Dying American Dream
The American Dream has not only turned into a nightmare but is dying. People the world over dream of coming to America the way millions of immigrants, myself included, did to better ourselves. America was a place where if one worked hard one got ahead and created a better world for their children who in turn did the same for theirs. That was a dream all Americans believed in. Today less than half believe so according to a poll released by ABC News/Yahoo News in September 2010.
This point was brought home to me wherever I came in America in 2010. Homeless people shuffling and pushing shopping carts with all their worldly possessions. As a lawyer who represented mobile home and trailer park developers when I practiced law in California in the 70s, I couldn’t help think, my, mobile home living sure has changed in America these days.
The seeds of today’s global economic disaster were sown in the 1980s. From 1980 to 2005, the U.S. economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. But the average income for most American families actually declined. The standard of living for the average family improved not because income grew but because women entered the workplace by the millions. As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher than in 2005!
The American dream was alive and well and evidently unassailable. Yet somehow, following the oil shocks, the hyper inflation and other traumas of the 1970s that triggered my protest horseback ride to my Beverly Hills office in 1979, We the Apathetic Maids allowed the oil companies and their extremist career politicians in the Military Industrial Congress to smother the dream.
America can and must restore the American Dream. The dream can be revived. It will take time, courage and sacrifice. The American experiment is alive and although dying, can and must be resuscitated and restored by reaching back to the founding principles of this great republic envisioned by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the Constitution.
This point was brought home to me wherever I came in America in 2010. Homeless people shuffling and pushing shopping carts with all their worldly possessions. As a lawyer who represented mobile home and trailer park developers when I practiced law in California in the 70s, I couldn’t help think, my, mobile home living sure has changed in America these days.
The seeds of today’s global economic disaster were sown in the 1980s. From 1980 to 2005, the U.S. economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. But the average income for most American families actually declined. The standard of living for the average family improved not because income grew but because women entered the workplace by the millions. As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher than in 2005!
The American dream was alive and well and evidently unassailable. Yet somehow, following the oil shocks, the hyper inflation and other traumas of the 1970s that triggered my protest horseback ride to my Beverly Hills office in 1979, We the Apathetic Maids allowed the oil companies and their extremist career politicians in the Military Industrial Congress to smother the dream.
America can and must restore the American Dream. The dream can be revived. It will take time, courage and sacrifice. The American experiment is alive and although dying, can and must be resuscitated and restored by reaching back to the founding principles of this great republic envisioned by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the Constitution.
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 7:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home