The Death of the American Dream - It’s Now the Canadian Dream

With three children of my own, I like so many do not believe that my children will have the opportunities that I had for to achieve the so-called American Dream, much less the opportunities that my parents had.  Why?  Because, in my view, America is headed in the wrong direction economically and to some extent socially.  Once upon a time, there was more of a sense of "we're all in this together" and that when the country built infrastructure, we all benefited.  Now, if the GOP had its way, America would be a completely cruel Ayn Rand world  where everyone simply fought to keep what was theirs and there would be no concept at all of the common good.  Add in globalization of the economy and the USA is headed for a situation like Great Britain found itself in following WWII.  Ironically, the far right blames "socialism" for America's predicament, yet Canada, our neighbor to the north is far more socialistic and it is now the nation that has taken over the dream that was once America's.  Even "Old Europe" now has more social upward mobility.  A column in the New York Times looks at America's decline, much of which has been self-induced.  Here are excerpts:

It was in 1931 that the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “the American dream.”

The American dream is not just a yearning for affluence, Adams said, but also for the chance to overcome barriers and social class, to become the best that we can be. Adams acknowledged that the United States didn’t fully live up to that ideal, but he argued that America came closer than anywhere else.

Adams was right at the time, and for decades. When my father, an eastern European refugee, reached France after World War II, he was determined to continue to the United States because it was less class bound, more meritocratic and offered more opportunity.

Yet today the American dream has derailed, partly because of growing inequality. Or maybe the American dream has just swapped citizenship, for now it is more likely to be found in Canada or Europe — and a central issue in this year’s political campaigns should be how to repatriate it.

A report last month in The Times by David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy noted that the American middle class is no longer the richest in the world, with Canada apparently pulling ahead in median after-tax income. Other countries in Europe are poised to overtake us as well.

In fact, the discrepancy is arguably even greater. Canadians receive essentially free health care, while Americans pay for part of their health care costs with after-tax dollars. Meanwhile, the American worker toils, on average, 4.6 percent more hours than a Canadian worker, 21 percent more hours than a French worker and an astonishing 28 percent more hours than a German worker, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Canadians and Europeans also live longer, on average, than Americans do. Their children are less likely to die than ours. American women are twice as likely to die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth as Canadian women. And, while our universities are still the best in the world, children in other industrialized countries, on average, get a better education than ours.

[S]everal studies show that a child born in the bottom 20 percent economically is less likely to rise to the top in America than in Europe. A Danish child is twice as likely to rise as an American child.

Three data points:

The top 1 percent in America now own assets worth more than those held by the entire bottom 90 percent.

The six Walmart heirs are worth as much as the bottom 41 percent of American households put together.

The top six hedge fund managers and traders averaged more than $2 billion each in earnings last year, partly because of the egregious “carried interest” tax break. President Obama has been unable to get financing for universal prekindergarten; this year’s proposed federal budget for pre-K for all, so important to our nation’s future, would be a bit more than a single month’s earnings for those six tycoons.

It’s time to bring the American dream home from exile.

The irony is that much of the path for America's decline tracks to failed GOP policies.  More ironically yet, the decline corresponds to the rise of the selfish, anti-knowledge Christofascists in the Republican Party.   The far right loves to talk about American exceptionalism, yet it is they who are killing it.