A political commentary I wrote about the state of the American Dream
A small loan of One Million Dollars
By Thomas Ferrick
The American Dream! Where the large houses with the grand arches and white picket fences are achievable by anyone! It is the American Dream that emphasizes that anyone in this country can enter society and live a modest and comfortable life. With the combination of hard work and smart work anything is possible. Free public education will teach the necessary qualities to achieve such success. The unlimited opportunities that this amazing country provides will allow for each and every “citizen” to make this dream a reality. Doesn’t this sound like something you would read out of a shitty tour guide magazine sitting in a vacant bar in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Well that is basically what the American Dream has turned into. At least for 99% of the country. If you grew up in the “middle working class” good luck with achieving the “American Dream”. Those that had the money, education, and the environment to succeed did. Those that did not, not so much. It is this binary between the top one percent and everyone else that makes this vision damn near impossible.
This “dream” is supposed to be inclusive of all races, genders, and nationalities. This is due to the cunning and accepting structure of our government. In the Declaration of Independence, the statement that all men are created equal and are entitled to fundamental rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness lacks evidential success. Let’s just skip past the part where prominent political founders of our country such as Thomas Jefferson owned other human beings and maybe even had an illegitimate child or two. Anyways, if this philosophy is true, that anyone can make it in today’s world, then this country must truly be the utopia that it has claimed to be . Surprisingly enough the idea that the American Dream is a reality is incredibly inaccurate and really is a bunch of bull shit. One accurate indicator of how likely someone is to succeed in life is how wealthy their parents are. If you have the means to achieve it is a lot easier than someone who does not. For example, President elect Donald J. Trump has noted that his success has mostly been self made, aside from his small loan of a million dollars from his father. Presidents before him have also been known to be born into connections and opportunities that the common american “Average Joe” could only dream of. Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. both came from a family of wealthy oil barons. Ronald Reagan was a popular and wealthy actor. Not to mention the american royal family the Kennedys; President John F. Kennedy came from a background of wealthy alcohol bootleggers. The list can go on and on of people who had access to money and status. For they were the ones that achieved the “American Dream”.
Since elementary school I knew I could become the POTUS if I really put my mind to it. However, I would be competing with all the individuals who have the same idea as me but the safety net to fall onto if they were to fail. If I want to have that big house with a pool in the backyard you bet I will have to work my ass of to reach that goal. Oh and pay back a couple thousand dollars in student loans first. The opportunity available does not compare to an individual who has everything handed to them. Granted it’s not just the top one percent that makes this dream unachievable.
Remember Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders? Neither do I, but let's talk about him anyways. Senator Sanders raised millions of dollars without being supported by the super pacs or big corporations that every other presidential candidate was quick to accept. He furthermore appealed to the middle working class because he was relatable. By god, the man used public transportation. From the beginning of his campaign it was widely recognized that the democratic superdelegates were already pledging their vote and loyalty to Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, Bernie lacked what the other extremely wealthy political figures had. Tons of money and coverage of the media. It was noted that Bernie Sanders during his campaign for democratic nominee only received 20 minutes of coverage from ABC’s World News Tonight. That compared to Trump’s 327 minutes and Clinton’s 88 minutes of media coverage. Unbelievable! A man that was truly speaking and representing in the interest of the people was shot down by the lack of media coverage of him and his campaign. His biggest failure was his name. He didn’t have ties or relations to the top one percent of the political economy. Therefore, he didn’t win. A man that had the platform to achieve the “American Dream” failed fundamentally because he didn’t have access to the resources that others did.
Stanford economist Raj Chetty authored a study that discussed the trends regarding income in America throughout the past 70 years. He compared children’s’ household incomes at age 30 (adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index) with their parents’ household incomes at age 30. He found that rates of absolute mobility (the proportion of children who earn more than their parents) for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980’s (Chetty, 2016). He explained that this is not the cause of a slowdown in domestic economic growth rates, but because of the inequality in the distribution of growth. While these findings are very telling of the unequal distribution of wealth our country is facing, they do not necessarily mean that our country is in a worse place than it was several decades ago. Although past generations have not been able to acquire capital at the rate that their parents had, our overall quality of living as a has increased dramatically, due to innovations in technology, healthcare, etc.
America has historically been a bastion of opportunity. Immigrants from all over the world flooded to New York in the 1800’s seeking economic opportunity and refuge from religious persecution. But does this account still hold true in today’s day and age? Mexico has notoriously been known for being the source of America’s illegal immigration issues and hey I do not blame the people coming here in the slightest. America may have some issues but it’s government sure is better than most of the rest of our word. We haven’t been seeing our jobs being stolen by undocumented immigrants like we used to. The rates at which immigrants have been coming into the US from Mexico is currently below net zero. For the first time in a while, people are actually leaving the US more than they are arriving in search of work. What happens when there is not enough work to go around?
Why pay someone to sew sweaters by hand when you can pay them to use a sewing machine with 10x the efficiency? Why pay someone in America to use a sewing machine when you can have a kid in China do it for a fraction of the price? Why pay a kid in China when you can buy a robot to do it that doesn’t need to be paid wages at all? At this point we will need some sort of social program to help the people when work is no longer available. The answer is simple! Former President Ronald Reagan once said, “The best social program is a job!”... Okay maybe the answer isn’t all that simple after all. There will eventually come a time when automation and computerization performs jobs better than humans ever could. How will people acquire jobs with livable wages when there aren’t any? A welfare queen sounds like something society would look up to when in reality taking government handouts is seen as something that the weak and helpless do. There may be a time when it becomes even less possible to live off of the fruits of one’s labor. However, this also may be the time where the American Dream was only a figment of our imagination.
Bibliography
Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, and Jimmy Narang
Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940
National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 22910, 2016