What is today's American Dream?
 

They may not have called it the American Dream but for centuries people have gone to America in search of freer, happier, and richer lives. But is today's American Dream a mythical concept or still a reality?

Isabel Belarsky's tiny Brooklyn apartment fills with the sound of her father's voice. Sidor Belarksy sings an Aria in Russian and 90-year-old Isabel, her lips painted an elegant red, sways gently to the song coming from her stereo.

Isabel speaks with pride about her father's talent and his success as an opera singer: Albert Einstein was such a fan she says that he invited Sidor to accompany him on his speaking engagements and would ask him to sing to the audience.

How the Belarsky's came to be in America is an extraordinary tale that Isabel loves to tell.

"It was the Mormons!" she says, laughing. "They couldn't be more different from us Jews!"

It was the offer of a six-month job by a Mormon college president, whom had seen Sidor singing in Leningrad, that enabled the Belarskys to escape from Stalin's Russia in 1930.

"Our dream was being in America," Isabel says. "They loved it. My mother could never think of Russia, it was her enemy and my father, he made such a wonderful career here."

National psyche

Like generations of immigrants before them, the Belarskys came to America in search of freedom - to them the American Dream meant liberty.

But Isabel says it promised even more.

"The Dream is to work, to have a home, to get ahead, you can start as a janitor and become the owner of the building."

The American Dream is not written into the constitution but it is so engrained in the national psyche that it might as well be.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12876917

Note: 28 March 2011 Last updated at 10:41 GMT

There are opportunities to find that which is desired, and opportunities which I probably not alone, this is based on my experience of the country that has and still is a part of me

George Carlin said it best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

It's good, but as I said my experience is based on many years of generations :yep:

As i sit here with my first cup of coffee.... lets see now..

"The dream is to work".
Well, yeah, assuming their's work to be had. Rising unemployment, outsourcing, production and industry jobs have or are going away. What's the unemployment rate now anyway? Even the number cruncher's don't really know for sure. At this point i think the dream here has been reduced to just having a dam paycheck so you don't end up out on the street.

"to have a home"
All i can say to that is, In this F'ing state called california? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAH
As long as i live here, i will NEVER EVER own a home. EVER. Last i bothered to look the bottom range of homes here cost around half a million. Everyones so used to citing the number in hundreds of thousands. I prefer to say it for what it is. HALF A MILLION.


"to get ahead, you can start as a janitor and become the owner of the building."
No, that's not how it works anymore. The day of starting in the mail room, and working your way up the company ladder are long gone. They bring someone in from outside the company. The great part is, it doesnt matter if you've been a loyal employee for 2 months, or 10 years, that newbie manager with a fraction of the time in the company that you do, can fire you if he wants to, for any reason he likes. Hasn't happened to me yet, but i've seen it done, multiple times. How's that action for getting ahead huh? :rotfl2:

It's never worked like that. Nobody has ever gone from the stock room to the board room without getting a college education or perhaps by marrying the bosses daughter.

I see that you have read the article, and the course is based on a general idea of the country, as one might have to go far back in time for it to be something relevant in it, btw you mentioned earlier that your job was in jeopardy it is better now?

I guess banks and oil companies find it harder than ever to proclaim the american dream to the vanishing middle and increasing lower class, but then - did they ever care ? :dead:

Shareholders have certain objections to this..

Wow. I disagree with him pretty much 100%.

You actually believe that the reason people are so poorly educated is a conspiracy by our "corporate masters" to keep the people ignorant? You believe that? That in a nutshell is what Carlin says in that video.

The implication presumably is that even though MORE money is spent per student in poor areas, presumably they work hard to make sure the teachers there are incompetent. Myself, I don't blame teachers for poor outcomes, I blame parents. Private schools don't select on the basis of affluence, they select for parents who are involved. Affluent people live in nice areas. Nice areas have good public schools in general. Is that a money sorting? Yes, but the people with money have a different culture WRT education. They value it. The sad reality in urban areas is that the culture doesn't value education. Does that mean no poor people value education? Of course not, but just enough don't value it to really screw things up. Bussing in CT found that when they bussed in enough urban kids to the burbs that they hit >10% of the school population, they dragged the whole suburban school down with them.

A great story on an attempt to correct this cultural gap in NYC on This American Life:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi.../364/going-big

It's the "Baby College" story.

Regardless, it's not a conspiracy, that's as absurd as truthers, etc, frankly.

Don'T know that guy, but I totally agree. I am saying exactly the same things in many threads here.

Allowing lobbyism is a stab with the knife into democracy's back. It means that those paying for lobbyist efforts think their opinion is much more worth in counts than the vote of a member of the ordinary voting cattle, and that one who pays for lobbyism deserves more influence on decision making and forming of policies, than voters. In the end, it is the effort to render all voting results meaningless, and to render all checks and balances of the democratic system meaningless as well. Both of which effectively is the declaration of invalidity of the democratic system itself.

And that is the reason why so many politicians - especially in America - but in other countries as well - love to be in bed with lobbyists. They both share the same intention: to bypass the electorate's power and legitimation by voting, and to bypass democracy itself. It is a form of hidden tyranny.

Lobbyism is not only corruption of a major kind - it is is high treason, nothing else.

Based on that, I'd say that the American dream is dead.

I would say its been a lie from the start with precious few exceptions

American Dream V2.0. To have a girlfriend (not a wife) with big boobs who'll pay the rent and buy you fast computers and video games, and she has a best friend with big boobs, who likes to get stoned and play strip poker with your girlfriend, and after they take it out on each other and you, they both cook you dinner.