The receding American Dream

[applegrove]

The receding American Dream

Erica Pandey, Courtenay Brown at Axios

The American Dream is moving further and further out of reach for millions in the U.S.

https://www.axios.com/american-dream-collapse-8ec1619c-8219-44af-9760-41ffe05bf60e.html

"SNIP.....

What's happening: It's increasingly unaffordable to buy a home or pay for college — and millennials, many of whom entered the job market at the height of the recession, are feeling the crunch.

The cost of higher education is ballooning. From 1978 to 2017, the Consumer Price Index grew fourfold, but the price of college increased 14-fold, according to research by Ana Hernández Kent, a policy analyst at the St. Louis Fed.

The price of homes is rising much faster than incomes. Per a study by real estate company Clever that looked at census data from 1960 to 2017, U.S. housing prices have skyrocketed 121%, but incomes have increased just 29%.

Wage growth has been sluggish. Wage growth in the U.S. has decelerated since 1979 — and the middle and low ends of the wage spectrum have been hardest hit, the Economic Policy Institute reports. Average hourly wages for all American workers grew 2.2% from 1947 to 1979, but just 0.7% from 1979 to the present.

And socioeconomic mobility is at an all-time low. As we've reported, fewer Americans are faring better than their parents did — and more are doing worse. Per a recent UPenn study, around 60% of people born in the 1940s did better than their parents, compared with 40% of those born in the 1980s.

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[Newest Reality]

1. Yawn...

I have read so many articles about that that I know it by heart.

The whole situation is also leading to more and more people living on the edge, paycheck-to-paycheck, becoming homeless and destitute, of course.

Let's see, is anything being done? No. Wall! Wall! Tax breaks for the wealthy. Tariffs. Cut everything. Destroy what's left. Appoint inept idiots and put people who loathe the department they head in charge. Cut SNAP. Distract with Orange Clown tricks. It is all about that. We have many real crises that are going to peak and are creating new ones.

That's what's being done and its a travesty because it looks like it is only going to get worse if it continues this way.

[c-rational]

2. Agreed, and this correlates well with simple mobility. When I was younger, folks did not think too

hard or long about relocating, even without a job. Then again, the American Dream we were taught was always a myth, just like the limitless resources I was taught we possessed as a nation in grammar school. Somehow, even as a 5th grader I knew this was a falsehood.

[pat_k]

3. To me, wealth inequality is the most mind-boggling, immoral, symptom.

The American dream is not just receding. We are living in a nightmare. It's not the first nightmarish time Americans have gone through, but it is one the we MUST somehow collectively wake up from and do something about.

The scale of wealth inequality is more horrifying to me than the scale of income inequality. See the first chart, wealth by percentile on this page

It's a statistic we all probably know, but I don't know if the magnitude and meaning really sinks in: As of 2016, 70% of the national wealth was owned by the top 10% while the bottom 20% is in debt (in 2016, the bottom 1 percentile was in about $80,000 of debt). This is appalling.

The data is from 2016. We know things have become even more out of balance since then.

I haven't found data on mobility, but I would bet that 90% or more of the kids born into a family in a given percentile end their lives within a couple of points of that percentile.

And sure, we have a right to vote (Repub barriers make it difficult to exercise, but we do have the right). However, the wealthy hold the reigns of power that has shaped a government that serves their interests. We can keep calling ourselves a democracy, but the truth is, as long as a majority of us accept the status quo, we will operate as an aristocracy -- one that is not the least "benevolent" to "the masses."

I know there are many, many, people finding ways to spark the political will needed to bring about real change. I take comfort and find hope as I witness the hard work and victories, even if small. I try to find ways to do my bit. But the magnitude of inequality in this country, and the consequences we see as we go about our daily lives, is oppressive. Keeping a sense of hope and possibility alive is tough.