What Did You Think The American Dream Was? And Now What?

[fj]

Circuit City is following the trend of having better financial numbers by trimming labor costs. Like the short-sighted retail idiots that they are, CC decided to do that by firing their best paid -- and thus supposedly highest achieving -- floor staff. The Slashdot write-up about it is not particularly interesting except that it included the phrase 'American Dream'. That is not interesting by itself either, a bit maudlin actually, but it did spark very interesting comments about what posters though the words 'American Dream' means.

I am not sure what the concept classically means, although of course the Wikipedia knows all. I am aware that the phrase has been explored a lot in many venues.

For me, I always thought it was about upward mobility, as some posters do, and I have mixed feelings about the state it is currently in. A number of flist readers have achieved it by clawing their ways out of grinding poverty to where they escaped their trailer-bound destinies and now live in homes of their own, raising children or pets, and the two I am thinking about did it both by hard work and smart choices, very American Dream, even if the choice was slightly smarter at the time than the same choice would be now with deployments to war-torn Iraq. There are very mixed statistics out there, though, about whether much of this upward mobility is still available. I keep thinking that hard work alone is less important and luck keeps getting more and more to do with it, especially since the twin behemoths of un-insurability for health-care and a credit industry intent on squeezing every dime they can from the lower economic strata by exploiting information imbalance seem to keep more and more people down.

If the American Dream is about being able to achieve a house of your own, a car, support your spouse and kids, stay comfortable, the American Dream in most places is just plain dead. Unless there is a huge correction in housing prices that could only be termed 'deep recession', or the US worker stops being thrown around like cattle to be pleased at getting 7 bucks or barely more an hour with no municipal or government services like cheap public transport or free higher education to go with it, owning many of those markers is just not going to happen, unless you are willing to enter dangerous deals with the credit industry.

For some, the words mean the ability to make it huge. Further upward mobility, from, say, where I am, into the stratosphere. I am not even sure that is any more achievable through just plain hard work than it used to be. Supposedly I have better access to it than most people because the latest success stories concentrate around the IT industry, but when I look who made it, hard work is not the only common thread. We all get to constantly work hard in IT, our schedules demand it because production is both so unpredictable and always behind what the market actually wants. The other commonalities I see for people that ascended is also access to all forms of capital (human, financial, creative), and, hoping I don't sound jealous or something, simply being at the right place at the right time. Which product takes off, which product could handle taking off, which product was not killed by the company that had it. It is completely unpredictable to me which products those are before they get big, and what it is about the people that make them. Being the smartest cookie in the bunch barely helps; there's tons of smart cookies out there without high-flying IPOs to look forward to. Or just look at the dot-com flotsam trying to have a second act after the first one was over: Marc Andreessen comes to mind. Jobs did it, though. But again, does anyone want to say that Jobs got there by just hard work?

But going back to the dream being about being able to become and stay comfortably middle class, I just don't know anymore. It seems to me The Netherlands is far better at achieving that version of the American Dream than the US is. Of course, the people in the US when told about what it takes in The Netherlands to maintain that, reject it, because, as I have been told, they think more equality through taxes and national ethos would hamper the second part of the dream, that of reaching the stratosphere. I find that the basic idea of rejecting unions and socialized medicine is that, by having them, you hamper getting obscenely rich. When I hear that verbalized I always think of homeless people using money to buy lottery tickets instead of vitamins. And really, are there per capita so many fewer really rich people in The Netherlands? Should anyone care? Sometimes it feels to me the promise of class mobility to the sky is as much an opium to the masses as religion ever was deemed to be to the person who coined the term. Just make sure the hope stays alive and the masses won't revolt to demand health, safety, solidarity, education.

So what does the phrase American Dream mean to you, more or less personally? Do you remember being in school learning about it, or listening to your parents going on about it? Did you believe in it? Is it happenning? Did your belief about what it means change? It that new belief happening?

Comments

[chreebomb.livejournal.com]

the american dream is bullshit. it always has been. it is only available to a very, very select few: mostly white, class-privileged males, with a few token white females and people of color to make it look like the rest of us are just lazy fuck-ups and if we tried hard enough we'd be just like oprah.

i don't think reaching for the stratosphere--or even middle class--should be anyone's goal. we live extravagantly at middle class, and no one needs that to survive or even thrive. material wealth/=happiness and a fulfilling life.

now, if the american dream went something like this, i could get behind it:

the ability for all people, regardless of color, ethnicity, language spoken, citizenship status, sex, sexual orientation, gender presentation, social status, physical ability (etc.) to live a life in which they are able to eat healthy foods, have access to clean water, have suitable shelter from the elements, the support of their community [and vice versa], and care for their children as needed while parents are working for the necessities of life.

[chreebomb.livejournal.com]

oh and for all people to be not only able to have these necessities but to have their identities respected ethnically, sexually, etc.

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, it was Karl Marx' who popularized the term "opiate of the masses" (or sometimes translated as you have done, with "opium"). I think he would disapprove of the "mobility to the sky" dream as much or more so than he disapproved of religion.

[fj.livejournal.com]

So what did the term American Dream mean to you? Did you hear it as a tyke in Columbus?

[ubiquity75.livejournal.com]

It means "a cruel joke" and it presupposes a level playing field in this country which simply does not exist.

When a company CEO, who inhales 8.5 million dollars in salary and compensation, can feel okay about laying off workers making $11, only to rehire them at $8, something is fundamentally wrong with this country.

In my grandparents' era, it was conceivable for a person to work hard in a factory job and do things like purchase a home, in cash and in full, live on a single income and so on.

In our country now, everything is predicated on a dual income, so if you don't have that reality, you're fairly well fucked, or if you do have that reality, but someone becomes ill or disabled, loses a job, etc. you're also fucked. And again, that presupposes that you have access to educational and professional resources of the type needed to be "a success."

The gulf is now so wide that the middle class, an already endagered species, will disappear and we will be a nation of debtors paying the credit card overlords and the contractors in Dubai at our wage-slave jobs with no benefits, no real earnings, and no way out.

Sound too alarmist? Not really, I would say. When is the last time real wages actually went up? The average American works more for less every single year and is one life event away from financial ruin. It's not only the spendthrifts who go into crushing debt. Try having a major medical catastrophe. If you're lucky, you have insurance. What kind of country allows its citizens to be destroyed because of a major illness?

It makes me fucking sick. I'm glad my grandparents, who fought in WWII and believed in this country, aren't here to see this. It's a crying shame.

[fj.livejournal.com]

I do not think you are alarmist at all. It is just that when this gets discussed, the data is not always that clear. Or, if you prefer, impervious to being spun.

[quillon.livejournal.com]

What is hyped as the American Dream is a falsehood. Working in the financial industry (something I don't think I honestly can stomach very much longer), I get to see just how people try to rob Peter to pay Paul, borrowing from their kid's custodial accounts to make sure their car, mortgage or credit card payments go through and get paid. They live paycheck to paycheck and I get the wrath of those poor strapped customers and clients that are only a breath away from losing everything.

What is touted as the "Dream" on popular media is obscene. Teenagers wanting $50K Sweet-Sixteen parties, crying because their humongous SUV isn't the right color or doesn't have the rims they wanted... it makes me sick. The only thing that makes me sicker is the popular media and corporations parading around that if YOU don't want THAT for yourself, then there's something wrong with YOU and that YOU'RE not patriotic. It makes my blood boil.

The American Middle Class is a dying dairy cow; the fat-cats running the corporations are sucking on its teats until its dry, all the while making contingency plans for moving business overseas, abandoning the American economy altogether. All for the Mighty Dollar. China's got *billions* of up and coming altruistic consumers, all pining for a piece of that mythical "American Dream".

It doesn't make me optimistic for the future of the U.S.

[fj.livejournal.com]

This makes me curious: how has watching this dangerous dance with credit from the inside impacted your attitude to finances?

[bigjohnsf.livejournal.com]

The American Dream meant that anyone who was willing to work had a real chance of making a life for himself and his family.

It was never completely real, but it was a lot more real than it is now.

I'm glad someone mentioned the double income thing, cause I think that is an example of the problem. It's like since the 1980s there have been subtle economic shifts that stack the deck against most.

In the same way, I think we focus too much on the successes right now. I know a lot of people who think the job market is O.K. Just because a few among us are headhunted before the slightest whiff of unemployment. But, for a frightening number of very qualified people the job market keeps getting worse. I don't know how anyone feel secure in their job right now.

BTW, I don't think any of this is an accident. I think a small number of people want things to be the way they are now, and they've worked hard to get it this way. All of the wealth that has been peeled off the middle class has been going somewhere.

[fj.livejournal.com]

So how are you ding in that picture?

[raimondas.livejournal.com]

From what I see in Lithuanians coming to this country, your first definition of American Dream is alive and well. Almost everyone I know finds jobs, works probably less than it would take to be successful in Lithuania, buys houses or condos, etc. Sure the houses are mortgaged, but most of them work out fine (unless US will really hit huge recession and housing crash). It is, of course, much easier to be upwardly mobile when you immigrate with education and professional knowledge achieved in some country, where it is much cheaper to get that education. It also helps when you can emigrate back to a cheaper country when you are old or sick and get the cheap care there. And that's the story of most Lithuanians. :) BTW, I am not talking about computer science or other uberprofessional people only. I know people who work those $8-10 dollar jobs + 2nd jobs on weekends, plus whatever. In LA.

I think I agree with you that the ones who emigrate to Western Europe get it easier than the ones who come to US, but I don't really know.

Second definition of the dream - I mostly agree with you. ;) Especially considering that a lot of my friends are number XX employees at Google.

[fj.livejournal.com]

If I went on the LA real-estate blogs and said it is possible to become a home-owner by working two low-wage jobs, people would not believe me. The view here is that the real-estate market is dire and insane.

But you know, needing two jobs including weekends doesn't qualify as the American Dream among most natives here.

And god yes does the free higher education help. I can't believe the credit burden people here get under just to get where I got for free.

[susandennis]

"The American Dream" had turned into one of those hateful phrases like "Family Values" and "Right to Life".

It is a boiler plate term that can be translated to: I am an ignorant American who buys into any religious and/or right wing platitude I can find so I don't have to think on my own and for myself. Oh and I am way better than you. Way better.

[necturus.livejournal.com]

"The American Dream" was all about selling homes in the suburbs to newly empowered working class folks back in the fifties and sixties. Fred Flintstone is the epitome of "the American Dream".

The problem is that suburban life is often wasteful of resources to the point of criminality, even for someone like me who owns a suburban house but does most of his personal business on foot or by public transportation.

Is "the American Dream" dead? I hope so; we need to start living more responsibly.

[gloeden.livejournal.com]

For me, the American Dream is like belief in religion: all about hope in the face of harsh realities and an unforgiving landscape in which luck is paramount. The coincidence of actually achieving the dream allows one the luxury of believing in one's own superiority both mental and moral over the rest of us. But the hope inherent in the Dream allows all of us to imagine that superiority to be attainable even if those who've already achieved it appear to be trying to prevent us those heights.
If anything, the Dream requires that those who do achieve it must extend themselves in some way, allowing others to at least tangentially benefit. In this way it is also like religion, which requires charity as a indication of the grace of the gods.
I believe in the American Dream as I believe in God: there is no better choice.

[fj.livejournal.com]

But, like charity, that extension downwards very often does not happen by those who have achieved it. More like "Get a job you bums, I did it and look at me!"

[jhf.livejournal.com]

The grandparents (and in some cases parents) of most people I know made there way in life pretty much the same way -- a single, blue-collar job in the household, one used car, a Huber home (probably bought with a VA loan), 3+ kids, hand-me-down clothes, a pretty serious debt load, and if anybody got sick, someone was going to have to get another job -- likely at minimum wage.

Maybe it's just nostalgia, but most people who lived that way seems to look back and say they felt lucky -- they were living the dream OK.

That worked better when the major economies of today's world lay in ruins, I'm told. That image of a chicken-in-every-pot gets conflated with the 19th-century dream, which just meant that the US still had a more classless society than most of the world yet, and you *could* do it, if you dedicated your every waking moment to it -- and so leave something to your children. The clan could get ahead.

I think we expect a lot more from the Dream these days -- we see our middle-class peers living better than our parents and grandparents did, and not really working any harder, and expect the same for ourselves (assuming one goes to college and so on, 'cause that's just necessary these days.).

But that affluence is based on the rise of two-income household, now that women have gone to work. It's not pretty, but that made the job market a lot more competitive -- you have a lot more households with two well-qualified people getting ahead, and then other households with less-qualified people working low-end jobs, who business would have just had to settle for when then workforce was half what it is today.

It's still possible in the middle-American cities to live something close to the life I talked about up top, even with the low-end jobs -- with two cars, even, and health insurance if you're lucky -- but you'll have to have two incomes, and you're likely to be working in the service industry, rather than an "honest" manufacturing job or middle-management.

But I think it seems poorer.

[nipper-dawg.livejournal.com]

The american dream is dead, it was killed by the "it's all about me" and the "it's all about my money" disease. It died when pride died.
i have guiven up on it myself.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

To me, the American Dream is that I can be successful (however I define that) with a combination of luck and determination, regardless of who my parents are or where I was born or what religion I was born into. There is nothing in the American Dream that says it will be easy or be guaranteed or will be handed to me by my government.

The fact that some people have it easier or harder is not part of the American Dream; that, to me, is just reality. If I had been born into the Rockefeller family, I would probably start from a more comfortable space than if I were a non-English-speaking Vietnamese refugee.

The American Dream is not just about making a gazillion dollars. It's focuses on being comfortable enough to not have to worry about being homeless or of knowing where my next meal is coming from. In addition, there is a notion that my government will not harass me because of my origin or political beliefs or religion. Another aspect is that the next generation will be better off than the one that came before it.

I still believe in the American Dream. It's not as simple as it was when we were growing up, but the world isn't the same as it was then. (It never was.)

[fj.livejournal.com]

Another aspect is that the next generation will be better off than the one that came before it.

That aspect still existing is now heavily being debated.

[bullneck.livejournal.com]

The 'American Dream' is, to me, a state of mind and being rather than a financial statement or what car one drives. It's essentially the theoretical and only sometimes realized (hence the use of the word 'dream') ability for people in the US to find and express themselves, their ideas, their talents, their beliefs, their passions, and their hopes in ways that perhaps weren't or still aren't possible in other nations. This sometimes gets wrapped up with terms like 'freedom,' 'liberty,' and the wonderfully-Jeffersonian phrase 'the pursuit of happiness', but the basic gist is the right to live one's life as a full free-expressing individual and to work toward whatever lot or goal in life one wishes to aspire to.

Is it fully real? No, it was and remains a slogan at best. But it's something to work harder toward creating as an actuality and has merit as one of the underlying themes in the American ethos, in my view.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. I would add (and wish I had added in my comment earlier in the thread) that the American Dream has at its core that people who work more should be rewarded for that work.

The American Dream often gets confused with how things are in reality, and that's a different (and fascinating) topic. There are those who believe because the American Dream isn't fully realized by each and every person who has uttered the phrase, then the Dream must be a sham. At best, this is a narrow view.

[italiangm.livejournal.com]

I've achieved what my poor immigrant parents believed the American dream was. Now I'm often too disabled to fully enjoy it. Some dream, eh?

[chucknoblet.livejournal.com]

I can't put too much thought into it or else I get pissed off :-D

[cubdaddy.livejournal.com]

Interesting analysis. I've always envisioned the American Dream to mean that one has arrived; self-actualization, if you will.

[thaaang.livejournal.com]

Initially: what you describe above, with the house and car and nuclear family.

Lately: steady job, the ability to travel several times a year, steady relationship, financially stable enough to raise a kid or two if I should want to, able to afford retirement at 65 without too much worry about money.

But as things stand, I currently have 30k of student loans that I can't even think about, and there's a good part of me that's like "fuck it - if the world still exists in 10 years, then I'll actually start fixing my sights on getting out of debt". I'm almost 35, and don't even have a savings account. My only consolation is that I'll be in good (and enormous) company when I'm too old to work but can't afford not to. This is all assuming that society as we know it actually exists by then. If we're lucky, the Revolution will come, the rich will be slaughtered and their assets dispersed more equitably, and things will regain some balance. Unfortunately, though, I think the years between now and when I hit 65 will be marked by a slow descent into dystopia. Hey, at least I've got a job that relies on a customer base of old people - that's one of the last growth markets left.

[thaaang.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I forgot - the "descent into dystopia" thing will only happen if we haven't wiped ourselves out entirely. But then, maybe if there's only a die-off of maybe 70% of the global population, thing'd be rosier than either of these two outcomes.

Unicorns and rainbows and rootbeer floats! Unicorns and rainbows and rootbeer floats!

[bigmacbear]

I commend to everyone's attention a book I heard about on the radio, using the original tag line because I like the double-entendre: "Get Screwed by Thom Hartmann." And I wouldn't mind that either, as long as he's into that sort of thing. ;-)

[jpeace.livejournal.com]

Bigjohnsf, gloeden, jhn, and bullneck had particularly good things to say. There is something important to this concept even in an age where the word "corporation" is like a grenade going off, paralyzing all rational thought. (This is a huge reason why I never discuss reality with people. We work in groups; deal.)

The idea that you would do better than your parents has probably evaporated by now. It doesn't seem to be present in my generation but it was definitely there for the previous one. My parents grew up pretty shit poor. They both struggled their way towards the middle class and got there. All of my other relatives didn't, and I see exactly how they arrived in the working class.

I've matched everything my parents did at my age on a single income and then some. But it wasn't a drive, it was just the result of a middle class child on autopilot. (The boomers just want their kids to "be happy". SPOILERS: We're not.)

The relentless plunge in the dollar's value and the plummeting cost of labor should have stabbed the American dream in the heart, but it's confounded by a lot of new factors. Everyone now works. Mom works. The kids work. Material goods continue to drop in expense, from shoe polish to washing machines. Electronics spread like a fungus at ever lower price points. Far more household privacy is available than ever before.

This is all masking how things that deeply matter like "education", "housing", and "medical care" are exploding in real and virtual cost.

What's weird is that americans do NOT see classes. They talk about class concepts but it comes out "money". She's so rich. He's got it made. They're talking class status, but view it only in terms of material goods, money, and camera time. Americans do NOT internalize class like every other nation on Earth. It's totally real, it's something you're very unlikely to move out of, it hinges on your teeth, it hinges on your hair, it hinges on the thousands of signs you emit every minute. But we don't see it that way.

There's a schism between "decent" and "scum" people that might explain the dream better. In another country you are scum because of your parents. In America, anyone can be decent if they try.

Another thing that is changing is sheer want. Something is new and deeply unpleasant about the total adulation of luxury. Ballplayers, lottery winners, media figures, and all their goddamn toys; this is the dream. My Super Sweet 16. It's disgusting, something out of the Britain mindspace. Everyone has a whiny bitchy disdain for consumption... unless they win the lottery. Then it's on and entirely socially legitimate. (sidenote: someone has got to write a book about the role and value of attention in America. Something is extremely different now.)

Class struggle exists here! Legitimate class struggle! But the only vocabulary americans have is "rich", "CEO", and "stuff".

But not their stuff. Oh no. Every teenager with a car? 6,000 sq. foot homes? The most complete totality of finished goods in human history at the lowest price. Infinite data? Epic entertainment options? THAT'S just day to day life. It's LeBron James and his cars that stick out as "rich".

Americans are incapable of viewing how their parents lived. Because the telephone technology changed, we can't place ourselves in that world. And Americans are fucking colossally retarded when it comes to money management. I mean, holy shit, we're all still paycheck to paycheck? Really? This is not a land of permanence or place. But we act like it every day.

Maybe the American Dream is fed and built on the edges, in terms of relative economic and social freedom. It is alive for people crossing the border. That's where to look.

In the third generation interior, where I live, it's a dull husk. What's left is some kind of weird "if I win the lottery" power fantasy. See Extreme Home Makeover. Gigantic house, new cars, interior decorating, and some snazzy toys.

Sorry for the ill-edited landfill of thoughtlets. I like to type stuff.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

it feels to me the promise of class mobility to the sky is as much an opium to the masses as religion ever was deemed to be to the person who coined the term.

So true. The word dream in "American Dream" reminds me of Hollywood, the powerful dream machine. The American Dream also makes me think of unsustainable lifestyles -- incredible damage done to people, and to our planet. For a few to dream, many must suffer... that's not fair.

[bardricks227.livejournal.com]

To me, the American is the mindset or belief that anybody, as long as they work hard, can be successful in the U.S. That whatever one’s dream is, he can find it in America.

While other countries offer fewer opportunities for its people, in America, with hard work and determination, there is hope for you to reach the top. That is why there are many people from other countries that go and work in America, to find greener pastures.

Bardo
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