Is the American dream really dead?

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: June 23, 2017 at 10:05:45 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Is the American dream really dead?
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Is the American dream really dead?
> Research shows that poor people in the US are 20 times less likely to believe hard work will get them ahead than 
> their (poorer) Latin American counterparts – with white Americans particularly pessimistic. What’s driving their 
> despair?
> By Carol Graham
> Jun 20 2017
> <https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jun/20/is-the-american-dream-really-dead>
>
> The United States has a long-held reputation for exceptional tolerance of income inequality, explained by its high 
> levels of social mobility. This combination underpins the American dream – initially conceived of by Thomas Jefferson 
> as each citizen’s right to the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
>
> This dream is not about guaranteed outcomes, of course, but the pursuit of opportunities. The dream found a persona 
> in the fictional characters of the 19th-century writer Horatio Alger Jr – in which young working-class protagonists 
> go from from rags to riches (or at least become middle class) in part due to entrepreneurial spirit and hard work. 
>
> Yet the opportunity to live the American dream is much less widely shared today than it was several decades ago. 
> While 90% of the children born in 1940 ended up in higher ranks of the income distribution than their parents, only 
> 40% of those born in 1980 have done so.
>
> Attitudes about inequality have also changed. In 2001, a study found the only Americans who reported lower levels of 
> happiness amid greater inequality were left-leaning rich people – with the poor seeing inequality as a sign of future 
> opportunity. Such optimism has since been substantially tempered: in 2016, only 38% of Americans thought their 
> children would be better off than they are.
>
> In the meantime, the public discussion about inequality has completely by-passed a critical element of the American 
> dream: luck. 
>
> Just as in many of Alger’s stories the main character benefits from the assistance of a generous philanthropist, 
> there are countless real examples of success in the US where different forms of luck have played a major role. And 
> yet, social support for the unlucky – in particular, the poor who cannot stay in full-time employment – has been 
> falling substantially in recent years, and is facing even more threats today. 
>
> In short, from new research based on some novel metrics of wellbeing, I find strong evidence that the American dream 
> is in tatters, at least.
>
> White despair, minority hope
>
> My research began by comparing mobility attitudes in the US with those in Latin America, a region long known for high 
> levels of poverty and inequality (although with progress in the past decades). I explored a question in the Gallup 
> world poll, which asks respondents a classic American dream question: “Can an individual who works hard in this 
> country get ahead?”
>
> I found very large gaps between the responses of ‘the rich’ and ‘the poor’ in the US (represented by the top and 
> bottom 20% income distributions of the Gallup respondents). This was in stark contrast to Latin America, where there 
> was no significant difference in attitudes across income groups. Poor people in the US were 20 times less likely to 
> believe hard work would get them ahead than were the poor in Latin America, even though the latter are significantly 
> worse off in material terms.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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