How the American Dream Died

DetroitFlickrMemories_by_Mike They told us all we had to do to get rich was work hard. They said we had a world of opportunities to achieve all the success we wanted. Yet an uncomfortable truth is dawning over America: the American Dream was simply never meant for everyone. Anyone could get rich – but not everyone at the same time. It’s only a dream for a privileged few, and a nightmare for everyone else.

Let’s take the “Dream” apart so we can take a closer look of what it’s made of. I can reap the fruits of my own hard work. I can forge the career of my dreams, and through that career, I can make good money and live the good life. I can free myself from the oppressive chains of government and oligarchy. Me, myself and I. If there’s a single underlying issue with the American Dream, a single virus behind the symptoms of sick lady America, it’s the individualistic mentality that has it locked in a futile battle against none other than itself. It is this mentality that has academics at the country’s most elite institutions concluding that the United States is not a democracy but an oligarchy.

So how did a country that once provided asylum to refugees of Europe’s aristocracy come to be ruled by a modern-day aristocracy? Part of the problem is the inability to realize that certain freedoms and liberties inherently conflict with each other. My freedom as an executive to make as much money as I want conflicts with your freedom as an employee to be able to make a living and afford basic human rights such as food, shelter, education and health care. I could show you some compassion – but not in hyper-individualistic America. Instead, my power as an executive allows my freedom to prevail, whereas your lack of power as a mere worker leaves you deprived of yours.

That is why Detroit, once the embodiment of the American Dream, now epitomizes its sad end: the unleashing of international trade anarchy opened the door to outsourcing, which in turn wiped out the Motor City’s economy. Wall Street finished it off. Neoliberal economists, feigning scientific-ness in order to legitimize the world’s plundering by the corporate elite, preach free trade in the name of maximizing “efficiency”. Poverty, unemployment and thousands of abandoned buildings aren’t exactly a perfect illustration of efficiency.

Hyper-individualism is unsustainable, and until people find meaning beyond the dollar, the American nightmare will continue to be a harsh reality for many.

How America’s Work Obsession is Killing Our Quality of Life

How the American Dream Died

Abby Martin comments on a recent poll showing that a growing number of Americans believe the ‘American Dream’ is impossible to achieve; and urges US citizens to rethink what the dream should truly be.

Written by Ming Chun Tang; image by Flickr user Memories_by_Mike

MEDIA ROOTS — Modern Money and Public Purpose is the 2012-2013 Series on Contemporary Issues in Law and Political Economics at Columbia Law School. The video below displays some hard-hitting, yet, little-known truths about our economy. We can broadcast the truth about money and the people’s democratic sovereignty to control it, especially given the false economic crises facing Americans–where unnecessary economic pain and austerity is being inflicted onto the people.

The speakers in the fifth installment in the series, Dr. Woody Holton (Univ. of S. Carolina), Dr. Farley Grubb (Univ. of Delaware, Economics Department), and Dr. Christine Desan (Harvard Law School) is moderated by Dr. Gillian Metzger (Columbia Law School). A notable aspect of this panel is the description of the origin of money, which traces its value in our society to today’s modern money systems. These inquiries lay bare the reality of money sovereignty for public purpose, denied by those who truly wield power in the USA, namely those who control the power to create money. As Dr. Holton noted in quoting the private banker Gouverneur Morris during the 1787 Constitutional Convention: “The monied interest will oppose the plan of Government, if paper emissions be not prohibited.”

Messina

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NEW ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES—The latest installment of Modern Money and Public Purpose is now online. This seminar explores the relationship between money and the legal formation of the modern liberal capitalist state, with a particular emphasis on the pre-Revolutionary and early United States. In contrast to conventional economic narratives that cast money as lubrication for existing forms of exchange, this event highlights the legal and political origins of our modern monetary system, and traces the influence of those forces on the shape of the modern economy.

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“The number one reason the people who wrote our Constitution were there—in Philadelphia, in that summer of 1787—was to stop the states from printing paper money. That’s the number one reason they were there,” said Dr. Holton.

Wow. The monied interests would straight shut down Government and Democracy, altogether, if the people awaken to the power of controlling the money supply for the public purpose. Although the speakers presented important work and were descriptive of historical truths, they seemed less, or un-, willing to explicitly connect those important truths to today’s real conditions of unnecessary and avoidable widening inequality and economic misery for a growing majority, as others do, such as Dr. Michael Hudson:

“But if governments are not allowed to create their money, then all of the credit the economy needs is created by the commercial banks. And when the commercial bank credit creation leads to debt deflation and the government cannot finance the deficit to pay the interest then the commercial banks say: Alright, sell off and privatise your infrastructure. This is what we’re seeing in Greece today, in Ireland. You’ve seen it in Iceland. What you are seeing is a financial grab of infrastructure that is taking place by the ability of commercial bankers to prevent the central bank from creating credit.”

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