The American dream: Going, going ... gone?

Americans are obsessed with terrorism, China, and other threats from beyond our borders, said Gregory Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times. But the biggest threat to our future comes from the recent and dramatic erosion of “that rather nebulous notion we call the American dream.” An ABC News/Yahoo News poll last week found that only half of us still believe in the dream—defined as the promise that “if you work harder you’ll get ahead.” More than 40 percent no longer think that’s true. The Great Recession may explain some of this gloom, but polls from as far back as 1995 have documented ever-rising doubts about the dream. This is alarming news, because “the dream is the glue that keeps us all together.” In this “diverse, highly competitive society,” it’s the belief that our lives and the lives of our children will get better that keeps our myriad ethnicities, races, religions, and regions “from ultimately tearing each other apart.”

Americans have every reason for their doubts, said Ronald Brownstein in National Journal. The 10-year period between 2000 and 2009 was “an utterly lost decade for many, if not most, Americans.” In inflation-adjusted dollars, the incomes of white families declined 5 percent over the decade, while the incomes of Hispanic families dropped 8 percent, and those of African-American families, 11 percent—an almost “unimaginable” reversal, after decades of steady progress. More than 12 million people fell into poverty. Even though the population grew by 25 million, fewer people held jobs at the end of the decade than when it began. If Americans feel as though “the ground beneath them is cracking,” can we blame them?

Velma Hart may have said it best, said Cynthia Tucker in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A middle-class veterans-affairs official with two children in private school, Hart became a “breakout cable-news star” last week when she asked President Obama at a town hall meeting if her current struggles to support her family were a passing phase or “my new reality?” Obama ducked the question, but no platitudes or vague promises can change the fact that millions of us share Hart’s “new reality” of economic insecurity, battered retirement savings, sagging real estate values, and diminished expectations for our children and our own retirement. “Does that mean the American dream is dead? Hardly. But it may need to be ‘right-sized.’”

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