The Death of the American Dream

Just as a point of interest, this post started as a criticism of suburbs, then a rant against the priorities of those living in gated communities, and now it's a rant against the mistaken ideals of American-style (and thus Canadian) society.

The American dream is a powerful idea for a great many people, as it represents the ideal that merit alone will make you successful, and it can be summed up that in America, through hard work and intelligence you can become rich. While there are many cases in which someone has brought themselves from poverty to astounding wealth completely on their own, as a whole the American dream is dead. I'm not even sure it was alive.

Achieving wealth is no easy feat in the current social climate, reflected in figures showing the widening gap between the rich and the poor as well as descriptions of America being not so much a melting-pot as a centrifuge. If the American dream were true, then the deserving lower-class citizens would be achieving their goal of the ideal American life, and the middle-class would grow. Instead, the middle-class is fragmenting, with the upper-middle class having more wealth, and the lower-middle class having to take on more debt to live the life they feel they deserve.

The American dream promises equality of opportunity instead of equality of wealth. However, it is quickly clear the opportunities are not equal. The disparity starts when wealthy parents send their children to private schools while a poorer but more intelligent child is forced to struggle through public school. And given the huge financial cost of university, many intelligent and motivated but poorer students cannot attend a prestigious college while a richer student, especially if his parents have good connections, can. Finally, a university diploma no longer guarantees a range of good opportunities, but being rich and well-connected is. With money opening doors at every step of life, how can it be claimed that America is a land of equal opportunity?

One of the major causes of inequality of opportunity, and the resulting increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, is a misplaced set of priorities. As wealth becomes harder to obtain, people can either race for the glorious prestige of a huge house with a huge TV and a huge car in a walled, guarded community, or they can examine why this trend is occurring to begin with. The two are exclusive because by fighting your way to the top, the cost you unwittingly inflict on society ensures that inequality will increase. If everyone, everywhere examined the cost of their actions and weighed them against their personal benefit so as to minimize cost while maximizing benefit, then a great many social problems would become easier to address.