205/madrick
<snip>
We may quibble about the exact threshold over which a nation must pass to be described as a class society, but the latest research on income mobility is startling. As economists Isabel Sawhill and Sara McLanahan state in the fall volume of the journal they edit, The Future of Children, the American ideal of a classless society "is one in which all children have a roughly equal chance of success regardless of the economic status of the family into which they were born." In sum, they write, "the association between one's parents' income and one's own should be small."

But that is not the case in America. Only a couple of decades ago, economists thought that in the land of Horatio Alger only 20 percent of one's future income was determined by one's father's income, a conclusion that University of Chicago economic Nobelist Gary Becker, among others, hailed as proof of the fairness and health of the American economic model. More sophisticated research in the 1990s, however, suggested that the relationship between incomes of fathers and their sons was closer to 40 percent--disheartening if true. Some relationship between intergenerational incomes is to be expected through biological inheritance, cultural privilege and the passing on of social norms, but at 40 percent, the Chicago school argument took a serious blow.

Now, based on new data gathered in the past few years, some economists, led by Bhashkar Mazumder of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, argue that 60 percent of a son's income is determined by the level of inco me of the father. For women, it is roughly the same. Sixty percent is a shocking number, and some economists want to await further research, but Mazumder's methodology is persuasive. At the least, the estimate of a 40 percent correlation is likely too low.
<snip>

We have the lowest class mobility in the industrialized world.

[noamnety]

12. We have the lowest class mobility in the industrialized world.

I just wanted that in the subject line. People act like the exceptions disprove the rule.

As for having a chicken in every pot, please note that it's a chicken in every pot, not 30,000 chickens in one person's pot.

A car in every driveway is clearly not sustainable, and I'm not sure that a chicken in every pot is sustainable either. This tells me it's time to revise "The American Dream" from Hoover's definition.

New American Dream: "To protect the environment, enhance quality of life, and promote social justice." http://www.newdream.org/about/

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. ..

They call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. George Carlin. :rofl:

[NotGivingUp]

15. that's a good one! i like george....carlin, that is! n/t

[Clark2008]

16. John Edwards did not grow up poor.

He grew up upper middle class, which is fine. But he had more opportunity than me, my son, Bill Clinton, Wes Clark and half of DU.

Otherwise, I respect your point. The point of your post is valid.

I just like to make sure the factual side is, indeed, factual.

:hi:

[Greyhound]

17. I guess this is yet another response to the distraction DU jour, namely, the

non-issue of Edwards new house, but you bring up an interesting point.

The American Dream, what is it? Originally it was about only one thing and that was liberty, or individual freedom. The new amerikan dream is what you are obliquely referring to and that is nothing more than a corporate fabrication created specifically to undermine the founding principles of our nation. It has been very successful in accomplishing this with your OP being a good example. ("a chicken in every pot" was campaign rhetoric from FDR, not The Dream)

Your depiction of the extreme examples of people "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" as proof of opportunity, is comparable to claiming that if you just buy enough lottery tickets and keep buying them for long enough you will get rich. We do, in fact, have an aristocracy and a rigid class system. Don't believe it? Just look at the names and familial connections of the political and industrial rulers of this country for the last 100 years.

Yes everyone can go to school, but that does not equate to education? No, you may only have that if you live in the right neighborhood. Why is this? Does the imparting of knowledge cost more than the current model of indoctrination of blind obedience to authority? Not at all, but we cannot support our class system with a population of thoughtful, well educated, rational people. They have a tendency to demand a fair share and to be treated as equals, can't have that, now can we?

We need to make fundamental and broad-based changes to our system, and those changes must happen soon, otherwise we are headed for a dismal future with each succeeding generation becoming less than the previous.

[SoCalDem]

18. Worried, anxious people can't dream much these days.

The "dream" worked when most jobs were union and people withour college could still do well.

These days, even people WITH college are struggling.

Once the boomers all die off, things should "improve", so hang on you young' uns..

[Wiley50]

19. But I Am A Socialist!

And I Do hate the wealthy, hate prosperity, hate success.

And I'll try to tell people how to spend their money if I want.

BTW, Welcome to DU

Watch out for the trolls.
They're everywhere

[hfojvt]

20. I would have put a couple of those words in quotes

hate prosperity or 'prosperity'? What is prosperity? We have learned these days to measure it by per capita GDP. Thus things like wealth distribution and second hand goods and free labor do not count. If I cut my own grass, that does not add to the GDP. If I pay somebody to cut it, then it does (at least if he reports the income). Buy a 2nd hand coat, does not add to the GDP, but a new coat does.

Then there is the aspirin standard. Society produces head-aches (social problems) so people buy aspirin (or spend money trying to fix social problems). And hurrah, buying aspirin adds to the GDP.

What is 'success'? Making lots of money, or helping lots of people? According to theory, people who have lots of money, have it because they helped people and the peoplethey helped gave money as payment for that help. Unfortunately, the reality is that often people are not helping others as much as they are extorting and exploiting others. On the other hand, there are people without power, for example, the working class. They help their employers and get paid for it, but they help far more than they get paid and thus also help their employers to get rich.

As far as telling people how to spend their money. In my view, the winners of the rat race are not necessarily winners, just fast or talented rats. We spend our time on this planet raping it, stressing out, racing, racing, racing, fighting each other, stressing other people out in order to get more money so we can buy more and nicer stuff. Supposedly that is how we 'enjoy life'. Maybe that works for some, but for others the entire process of the rat race is not that enjoyable, and in my view, although the winners may not notice it, it causes alot of our problems and destroys the solidarity that could make life better for all of us. So I am more likely to shake my finger at the 'winners' of the rat race than I am to applaud them. They are typically far more part of the problem than they are part of the solution.

[Wiley50]

21. "The Thing About The Rat Race Is Even If You Win, You're Still A Rat" --Gilda Radner n/t

[nam78_two]

22. If only the planet had infinite resources.nt