Posted on 03/19/2009 1:30:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I'm sick of hearing that America is no longer a land of opportunity.
Even before the current recession, politicians and pundits were constantly wringing their hands about the "demise of the middle class."
"Middle class families are struggling," President Barack Obama kept saying on the campaign trail.
Lou Dobbs hammers away at this night after night: "What's left of our middle class may be on the verge of collapse."
And author Barbara Ehrenreich won fame by claiming that it's almost impossible for an entry-level worker to make it in America. She wrote "Nickel and Dimed," a book that describes her failure to "make it" working in entry-level jobs. Her book is now required reading in thousands of high schools and colleges. I spoke to her for my ABC special "Bailouts, Big Spending and Bull".
"I worked as a waitress and an aide in a nursing home and a cleaning lady and a Wal-Mart associate. And that didn't do it."
If you do a good job, can't you move up?
"That's not easy. Wal-Mart capped the maximum you can ever make."
But if you do a good job, you could be promoted to assistant manager, store manager.
"Well, I suppose."
I pointed out that the new CEO of Wal-Mart, Mike Duke, started out as an hourly worker.
"There are always exceptions," she said. "My father worked his way up and became a corporate executive. But that was a one-in-a-million situation."
Oh, yeah?
"I read 'Nickel and Dimed,'" Adam Shepard told me. He was assigned her book in college and decided to test Ehrenreich's claim.
He picked a city out of a hat, Charleston, S.C., and showed up there with $25. He didn't tell anyone about his college degree. He soon got an $8/hour job working for a moving company. He kept at it. Within a year, he told me, "I have got $5,500 and a car. I have got a furnished apartment."
Adam writes about his search for the American Dream in "Scratch Beginnings". It's a very different book from "Nickel and Dimed."
"If you want to fail, go for it, " he said.
Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to fail?
"Absolutely, I think she wanted to fail -- and write the book about it.
I asked him for evidence.
"She is spending $40 on pants. She is staying in hotels. I made sacrifices so that I could succeed. She didn't make any sacrifices."
I asked Ehrenreich: Why can he do it, when you couldn't?
"I know, it's embarrassing."
Were you trying to fail?
"I think that is so unfair. The $40 pants, that was a big mistake, and that was one mistake I made early on. The motels, that's not a rich person option."
You could have succeeded if you'd gotten a roommate.
"In time, yes, I could have gotten roommates."
You're saying you can't make it in America in these jobs. And you can.
"I said, here's what my experience was."
Her account of her experience is a very misleading portrait of opportunity in America. American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks points out, "From 1950 to 2007, middle-class family income went up, in real dollars, adjusted for inflation, from $29,000 a year to $75,000."
Of course now we're in the midst of a recession. Millions have lost jobs.
"We can't make light of that. But we have to keep this in perspective. We've had worse recessions."
Perspective is right.
"Middle-class people today live like rich people lived in the 1950s."
"We've always said, 'But in the old days things were better,'" Brooks notes. "They said that in the 1920s. They said that in the 1950s, and we say it again today. It's not that we have less money. It's that our expectations have risen."
Lately, fear has risen, as the economy has fallen. But economies do recover.
"We have a society that rewards hard work and merit," Brooks adds. "Half of the poor actually are not poor 10 years later. Nobody is stuck where they start out."
I love my life!
I think I live the American dream every day!
One point to take away from this article is that Barbara Ehrenreich’s book is a fake. I read it and like it, but it was clear she was planning to fail.
Seems to me the American Dream should be about “life,liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Oh,wait...our baby-killing culture of death has removed life from the American Dream. Liberty? Our socialist masters are squelching that. That leaves the pursuit of happiness, which our pleasure-mad,sex-obsessed society defines as unrestrained self-indulgence. A nightmare has replaced the American Dream.
In 1980, at Temple U, the son of a friend of mine was told by his economics professor that the American dream was dead, that no great fortunes would be made anymore. They guy mentioned that his father was nearing million dollar net worth in his furniture business. He was told to shut up and learn.
The professor had not yet heard of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell or a host of others who amassed great fortunes, after 1980.
I started an accounting practice 27 years ago. My wife and I live in material abundance that would have been unimaginable just two generations ago, and we both work hard, but not excessively so, and we are not really very wealthy, materially speaking. We are certainly wealthy in a lot of other ways, and have much to be grateful for.
Every generation is told that the American dream is dead, and then goes on to prove that prediction wrong. If the American dream is truly dead, it’s because Obama and his henchmen are killing it.
“the seeds of depression cannot take root in a grateful heart.” Andy Andrews
I assign “Scratch Beginnings” to all my Business History classes, and give them a few xerox copies of an Eherenreich chapter or two . . . so she doesn’t make any more money off that crap.
I’m glad you all are doing so wonderfully well. I, like most of the people around me, were also doing well until recently. Now I am watching well-educated, prudent, extremely hard-working friends, relatives, and neighbors losing what they had worked for. A close friend who has a PhD in a science and a distinguished career behind him has seen his life savings wiped out, has lost his business, and at age 68 can’t get an $8 an hour job. I think the American Dream was alive until about six months ago. Now? I don’t think so. Unless you’re a gun dealer, of course.
Or a coke dealer in Washington, D.C.
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“Middle-class people today live like rich people lived in the 1950s.”
This country has the highest standard of living in the world in my opinion. We have luxuries that many take for granted, especially those who were born after color TVs, PCs and microwaves were invented and put into the stream of commerce.
How did we do it?
CAPITALISM.
But if our system of free enterprise is replaced by socialism/communism/marxism/whatever-name-you want to give it, the incentives to strive to be better will be lost.
Coupled with corrosive attacks on our Constitutional rights, the Conservative pundits who claim that American society will look quite different by the time this FUBAR govt gets through changing it...are right.
Take away American exceptionalism, and we start the decline to become a third world, socialistic society, run by fascists who have NO respect for our LIVES, OUR LIBERTIES, and our PURSUIT of happiness.
That is ironic considering Russell Conwell's (Temple University's first president) "Acres of Diamonds" speech extolling the virtues of success present within all communities.
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