Welcome to...
The Disintegration of
the American Dream
the American Dream
Ronald Wright
"The belief that America offers the opportunity to everyone of a good and successful life achieved through hard work."(7)
But for whom does this dream become real? Over the last four decades lobbying and policy would favor economic prosperity for only the wealthiest Americans. People will enable and vote against their own interests when they believe in the American Dream. More like the American Delusion...
Americans are working more than twice as hard but not getting paid much more.
The value of the federal minimum wage has not kept up to the exponential rise in productivity.
There is a type of worker who's pay has risen exponentially... In 2013, CEO’s made 296 times what a typical worker earns.
It also looks like opportunity does not reach everyone equally.
The tax rate for the ultra wealthy has fallen over the last 60 years, and has finally fallen below the effective tax rate of the bottom half of the country's.
If we look back at Productivity vs. Compensation, and then correlate Union membership, we can maybe paint a picture of how union-busting has affected our economic reality.
No matter your political beliefs, the reality of the American Dream skews toward the ultra wealthy and not towards 90% of Americans. No need to be discouraged, but we need to organize. Look into local/grassroots organizations. I included some national-level resources at the bottom of this page if you wish to dive deeper into the subject.
George Carlin
1. The State of Working America by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
2. The World Inequality Report by the World Inequality Lab
3. The Annual Report on Union Membership by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
4. The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances
5. The Economic Mobility Project by the Pew Charitable Trusts
1. "The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future" by Joseph E. Stiglitz
2. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Thomas Piketty
3. "Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class" by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
4. "The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do about It" by Timothy Noah
5. "The American Dream and the Power of Wealth: Choosing Schools and Inheriting Inequality in the Land of Opportunity" by Heather Beth Johnson
1. Economic Policy Institute (EPI) - epi.org
2. Center for American Progress (CAP) - americanprogress.org
3. Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) - ips-dc.org
4. The Brookings Institution - brookings.edu
5. The Pew Research Center - pewresearch.org
1. Economic Policy Institute (EPI) - epi.org
2. AFL-CIO - aflcio.org
3. SEIU (Service Employees International Union) - seiu.org
4. American Federation of Teachers (AFT) - aft.org
5. National Employment Law Project (NELP) - nelp.org
