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 Maybe the American Dream is dead or wounded — or maybe it’s just outdated.
I’m always so happy to have a successful Yale-educated child of a novelist and poet cough up commentary about how hard it is for “the young.” Particularly one who bragged about her engagement on an island off the coast of Sweden followed by a deluge of silver while publicly shilling for her book on economic woes. Where to start? She compares average wages at 1970 GM ($17.50) and today’s Wal-Mart ($9.00), pining for GM’s higher wage for the high school educated and noting it is all but bankrupt. Glaringly obvious is the question, “Why is GM nearly bankrupt?” Precisely because of uncompetitive wages (and non-wage costs like healthcare and pensions). But then we’re treated to some studies suggesting earning more doesn’t make people happier – a fair point, but who are we to read this in light of her complaints about wages? Should we want more, or not be concerned?
Similar oddities appear at the beginning and ending: the piece starts of with a survey underscoring pessimism, yet concludes with the author’s sage observation about pessimism being a luxury. Again, which way, Anya? Not surprisingly, this is a feature of her writing in other venues: in a piece on unpaid internships, she derided them as “simulated jobs” then suggested they contribute $124 million in uncompensated value to corporate America – huh? Wouldn’t that be simulated value? Not to mention a huge percentage of these are in government and non-profits….
Anya does make a few decent points: flexibility has value, commuting is hard, getting into jobs lots of other people want is hard. Ok, fine, not exactly a revelation.
The real kicker comes at the end, and she shows her true colors. After pining for wage stability, better benefits, more time outdoors, socially-conscious non-profit jobs (makes you wonder why she didn’t stay in Sweden), she brings in big government as a means for saving people the hard work of making tradeoffs. Drivel…..
Another limousine socialist.
There are two commodities of value. One is time, the other is money. Most people trade time for money. If folks earn 50,000 (a government worker say) and have lots of free time, it is not surprising that they might feel as great a sense of wellbeing as one who earns 150,000 and has no time at all. On the other hand, if instead of being a 50,000/year social worker with paid vacations you are a 50,000/year grunt working three jobs in order to pay for taxes and the burden of government induced inflation caused by deficit spending, then I suspect your sense of well being is less warm and fuzzy.
My dad knocked my mom up when he was 20 and she was 19. They got married right away, he went to work in an auto plant, and they bought a house for $17k and raised me and my sibs in relative comfort with a stay-at-home mom. It wasn’t what they had in mind, but when the rabbit died, they knew what their options were.
If my 19-year-old niece gets knocked up by her 20-year-old boyfriend, what are their options? They cannot support themselves, let alone a family, no matter how hard they work, until after they finish their degrees. My spouse and I didn’t have our first/only baby until our late 30s, and we’re still renters, despite two almost-paid-off college degrees between us and two full-time “good” office jobs.
It’s hard to contrast our current situation with my upbringing in the 70s. I love our life, and we’ve been able to make it work pretty well and I know that we have advantages that other people don’t have, but I still don’t think that I’m doing better than my parents, and I worry for our child’s future all the time.
It’s time for This American dream to perish. It’s a turkey whose thanksgiving should have come long ago. The dream: Anybody can get rich if he works at it in America. If you are rich, you can buy and buy anything you want. This is the goal in life.
There was a much older American dream. Do you remember it? LM