6 ms·

Is the American Dream Dead?

34 points by cs702 3y ago

hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
https://archive.is/CIlEe https://archive.is/CIlEe
chroni29006 3y ago
[flagged]
prh8 3y ago
Yes, Reaganomics and late stage capitalism killed it
Gimpei 3y ago
I’m not a fan of big idea books, in particular when they’re by journalists, who are basically dilettantes. I’ll challenge the very premise on two counts. One, it’s debatable that the US was never all that mobile (see the latest American Economic Review) and two, median household income is way up since 2001: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.
- readingnews 3y ago
  I have a CIO who stated, our churn is no worse than anyone elses, on average. The problem with that statement was that our churn was department specific, so if you looked at the average, it looked great. But if you zoomed in, the highly skilled IT workers were fleeing, and we were left with huge holes that caused real problems. In the graph you link to, I would love to see that with the top 10%, perhaps even 20% removed. I really wonder how a few hundred people like Elon or Bezos skew the median, plus the thousands of CIOs making 400X what I make.
  - HEmanZ 3y ago
    No one can skew the median. They can skew the mean. And the parent link is median. You could remove every billionaire and the number wouldn’t change.
- willis936 3y ago
  Now divide that trend by cost of housing rather than consumer price index. The market is saying "get in the box, pay the rent we are illegally fixing, and don't even think you'll be building equity or gaining security over the course of your life". If you don't have any anxiety about an aging society or living in a declining empire: you should.
hash872 3y ago
As an American I constantly hear about how the Nordic model of social democracy is superior. I feel like it's underdiscussed that the Nordic countries have very high wealth inequality though. According to 2019 Gini numbers, both the Netherlands and Sweden have more wealth inequality than the US. (1) Denmark, BTW, is quite close to the US- #8 in Gini to America's #4. If wealth inequality is so bad, are the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark doing poorly? I'd like to hear this discussed more. In terms of income inequality, the US is #61 out of 168 countries by 2020 World Bank numbers. (2) Hardly seems shocking to me. Anyways, just trying to inject some facts into what's usually a quite emotional subject. I hear a lot of comparing how the US is doing now to say 40 or 50 years ago, but less comparing objective stats on the US to other developed countries 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  I think wealth inequality numbers can be misleading. I was on a contract in Stockholm for a bit. There, I worked with some support line people. Working on a support line, they were able to rent a flat, afford to study at a university (debt free!), have access to medical system, party pretty much regularly and relatively good food. They would not be saving much after all this, but that probably was because they were young people and were not thinking much about saving anyway. Now, do tell me what does an entry job on a support phone line buy you in the US? One reason for wealth inequality numbers is high immigration in Scandinavia. For example, in Sweden, 20% of all residents are foreign born immigrants, compared to 14% in US.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > Now, do tell me what does an entry job on a support phone line buy you in the US There's a reason call center jobs in the US have moved to the South and Midwest (think Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky). You can pay $3-4k a month in those areas and still afford an "American Dream" style life. The downside is it isn't "sexy" to live in Middle America and some people don't want to live there for ideological reasons.
nadermx 3y ago
Was it ever sustainable?
tennisflyi 3y ago
Simple math puts renting/owning a(n) apartment/house out of reach for many. So, yeah.
nine_k 3y ago
> while 92 per cent of children born in 1940 had higher household incomes than their parents, babies born in 1980 had only a 50/50 chance of doing better than the previous generation. Come on. The generation which was born in 1940 was born after (or arguably during) the Great Depression, and then got to live their lives in the world after the hugest world war, from which the US emerged as a victor, and mostly intact. In their adult lives they encountered the period of American economical and technological hegemony, while Europe and Japan scrambled to restore themselves after the devastation of the war. It was really hard for that generation to not live better than their parents whose adult life went through the times of the Prohibition and the Great Depression. A contrast like this cannot occur "naturally", during times of peaceful life and regular progress. So the 1980s were a regression to the mean, when the US started to face some real competition. As the generation of 1940 (and even more so, of 1950) got a lot of wealth very quickly, it became really hard to compete with them, as assets like land and realty had appreciated a lot by 2000s when the generation of 1980 came of age. But on topic: the American Dream is defined as «life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement». IDK about "better" and "fuller", but 2000s with their continued technological explosion offered a huge amounts of opportunity, admittedly with a crash in the end; 2010s seemed to be totally not devoid of opportunity, too. The "richer" part was hit hardest; while opportunities to go from rags to riches demonstrably existed, they hardly affected "everyone". As of "fuller", well, the society, to my mind, have become more tolerant and open; I suppose that living a "fuller" life as a woman was/is easier for a person born in 1980 than born in 1940. For a more informative comparison, I'd like to compare generations of 1890, 1900, and 1920, for instance.
- yetanother12345 3y ago
  > the American Dream is defined ... Thanks for the definition. As a non-American I've always wondered what that idiom really ment, and I didn't even imagine that it had a definition. I honestly assumed it was just referring to the opportunities for the few to get ultra-rich. Not as something for the masses.
  - nine_k 3y ago
Animats 3y ago
"In a country that fundamentally skews more socially conservative, the Democratic party has also become too radically progressive on social issues such as abortion, immigration and LGBTQ rights." That put Trump in the White House last time. Re-read the Wikipedia summary of the 2016 campaign season.[1] It will be worse next time. Read "Project 2025", the conservative master plan from the Heritage Foundation.[2] Last time around, Trump took office with no plan. This time, there's a plan. 900 pages. Important enough to read. Wikipedia has a summary.[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential... [2] https://www.project2025.org/ https://www.project2025.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  Along these lines it's really troubling to see some parallels already. For instance, there were some polls that came out a couple weeks ago that showed Trump pulling ahead of Biden and some of the commentators I read from time to time just sort of dismissed them. Eerily reminiscent of the run-up in 2016 where a lot of folks were just assuming Trump couldn't win "because come on..."
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Biden sets a low bar. They both should be disqualified by age alone.
- Sabinus 3y ago
  That's really chilling.
- maeil 3y ago
  What put Trump in the White House in 2016 was the worst Democratic candidate in at least two decades by a large margin. Was the HRC platform in 2016 significantly more "radically progressive on social issues such as abortion, immigration and LGBTQ rights" than the Obama platform 4 years earlier? I strongly doubt it.
lordnacho 3y ago
As a European with substantial friends and family in America, yes. The American Dream is interesting because it's not just "Can I make it if I try hard as an American", it's also "would I want to go to America, as a foreigner?". To the rest of the world it is as much an ideal as it is to Americans. Now of course there are many people who still try to gain entrance to America. Undoubtedly, some of them are leaving places with worse opportunities. But I'm going to take it from my family perspective. My parents' generation basically got kicked out of the old country in the late 1970s, and ended up spread around various countries. Denmark, France, UK, Canada (Vancouver/Toronto), and a large contingent in the US (CA, CO, DC). Big family, more cousins than I can count. Even more people and countries if we start counting family friends and distant relations. Now and again people meet up. When someone is traveling, whoever is around tries to hang out with them. Luckily we have no alcohol tolerance so it is cheap to get us drunk. Inevitably, people end up asking each other what it was like to grow up in whatever country it was. Above everything, two things stick out. University costs a bunch of money in America, and health insurance costs a bunch of money. Not only that, your chances at secondary school depend a lot on where you started out. There is systematic racial bias built into the admission system. With the cost being so high, you'd better hope nothing bad happens while you're studying. The health insurance thing is a big deal as well. Get sick, go broke. Don't lose your job either. And what does your day-to-day look like? Well, you walk out on the street in SF and there are people using the public streets as toilets. There are people in obvious need of psychiatric help wandering around cursing their invisible enemies. There are tent camps of people who live in the middle of one of the most prosperous cities on earth. There are videos of large groups of people completely messed up on drugs, just sitting in the middle of the street. There are people who loot stores en masse. The question of "can someone make it if they work hard?" is also a question of fairness. What rules have they got in place in America, so that people who did well previously do not simply use their winnings to keep "winning"? Well, it seems like there are a lot of rules that favor the already rich. We hear they can arrange their taxes favorably. We hear they can lobby Washington. They can get their kids into those universities, something that is not so straightforward in other countries. This is all on top of an electoral system that is not proportional representation, for various reasons. It seems to favor stasis, with two large parties that have kept everything the same for a long while. Anyway, that's enough for now, getting late here, but there are other thoughts to gather on the subject.
whoknowsidont 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_... It's been dead for 70+ years.
- moribvndvs 3y ago
  It was really fucking dope to spend the first 18 years of my life being proselytized and then radicalized into an ideal that died 10-20 years before I was born and even then was concerted pyramid scheme marketing bullshit. A better subtitle, several decades past its prime, is: was it ever even real?
vlark 3y ago
Appropriate George Carlin clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
pylua 3y ago
After visiting India it felt to me like I was living in the 90s in terms of the economy, at least in Bangalore. In America there seems to be a strong since of desperation and general malaise in my generation. A lot of people on drugs or have mental issues. The average person does not seem happy. I’m worried that the opportunities and dream have been offshored. It is too costly to hire, be hired, or build a life here.
whatilearned 3y ago
[dead]
xnx 3y ago
I doubt we can even agree on what the American Dream was or is. It is probably easier to argue that there has never been a better time to be alive in world history than right now.
absoluteunit1 3y ago
Every time I see/hear the words “American Dream”, I immediately think of a George Carlin quote…”The American Dream is called a ‘Dream’ because you have to be asleep to believe it”
kelseyfrog 3y ago
No, if you have an iPhone you're definitionally better off than your parents.
- yladiz 3y ago
  Besides that this ignores why that person might have gotten the iPhone (perhaps their parents gave it to them?), having a smart phone doesn’t really indicate how wealthy a person is, and absolutely does not correlate with mobility across income brackets, so no, having an iPhone does not by definition mean you’re better off than your parents.

34 points by cs702 3y ago

hoppyhoppy2 3y ago

https://archive.is/CIlEe https://archive.is/CIlEe

chroni29006 3y ago

[flagged]

prh8 3y ago

Yes, Reaganomics and late stage capitalism killed it

Gimpei 3y ago

I’m not a fan of big idea books, in particular when they’re by journalists, who are basically dilettantes. I’ll challenge the very premise on two counts. One, it’s debatable that the US was never all that mobile (see the latest American Economic Review) and two, median household income is way up since 2001: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.

readingnews 3y ago
I have a CIO who stated, our churn is no worse than anyone elses, on average. The problem with that statement was that our churn was department specific, so if you looked at the average, it looked great. But if you zoomed in, the highly skilled IT workers were fleeing, and we were left with huge holes that caused real problems. In the graph you link to, I would love to see that with the top 10%, perhaps even 20% removed. I really wonder how a few hundred people like Elon or Bezos skew the median, plus the thousands of CIOs making 400X what I make.
- HEmanZ 3y ago
  No one can skew the median. They can skew the mean. And the parent link is median. You could remove every billionaire and the number wouldn’t change.
willis936 3y ago
Now divide that trend by cost of housing rather than consumer price index. The market is saying "get in the box, pay the rent we are illegally fixing, and don't even think you'll be building equity or gaining security over the course of your life". If you don't have any anxiety about an aging society or living in a declining empire: you should.

hash872 3y ago

As an American I constantly hear about how the Nordic model of social democracy is superior. I feel like it's underdiscussed that the Nordic countries have very high wealth inequality though. According to 2019 Gini numbers, both the Netherlands and Sweden have more wealth inequality than the US. (1) Denmark, BTW, is quite close to the US- #8 in Gini to America's #4. If wealth inequality is so bad, are the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark doing poorly? I'd like to hear this discussed more. In terms of income inequality, the US is #61 out of 168 countries by 2020 World Bank numbers. (2) Hardly seems shocking to me. Anyways, just trying to inject some facts into what's usually a quite emotional subject. I hear a lot of comparing how the US is doing now to say 40 or 50 years ago, but less comparing objective stats on the US to other developed countries 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

onetimeuse92304 3y ago
I think wealth inequality numbers can be misleading. I was on a contract in Stockholm for a bit. There, I worked with some support line people. Working on a support line, they were able to rent a flat, afford to study at a university (debt free!), have access to medical system, party pretty much regularly and relatively good food. They would not be saving much after all this, but that probably was because they were young people and were not thinking much about saving anyway. Now, do tell me what does an entry job on a support phone line buy you in the US? One reason for wealth inequality numbers is high immigration in Scandinavia. For example, in Sweden, 20% of all residents are foreign born immigrants, compared to 14% in US.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > Now, do tell me what does an entry job on a support phone line buy you in the US There's a reason call center jobs in the US have moved to the South and Midwest (think Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky). You can pay $3-4k a month in those areas and still afford an "American Dream" style life. The downside is it isn't "sexy" to live in Middle America and some people don't want to live there for ideological reasons.

nadermx 3y ago

Was it ever sustainable?

tennisflyi 3y ago

Simple math puts renting/owning a(n) apartment/house out of reach for many. So, yeah.

nine_k 3y ago

> while 92 per cent of children born in 1940 had higher household incomes than their parents, babies born in 1980 had only a 50/50 chance of doing better than the previous generation. Come on. The generation which was born in 1940 was born after (or arguably during) the Great Depression, and then got to live their lives in the world after the hugest world war, from which the US emerged as a victor, and mostly intact. In their adult lives they encountered the period of American economical and technological hegemony, while Europe and Japan scrambled to restore themselves after the devastation of the war. It was really hard for that generation to not live better than their parents whose adult life went through the times of the Prohibition and the Great Depression. A contrast like this cannot occur "naturally", during times of peaceful life and regular progress. So the 1980s were a regression to the mean, when the US started to face some real competition. As the generation of 1940 (and even more so, of 1950) got a lot of wealth very quickly, it became really hard to compete with them, as assets like land and realty had appreciated a lot by 2000s when the generation of 1980 came of age. But on topic: the American Dream is defined as «life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement». IDK about "better" and "fuller", but 2000s with their continued technological explosion offered a huge amounts of opportunity, admittedly with a crash in the end; 2010s seemed to be totally not devoid of opportunity, too. The "richer" part was hit hardest; while opportunities to go from rags to riches demonstrably existed, they hardly affected "everyone". As of "fuller", well, the society, to my mind, have become more tolerant and open; I suppose that living a "fuller" life as a woman was/is easier for a person born in 1980 than born in 1940. For a more informative comparison, I'd like to compare generations of 1890, 1900, and 1920, for instance.

yetanother12345 3y ago
> the American Dream is defined ... Thanks for the definition. As a non-American I've always wondered what that idiom really ment, and I didn't even imagine that it had a definition. I honestly assumed it was just referring to the opportunities for the few to get ultra-rich. Not as something for the masses.
- nine_k 3y ago

Animats 3y ago

"In a country that fundamentally skews more socially conservative, the Democratic party has also become too radically progressive on social issues such as abortion, immigration and LGBTQ rights." That put Trump in the White House last time. Re-read the Wikipedia summary of the 2016 campaign season.[1] It will be worse next time. Read "Project 2025", the conservative master plan from the Heritage Foundation.[2] Last time around, Trump took office with no plan. This time, there's a plan. 900 pages. Important enough to read. Wikipedia has a summary.[3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential... [2] https://www.project2025.org/ https://www.project2025.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

soupfordummies 3y ago
Along these lines it's really troubling to see some parallels already. For instance, there were some polls that came out a couple weeks ago that showed Trump pulling ahead of Biden and some of the commentators I read from time to time just sort of dismissed them. Eerily reminiscent of the run-up in 2016 where a lot of folks were just assuming Trump couldn't win "because come on..."
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Biden sets a low bar. They both should be disqualified by age alone.
Sabinus 3y ago
That's really chilling.
maeil 3y ago
What put Trump in the White House in 2016 was the worst Democratic candidate in at least two decades by a large margin. Was the HRC platform in 2016 significantly more "radically progressive on social issues such as abortion, immigration and LGBTQ rights" than the Obama platform 4 years earlier? I strongly doubt it.

lordnacho 3y ago

As a European with substantial friends and family in America, yes. The American Dream is interesting because it's not just "Can I make it if I try hard as an American", it's also "would I want to go to America, as a foreigner?". To the rest of the world it is as much an ideal as it is to Americans. Now of course there are many people who still try to gain entrance to America. Undoubtedly, some of them are leaving places with worse opportunities. But I'm going to take it from my family perspective. My parents' generation basically got kicked out of the old country in the late 1970s, and ended up spread around various countries. Denmark, France, UK, Canada (Vancouver/Toronto), and a large contingent in the US (CA, CO, DC). Big family, more cousins than I can count. Even more people and countries if we start counting family friends and distant relations. Now and again people meet up. When someone is traveling, whoever is around tries to hang out with them. Luckily we have no alcohol tolerance so it is cheap to get us drunk. Inevitably, people end up asking each other what it was like to grow up in whatever country it was. Above everything, two things stick out. University costs a bunch of money in America, and health insurance costs a bunch of money. Not only that, your chances at secondary school depend a lot on where you started out. There is systematic racial bias built into the admission system. With the cost being so high, you'd better hope nothing bad happens while you're studying. The health insurance thing is a big deal as well. Get sick, go broke. Don't lose your job either. And what does your day-to-day look like? Well, you walk out on the street in SF and there are people using the public streets as toilets. There are people in obvious need of psychiatric help wandering around cursing their invisible enemies. There are tent camps of people who live in the middle of one of the most prosperous cities on earth. There are videos of large groups of people completely messed up on drugs, just sitting in the middle of the street. There are people who loot stores en masse. The question of "can someone make it if they work hard?" is also a question of fairness. What rules have they got in place in America, so that people who did well previously do not simply use their winnings to keep "winning"? Well, it seems like there are a lot of rules that favor the already rich. We hear they can arrange their taxes favorably. We hear they can lobby Washington. They can get their kids into those universities, something that is not so straightforward in other countries. This is all on top of an electoral system that is not proportional representation, for various reasons. It seems to favor stasis, with two large parties that have kept everything the same for a long while. Anyway, that's enough for now, getting late here, but there are other thoughts to gather on the subject.

whoknowsidont 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_... It's been dead for 70+ years.

moribvndvs 3y ago
It was really fucking dope to spend the first 18 years of my life being proselytized and then radicalized into an ideal that died 10-20 years before I was born and even then was concerted pyramid scheme marketing bullshit. A better subtitle, several decades past its prime, is: was it ever even real?

vlark 3y ago

Appropriate George Carlin clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

pylua 3y ago

After visiting India it felt to me like I was living in the 90s in terms of the economy, at least in Bangalore. In America there seems to be a strong since of desperation and general malaise in my generation. A lot of people on drugs or have mental issues. The average person does not seem happy. I’m worried that the opportunities and dream have been offshored. It is too costly to hire, be hired, or build a life here.

whatilearned 3y ago

[dead]

xnx 3y ago

I doubt we can even agree on what the American Dream was or is. It is probably easier to argue that there has never been a better time to be alive in world history than right now.

absoluteunit1 3y ago

Every time I see/hear the words “American Dream”, I immediately think of a George Carlin quote…”The American Dream is called a ‘Dream’ because you have to be asleep to believe it”

kelseyfrog 3y ago

No, if you have an iPhone you're definitionally better off than your parents.

yladiz 3y ago
Besides that this ignores why that person might have gotten the iPhone (perhaps their parents gave it to them?), having a smart phone doesn’t really indicate how wealthy a person is, and absolutely does not correlate with mobility across income brackets, so no, having an iPhone does not by definition mean you’re better off than your parents.