America's imagination of itself is rather inflated with an ungrounded sense of its superiority. One of the great myths of our time is that ours is a land of unique opportunity, that the American Dream is what makes living in the U.S. an amazing experience to be found nowhwere else. That was more true a hundred years ago, especially for so many of the immigrants who fled Europe for a better life in an economy that hadn't yet hit full stride, but it just isn't any more. And since 1980 it has become ever less so with each passing decade thanks to the co-optation of American politics by the money elites and their political lackeys who seek to dismantle the New Deal:
Conventional wisdom among the globalist elite is that inequality is the price a society must pay for increasing social mobility, reflecting greater opportunity. Thus, for example, the governing class never seems to tire of telling Americans how lucky they are compared with the citizens of Western Europe who are so protected from competition that they have no incentive to succeed. Yet, although the United States has the highest level of income inequality among all advanced societies, a child born to poverty actually has a greater chance of moving up the class ladder in Western Europe and Canada than in the United States. Economist Miles Corak, who analyzed dozens of studies on this point, told the Wall Street Journal in May 2005, "The U.S. and Britain appear to stand out as the least mobile societies among the rich countries studied." France and Germany, regularly ridiculed by the American elite for economic policies that supposedly discourage ambition, actually provide more room for mobility than does the United States. Canada and the Scandinavian countries, home of high taxes and generous welfare, are, according to the numbers, even greater lands of individual opportunity. . . .
You can become a billionaire quicker in America, but your chances of living a longer, more secure life, with time for your family and friends, free from the anxiety of economic ruin if you get sick, and a higher-quality education for your children are much greater in Western Europe. European workers have taken more of their productivity gains in leisure--primarily in longer holidays and shorter workweeks. Over their lifetimes, Americans work an estimated 40 percent more hours than do workers in France, Germany, and Italy. --Jeff Faux, Global Class War
No system is ideal, and I know that it's easy enough to find flaws in the Canadian and European systems, but ultimately it comes down to quality of life, and in most respects ours has evolved to become comparatively inferior, and getting worse. And so we persist in this ridiculously distorted picture of our national greatness as if having the biggest military was the proof of it. It's nutty. We mostly have no idea about the price we're paying. There are layers upon layers of costs, and we are the poorer for it. And after this fiasco in the Middle East, we'll be paying for decades to come.
But maybe it's just time to redefine the American Dream. It has become too much associated with becoming fabulously wealthy, and it's this idea that co-opts a lot of Americans into rejecting any concept of limits on one's avarice. No restrictions should be put on people acquiring as much wealth as they feel they need, because theoretically ordinary Americans dreaming the American Dream delude themselves to think that in theory they or their children could some day be one of the superwealthy. Any healthy society has to have ways to productively channel the ambitions of its citizens, but why is wealth the ultimate criterion? It's pathological. Prosperity, yes. As-much-as-you-can-get wealth, no.
We see the pathology at work in the ridiculous compensation given to CEOs and athletes. How much is too much? Well, actually, in this model, there should be no limit, and that's why athletes will jump from a winning team to a bad team for $25 million a year instead of $18 million a year, to take the example of Alex Rodriguez after the 2000 season. I realize that seven million dollars is a lot of money, but the conventional wisdom is that anybody who was in A-Rod's position would have done the same thing, and it's hypocrisy to say otherwise.
But why? Because that's the culture we live in. Greed is the motivator that trumps all others, and we just accept it as normal. Staying to make a team on the brink of greatness even greater meant nothing. His connection to the coaches, teammates, and the city that adored him meant nothing. It was not even a consideration to make a statement that loyalty and winning and being ridiculously well paid was more important than disloyalty, losing, but being even more ridiculously well-paid. Is it just that he was a jerk? No, because if he hadn't taken the deal, he would have been considered a fool by his peers and by his agent. "It's a business decision." "I'm doing what's best for my family." "I only have a few productive years." What? to make more money in a year than 99% of the world will see in their lifetimes?
How is it that it has become acceptable to be bought so easily, to be so crudely, publically avaricious? What has become of us that this is so? That we just accept it as normal?
So the popular American belief in this avaricious version of the American Dream is something that plays right into the hand of the overclass. It preserves the structure of the hierarchy with all the advantages going to the people at the top. But as Faux, and Kevin Phillips and so many others are at great pains to point out, it is a myth--very few people rise to positions in the overclass--the best most will achieve is simply to function as overclass lackeys. But even if the myth were true, it's not a myth that leads to true national greatness. It leads to what we have today--the rich and powerful doing as they please at the expense of everyone else.
My version of the American Dream is one that focuses not on greed but American decency, modesty, humor, magnanimity, and sobriety, that focuses not on market dynamics, but on public service that strives to build public wealth, that seeks to mitigate the cruelties of the market with a clear-headed compassion that empowers the powerless, that helps the dependent to find their dignity as productive citizens, and provides adequately for the health and education of all citizens, especially its children and elderly.
This is not the America we live in, and if you think it's ok to live in such an America, you are living not any American Dream that is worth caring about, but in a self-absorbed Libertarian/Reaganite American Dreamworld, and you need very badly to be woken up.