President
If you do study economics it is interesting that you don't link the prevalent economic and socio-political system with the debt that is derived from it.
When I talked about brain-washing this is what I was referring to, at some stage or maybe never you'll realise that the current economic situation is linked to economic policies. Acceptance has to happen before change happens so this perpetuation of the 'American Dream' is just delaying the recovery and the changes needed to get America back on its feet.
The good news is that there is lots of dollars sitting in corporate Americas balance sheets, if we want to perpetuate the current system we simply take wealth, recycle it to the poor and the crazy game can start again, only this time around the govt need to be more responsible with the cash it gets in. It needs net budget gains and it needs to use that money to pay off the debt.
You may think this a little far-fetched but what else can or should Corporate America do with that money sitting in their balance sheets but spend it, how else do you derive value or stimulate growth, money is just the means to an end, not the end itself and that is the same for Capitalism, it's not a way of life but a way to get a life, but if through your taxation system too much of the money ends up as wealth it is removed from the money merry-go-round and the system stops working.
The answer to current problems are Robin Hood taxes, this is not Socialism, it's the vital ingredient missing in the current market economic system. Top economists know this but don't promote it for one good reason, they are the people with the money, if economists were in the group with the have-nots they would be screaming for a change, it's individual and corporate greed that are killing the American Dream, is it too late to save Capitalism, now that is an interesting debate?

President
If you do study economics it is interesting that you don't link the prevalent economic and socio-political system with the debt that is derived from it.
When I talked about brain-washing this is what I was referring to, at some stage or maybe never you'll realise that the current economic situation is linked to economic policies. Acceptance has to happen before change happens so this perpetuation of the 'American Dream' is just delaying the recovery and the changes needed to get America back on its feet.
The good news is that there is lots of dollars sitting in corporate Americas balance sheets, if we want to perpetuate the current system we simply take wealth, recycle it to the poor and the crazy game can start again, only this time around the govt need to be more responsible with the cash it gets in. It needs net budget gains and it needs to use that money to pay off the debt.
You may think this a little far-fetched but what else can or should Corporate America do with that money sitting in their balance sheets but spend it, how else do you derive value or stimulate growth, money is just the means to an end, not the end itself and that is the same for Capitalism, it's not a way of life but a way to get a life, but if through your taxation system too much of the money ends up as wealth it is removed from the money merry-go-round and the system stops working.
The answer to current problems are Robin Hood taxes, this is not Socialism, it's the vital ingredient missing in the current market economic system. Top economists know this but don't promote it for one good reason, they are the people with the money, if economists were in the group with the have-nots they would be screaming for a change, it's individual and corporate greed that are killing the American Dream, is it too late to save Capitalism, now that is an interesting debate.

I think the capitalism, for good or ill, is here to stay for the time being. But free market capitalism of the Milton Friedman variety carries with it some inherent instability and tendency to produce economic inequality which, after 30 odd years, has begun to show. Both of the those factors tend to produce the need for greater entitlement spending. The alternative is to leave people to suffer which will lead to social unrest which will lead to costs of another kind. I think a flexible approach rather than strict adherence to a economic ideology is far more rational. If the history of economics has taught us anything it has shown us a tendency of economic theories to produce problems that it is ill-equipped to handle. There is no one size fits all that works.

Had to remove that question mark at the very end which was bugging me :-)

I'm about to enter a live game so I don't have time to respond in depth, but two key notes:

(1) Given the responses here and a PM I received, it seems people are conflating my description of the American Dream with belief in it. Nope nope nope. The AD notion makes me facepalm. It's pie-in-the-sky idealism.
(2) Defending the fundamentals of the system is not equivalent to defending the many MANY flaws inherent in the bastardization of the system. I do not like the current situation at all, but equating it with the fundamental idea when the current system is anything but is wrong.

Love how this thread turned out.

The question is, does it really matter that the American Dream is just something for the very few? Doesn't the achievement of the guy in the OP reflect well on all the other immigrant-janitors? "At least one of us made it out of here?" Something like that?

@ President Eden, yes you do get the choice to not spend the money in that hypothetical.
"domestically" in Australia, our economy is a bit of a mixed bag, Mining has been booming, but Manufacturing getting hammered, we've had a 10 year drought, broken by 3 years of floods, but there is a definite "skills demand crisis", the Mining boom
and the demographic bump of the baby boomers starting to hit retirement age are just two drivers of that.
What's your approach to Education funding in those circumstances with all that
demand ? Immigration won't do it, so.....????

'Doesn't the achievement of the guy in the OP reflect well on all the other immigrant-janitors? "At least one of us made it out of here?" Something like that?'

yes, this is a perfect example of the kinda of cognitive bias that allows flawed arguements to continue. The entire basis of the American Dream lie, perhaps...

'we've had a 10 year drought, broken by 3 years of floods' - terrible things the climate change has wreaked, but good luck with that, i'm going to burn me some fossils!

Huh?

I still don't get how a dream or a goal or even a set of dreams or goals.is a lie just because it os difficult to achieve and requires some.luck in the process. The American Dream isn't about how to achieve it, but about the end product. If you want to say that hard work alone will accomplish it is a lie, fine. Yes, there is a touch of luck.and being born into the right environment is part of that luck. But the Dream itself is not a lie.

Maybe it is merely unrealistic, rather than a lie. The point is humans are easily conned, just as by the lottery, because our brains work a certain way.

I'm on my phone, but I have an important point to make: what if the purpose of the dream is simply the dream itself?

That's a valid question. The purpose of buying a lottery ticket is to expierence the excitement of the possibility of winning; those of us who don't believe it is possible (or likely) don't get excited and thus don't buy the lottery ticket.

On the other hand, it might be suggested that the purpose of the American Dream is to encourage subservience to the system - especially if you look at America in terms of class.

But the American Dream was traditionally to be middle or upper middle class. Middle America of the 50s was the white picket fence home with wife kids and dog like Leave It to Beaver.

and yet Howard Zinn found his parents very hard working and still lower class unable to afford their own home or picket fence...

meanwhile America 'trickle down' economics has resulted in an ever increasing rich-poor gap over the last 30 or so years...

A) one person's experience - even a famous one - is anecdotal.
B) Zinn grew up in the middle of the Great Depression. You know, that time when fat cat stockbrokers were jumping from windows after the market crashed in 29 (Zinn was 7 at the time). I clearly said in the 50s when he would have been 30-35 years old.

And the last 30 years means 80s and Reaganomics when Zinn was pushing 60 and his parent's probably dead. Coming out of WWII, America started into a prosperous recovery and the phrase came to mean the white picket fence, two cars, etc. As originally coined in 1931 by James Truslow Adams in his book, The Epic of America...

This page from the Library of Congress
 contains the original quote:It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

I still don't get how the "American Dream" means ANYTHING AT ALL if it's just defined as "following your dream, whatever that dream may be." Friggin' everyone has said that, American or otherwise. We don't have a unique "claim" to it, and acting as though we do is nationalist bullshit plain and through.

"What's your approach to Education funding in those circumstances with all that
demand ? Immigration won't do it, so.....????"

Wasn't considering the scenario in Australia. I just know in America that our education system is an abomination built to serve the interests of big industry and big government and for that reason is never ever ever gonna get fixed, so I find it morally appalling to consider the notion of confiscating $20 million through the state's monopoly on violence to fund the country's minor leagues for industrial society.

*cont.

In the abstract, certainly, $20 million for public education is fine by me. If we're going to presume the necessary existence of a state, it should prioritize education as highly as policing, courts and national defense.

But in context of America? Hell no. This monster needs to be defunded and deconstructed. It's beyond repair.

@ President Eden, thanks for your reply
I appreciate the dificulties, in that we are at times comparing apples with oranges,
in that there are similarities between the political / economic circumstances of our 2 nations, but there are huge differences as well.
Plus I only have a distant observers view of America and you are probably in a similar position regarding Australia

Ok you describe the American Education system as a "monster that needs to be defunded and deconstructed" If that was to occur what would you do for a public education service ? construct a better system, have no public education ???

@ orathaic
umm, Australia has had a drought /flood cycle with bushfires thrown in for a very long time before any humans got here and the indigeneous australinas that strolled in here 30,000 years ago, although the creationists out there may want to quibble on that,
increased the amount of bush fires by using fire as their basic "farming" tool.

so if you are thinking, dear orathaic, that by fixing climate change, that will somehow fix the drought / flood cycle of Australian weather, then I regret to inform you that you are taking a somewhat "Pollyanna like" view of things.

@ President Eden,

whats the problem with an Education system that gives people the skillls Industries need in employees ? An education system funded by the state with taxpayers monies should, in my opinion, provide a diverse range of educational opportunities, including training people with the skills needed in the economy.

That was a point I was trying to make with the example of Singapore, the economic success of Singapore is no accident, no happy combination of random factors, it's a brilliant example of transforming a nation using education as a prime driver

Construct a better system, first and foremost. The fundamental problem with education in America is its purpose. We like to think it's about building a more well-rounded, intelligent individual, but that's pretty clearly a load of crap when you consider how little funding the arts get, how much of schooling comes down to rote memorization, and how little concern exists, on a systemic level, for critical thinking and analysis. It's often argued that education's purpose is to prepare children to find jobs and be competent in fundamental matters like mathematics, and while that seems more in line with how the curriculum is shaped, the fact that America lags behind the developed world in math and science would indicate that if that's the purpose, we're not meeting it satisfactorily, and there's probably an issue with the underlying structure that's to blame.

Now, what should the purpose behind education be? I have my ideas, though I'll admit they're not that well fleshed-out. Broadly speaking, the purpose we like to say education serves - building a well-rounded, intelligent individual capable of critical thinking - seems like a good one, it's something on which I can definitely sign off. I think that "creating workers for the industrial machine" most definitely should *not* be the purpose of education, though, and the fact that it is - and that the only people in the country with the power to change that purpose don't want to change that purpose - is enough to say scrap the system and start over.

I halfway expect Putin to come in here with his "If you don't put forth an alternative your position is useless" line, so I'll go ahead and pre-emptively say that if status quo is making things worse than they would be if we did nothing, then "doing nothing" is a valid alternative which must be adopted. Here, at least, I think that holds.

"whats the problem with an Education system that gives people the skillls Industries need in employees ? An education system funded by the state with taxpayers monies should, in my opinion, provide a diverse range of educational opportunities, including training people with the skills needed in the economy."

I would agree, but I'd say that's not the only role of an education system, and when such a system is actively antagonistic toward other important facets of intellectual and emotional development, as the American system currently is, that's a serious problem that should be addressed. But it won't be.

Rote learning probably made a lot more sense in victorian times, meanwhile 'testing' is harder to do in a manner where rote learning of the answers will not provide a good result (and thus be a prefered strategy)

We do need a system of open book / internet access testing, and inventive questions which test the ability to understand all the information which is out there and how to retrieve it...

I completely agree with Eden in what should constitute a real education in this country. I don't no if defunding/deconstruction would get us there though. The changes in education have in large part been driven by a cultural shift in America. We have become lopsidedly materialistic. Unless that culture changes education is likely to continue down the same path. I can't tell you how many times when pursuing a Philosophy degree people asked me..."How are you going to make money with that?"

The purpose of education should be to create an individual with the skills and capacity to act responsibly as a free citizen (as in, the liberal arts). This should the extent of a free society's involvement in education: preparing students to become fully participant and responsible members of that free society. I don't think we need to go back to medieval trivium or whatever, but I think it's worthwhile to consider what skills are essential for citizens of a representative free society, and focus on those.

These would not include sitting quietly in a room for seven hours a day, or doing what you're told and showing up on time. If factory owners and businessmen want a compliant workforce, they can make it themselves. It's not a coincidence that the common schools movement in the USA began in the same time period, and came out of the same impulses, that created prisons, insane asylums, and workhouses.

'lopsidedly materialistic' (lobsided?) but yes, and advertising (READ: corporate propoganda) is the feature which makes this the case - long before governments were abandoning the use of force in favour of propoganda - there were companies who had no choice but to use advertising to influence people. And while the companies are all competing for market share (and mindshare) they are co-operating on making everyone consume more, even if they don't know it. They all benefit from a more materialistic focus in life.

"lopsidedly" is right....on another note "And while the companies are all competing for market share (and mindshare) they are co-operating on making everyone consume more, even if they don't know it" there is a great documentary by Adam Curtis of the BBC called "The century of the Self" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhxfArTAcfM is part one (the whole thing is 4 hours long) that addresses this brilliantly.