By Cliff DuRand
Truthout | News Analysis
10 May 2013
The American Dream of upward mobility is dead, thanks to the
neoliberal ministrations of capital and government. But a new dream
could rise from the mess left by globalization, off-shoring and
austerity.
The continuation of the economic crisis of 2008 up to the present has
driven home a social trend that has been evident since the late 1970s,
the decline of what is usually called "the middle class" and the
accompanying American Dream.
The American Dream is the belief that if you work hard, if you are
blessed with at least a modicum of ability and have a little luck, you
can succeed. That is, you can rise in society no matter how humble your
origin to something better in the way of material well-being, economic
security, a settled life and social prestige. It is the dream of upward
mobility for oneself, or at least for one's children.
As Richard Wolff has pointed out in Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to do About it, this
upward mobility was a reality for most citizens of the United States
for several generations, from 1820 to 1970. For 150 years, real wages
rose. In the quarter century from 1947 to 1973, average real wages rose
an astounding 75 percent. But that shared prosperity came to a halt in
the mid '70s. In the next 25 years, from 1979 to 2005, wages and
benefits rose less than 4 percent. The sustained rise in standards of
living had been made possible by a conjunction of historical
circumstances, circumstances that began to reach exhaustion by the mid
1970s.
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