From rags to riches?

[scandium]

Originally Posted by Skybird

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1579981

It sometimes (from an american side: often) is said that "everyone" in the promised country could make it to the top. That everyone could become a rich man if only he tries hard enough, and that everyone could become president, and that this system works og so much better than the"overcontrolled" social regulation in "socialist" Europe. American society thinks irrational here, like i9t is irrational to play Lotto: the chance to win the big jackpot is so thin that all of us in this forum will never know, even hear of someone who won it, and the same is true for our children and children'S children. Nevertheless, millions waste their money playing Lotto. It's an irrational process, turning unrealistically low chances into realistic chances - in our fantasy.

and if you are a street dog, maybe you even need the belief that it will be better for your children, else reality would be to cruel to bear, and the question "Why?" remains unanswered. People need to see sense and reason in their life, else their soul becomes ill.

But Europeans and social-examiners from both continents know it better since long that the reality is slightly different. We ineurope have no reason to copy the american model - "from rags to riches" is illusory only. for every winner, there are hundreds if not thousands of loosers. And it seems that the socalled social mobility already is higher in Europe, than in the US, and chances for improvement of living conditions from one generation to the next are clearly better in European countries, than in the US . Nevertheless "market liberators" and "guardians of unregulated free trade" do not get tired to tell us that doing according to the american way would solve our problems, reduce the level of unemploment, would give anyone better chances if he only works hard enough, and bring our economies into swing again. They are lobbying for the advanatge of a smaller and smaller anti-democratic plutocratic elite only. They are only the lobbyists of the raising plutocratic elite.

In fact the existence of the American middle class is largely due to "left-wing" reform through the early 20th century emergence of unions and FDR's "New Deal". All of which is slowly being swept aside as America moves farther and farther to the right while inequality increases and the middle class slowly disappears. Things have reached the point in the US where "liberal" has become a bad word that's used to insult someone with.