Whose American Dream Is It, Anyway?

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Anya Kamenetz
Generation Debt

Whose American Dream Is It, Anyway?
by Anya Kamenetz
Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, 12:00AM



A recent "USA Today" poll showed that, given the worsening economy, high prices for energy, and the housing crisis, Americans are more pessimistic about their lives than at any time in the past half-century. Most worrisome is that just 45 percent believe their children will be better off financially than they are, which caused reporter David Lynch to ask if the American Dream was, if not dead, then at least wounded.

I've been asking the same question since I started writing the original Generation Debt series for "The Village Voice" back in 2004. Back then the economy was booming, but the long-term data were already clear -- young men were earning significantly less than their fathers had 30 years ago (given inflation); young women were barely making progress on the gains in the workforce that their mothers had worked so hard for; and both were saddled with record prices for housing, health care, and education, as well as rising student loan and credit card debt.

Well, now I think it's time to take a fresh look at the issue. Maybe the American Dream is dead or wounded -- or maybe it's just outdated.

Perhaps the strongest symbol of the traditional American Dream is the single-family home in an automobile-dependent suburb. Today, in many places, those houses are unaffordable for the middle class.

With gas prices soaring to an average above four dollars a gallon, the car commute is unaffordable, too -- and no one is expecting gas to come back down to the 99-cent range anytime soon.

Furthermore, even if house prices continue to decline and cars get more fuel-efficient, it turns out that the driving commute itself cuts into people's happiness -- so much so, one pair of researchers found, that someone commuting an hour each way would have to earn 40 percent more to compensate for the decreased quality of life.

Another piece of the American Dream that we're saying goodbye to is lifetime employment with a single corporation that offers health care, a pension, and a gold watch upon retirement. Manufacturing has moved overseas, and large corporations simply don't operate like that anymore.

For high-school educated workers, the middle class job is all but kaput. GM was the largest employer in the country in 1970, with an average wage of $17.50 an hour. Today GM is all but bankrupt, and Wal-Mart is the nation's largest employer, with an average wage of $9 an hour.

But what about the most fundamental assumption of the American Dream, the idea that standards of living, as measured by money and ownership of material things, ought to keep rising steadily year after year, generation after generation? That one is looking to be on the shakiest ground of all. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/generationdebt/88236

[MichiganVote]

1. The bad habits of American business have gone global.

[Mist]

2. "It's called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to

believe in it." George Carlin