Ye Olde Soapbox

The Death of the American Dream

Posted on June 12, 2012   

Want to participate in the American Dream, go buy a lottery ticket.  It will give you a better chance of acquiring that house on the corner with the white picket fence than hard work ever will.

The net worth of the average American family dropped from $126,000 to $77,000 between the years 2007 and 2010.  A large chunk of that decline is due to the housing bubble that burst at the beginning of the Great Recession, but another factor is the stagnation, or outright decline, of wages paid to the working man.  Americans, especially the middle classes, have grown poorer through no fault of their own.  They have little to no savings, and many of their homes are underwater.

On the flip side, the top 10% of our nations earners saw a rise in income.  How is this possible, or fair, when the rest of us don’t have two nickles to rub together.  American corporations are sitting on piles of money – see Exxon Mobil and General Electric – while doing nothing for the country that helped make them successful.  Instead, they are outsourcing jobs overseas in search of more profits.  Where does it end.

The decline of the middle class, combined with the prosperity of the wealthy elite, has led to a disparity in income not seen since the Great Depression.  Historically, the middle class is the engine that drives our economy.  The rich can not, or will not, support the economy on their own.  Yet the middle class, with their loss of income, are incapable of stopping the current trend.  Disposable income is nonexistent when you make minimum wage.

Most families I know have two wage earners yet are barely making ends meet, and any savings they may have had have been erased by the last three years of the recession.  They see their kids on weekends and after work, that is if they aren’t working six-day weeks or overtime.  Is that any way to live?

For most Americans, their home is their main investment.  Stocks are for the rich and well to do.  But because the housing bubble burst, people will have to put off retirement until their late sixties or early seventies (and the way things are, due to Social Security and Medicare being in dire straights, the delay will be mandatory.)  People working into their seventies will not be an aberration, it will be the norm.  All because the rich want to get richer, and to hell with everyone else.

Greed will be the death of capitalism, and we are seeing the beginning of the end.  There is enough money to go around, but no one wants to share.  The numbers don’t lie.  Hard work will no longer help you get ahead, not at minimum wage, which is what the new jobs pay, and unions are a dying breed.  You are on your own, as even the government has businesses best interests at heart.  The people come second (if that high.)

This country was founded by elite white men for elite white men, and it has never changed.  So get out there and play the lottery, and maybe you too can retire before you’re seventy.  And if you happen to pass a poor person panhandling on the street you can tell him just what the rich people tell him, “Get a job, you lazy bum.”

And life goes on.

 The Death of the American Dream | breezespeaks.

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