J. Stiglitz: The American Dream has become a myth

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

With all due respect...what do you know about the American Dream? Have you lived here for any lengthy period of time?

Sorry if I come across as harsh, but when you dog Teddy Roosevelt, who is one of my historical heroes and someone that I feel really "gets it" in terms of what America is all about, you get my dander up.

Sorry to sound like August here, but I think you're out of your depth and you have no idea what you're talking about.

The American Dream is a term common in literature that can objectively discussed on the grounds of history, politics, economics and more - without needing to live in America or holding American citizenship. You could as well question the wisdom in discussing for example Keynesian economics as long as you have not lived in Britain or Roman law without having lived in the Roman empire or the idea behind the the era of German romanticism without being German. Same is true for the pursuit of happiness - you can discuss its content and meaning and vision like you can discuss the premise of the German Basic Law that the dignity of man is untouchable.

and I stick to it, the basic idea of changing society according to socialist and communist ideas is redistributing wealth from private owners to everybody. Any government claiming the right to regulate wealth, interferes with the basic freedom of citizens, and the more a state or government is being left with the power not only to financially live by the people, but to even regulate how much people have to give away, the more such a govenrmet will want in taxes, redistribution, and control of people'S freedom. In other words, after private property gets ordered to be turned into property owned by all (regulate wealth), democratic governments turn into tyrannies themselves. In principle, democratic governments are tyrannies from all beginning on - already for the only reason of that they do exist.

BTW, I knew by whom the quote was, I have read it before. Still, I call it the operation manual to run communism.

The US were founded as a lose union of sub-national entities with a very weak - intended - government, the foundign fathers explciitly tried to prevent that America would turn into a democracy. It was Andrew Jackson, the sixth or seventh president, who started to inject the idea of a stronger national centralism in government, and to demand that the basis of political power should become a justification founded in the idea of democracy. With it, there came the American so-called spoils system, the birth of massive economic lobbyism, and all the aberrations and distortions that democracy unavoidably comes along with and that the founding fathers wanted to prevent. And it took a civil war to enforce the strong central government against the bitter opposition of a significant part of the american people. The end of slavery was just only aspect of it all. The change from an aristocratic to a democratic republic was far more decisive a consequence of the civil war, like later in Europe the first World War marked the change from monarchic systems to democratic republican system.

One must not live in America or be American to talk about this, Mookie. Both conditions do not guarantee education on these things, btw. What really is far ire important is: to have access and to read some books, or use other sources of education on something.

I do not claim to be an expert for American history. But I constantly learn about it in context with the political themes I am interested in. I have great sympathy for the ideas and worries of the original founders of America, and their vision of what the country should be like, and led by what sort of ethical yearning. But I have not much sympathy for what the US today is, and how it has changed for the worse since then, and how it has deformed its original nature and spirit. America today and the America that once was meant to be - are lightyears apart. All my criticism of of America today must always be seen in the light of this basic opinion of mine: the difference between how it was meant to be, and how it really is today.