So growing up, I had this idea that the American dream was about that if you put in an honest amount of work, you would be rewarded with a good life. This would mean you would be able to take care of yourself and your family, afford a car and a house. In my view, working one job would probably be enough.
Nowadays, I get the idea that the American dream has become about working your ass off in order to have a chance to become a millionaire. Somehow glorifying “the grind” appears to be a part of it too now.
The American dream has been slipping out of reach gradually since the 80s, but people just keep hoping real hard about it; poll done about a year ago shows that close to half of Americans think they’ll be billionaires one day.
Edit: The poll more accurately says nearly half of Americans think it’s possible they’ll be billionaires. Which is, for all practical purposes, no less wrong.
Aka people who don’t realize how much a billion dollars is and what you have to do to get it. That is, have rich parents, to start with.
What’s the difference between a Million and a Billion?
About a Billion
Which is more true by the year. Economic policy in the US and (to a slower extent) Europe has been shifting toward letting the rich horde wealth and away from new wealth being created, again since the 80s.
That’s actually insane. I’d love to see it broken down by party affiliation as well.
Interesting source, thanks!
The American dream is essentially trying to tell people that the United States is a meritocratic society. The more work you put in the more you get out. However, I’m sure most of us know this isn’t true. Where you were born and what family you were born into is the primary factor in determining someone’s success. So you grow up hearing stories of “hard working” billionaires and think “I can make it there if I work hard” while ignoring your family who worked their asses off and got nowhere. You see more of the lie of meritocracy as you age. People around you work hard and fail, you might succeed with less effort or fail with more. The idiotic decisions of today’s billionaires solidifies the notion that the American dream never existed and was fabricated to get people to work more for less in the hopes that one day they will make it. In reality, it all comes down to the zip code you were born in.
I think glorifying the grind has come naturally along with most people not being able to afford all of the previous generation’s big landmark goals like homes and things.
Kind of like how the move towards more employment options for women naturally came with the death of the single-earner household.
That’s basically what I was raised to believe too. The American Dream is supposed to be a house, a car, a family and a good job. But at some point, that did change to ‘you could be rich like them one day’ and I’m not sure when.
That’s just Instagram. The american dream, which is to be a company man and work the same job til youre 65 and live in a house with a nice yard and 2 cars and all that is still around, it’s just out of reach for most people whereas it wasn’t a generation or two ago.
The american dream was for the boomers who were promised pensions and social securitybin an era where the dollar had some semblance of value. We will never ever have those things. Even the boomers who get 800$ in SS are eaten alive with rent and forced into starving or living out of their cars in today’s economy.
The american dream is called that because, you have to be asleep to believe it. We are much more awake as a society to the systems reality. Most of us are wagies that only exist in the eyes of the govt and corpos to pay taxes and generate profit until we get too old then put to pasture. The average life expectancy is 75, most of the boomers who retired at 65 maybe had 10-15 ‘golden years’ they couldn’t enjoy cause they were too old
You don’t need the american dream. You don’t need to work your whole life to pay off a 500,000$ mortgage on some shitty suburbanite hellhole with a terrible hoa. You don’t need to go the common path most people do. I feel pity for anyone who got tricked into being an indentured slave to the banks/economy because they were a thoughtless monkey in their 20s who signed the dotted line on 50k in debt for a worthless degree and another 300k debt on a house because “family/kids”. The only way to really be happy is to gibe the finger to the normal path and do something alternative.
Work hard, learn to save/invest in actual assets, don’t squirrel away your money in a bank account forever since inflation will eat away its value if you just have it sit there. Have an e-fund of 3k to 6k, buy a van and convert it into a semi-living/camping space. Develop hobbies with actual skills, start your own small concession business. Don’t buy a house buy land and develop the skills to build one yourself while living in a canvas tent. Plainly put, most people are too stupid, lazy, and unwilling to go without modern convinence. It takes a surprisingly little amount of money to live a comfortable lifestyle if you are intelligent, creative, driven, adaptive, and open to new experiences even if the outcome may be uncertain.
