[HN Gopher] Is the American Dream Dead?
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Is the American Dream Dead?
Author : cs702
Score : 19 points
Date : 2023-12-02 21:08 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| https://archive.is/CIlEe
| prh8 wrote:
| Yes, Reaganomics and late stage capitalism killed it
| Gimpei wrote:
| I'm not a fan of big idea books, in particular when they're by
| journalists, who are basically dilettantes. I'll challenge the
| very premise on two counts. One, it's debatable that the US was
| never all that mobile (see the latest American Economic Review)
| and two, median household income is way up since 2001:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.
| readingnews wrote:
| I have a CIO who stated, our churn is no worse than anyone
| elses, on average. The problem with that statement was that our
| churn was department specific, so if you looked at the average,
| it looked great. But if you zoomed in, the highly skilled IT
| workers were fleeing, and we were left with huge holes that
| caused real problems.
|
| In the graph you link to, I would love to see that with the top
| 10%, perhaps even 20% removed. I really wonder how a few
| hundred people like Elon or Bezos skew the median, plus the
| thousands of CIOs making 400X what I make.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| No one can skew the median. They can skew the mean.
| willis936 wrote:
| Now divide that trend by cost of housing rather than consumer
| price index. The market is saying "get in the box, pay the rent
| we are illegally fixing, and don't even think you'll be
| building equity or gaining security over the course of your
| life". If you don't have any anxiety about an aging society or
| living in a declining empire: you should.
| hash872 wrote:
| As an American I constantly hear about how the Nordic model of
| social democracy is superior. I feel like it's underdiscussed
| that the Nordic countries have very high wealth inequality
| though. According to 2019 Gini numbers, both the Netherlands and
| Sweden have more wealth inequality than the US. (1) Denmark, BTW,
| is quite close to the US- #8 in Gini to America's #4. If wealth
| inequality is so bad, are the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark
| doing poorly? I'd like to hear this discussed more.
|
| In terms of income inequality, the US is #61 out of 168 countries
| by 2020 World Bank numbers. (2) Hardly seems shocking to me.
| Anyways, just trying to inject some facts into what's usually a
| quite emotional subject. I hear a lot of comparing how the US is
| doing now to say 40 or 50 years ago, but less comparing objective
| stats on the US to other developed countries
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
| 2.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| I think wealth inequality numbers can be misleading.
|
| I was on a contract in Stockholm for a bit. There, I worked
| with some support line people. Working on a support line, they
| were able to rent a flat, afford to study at a university (debt
| free!), have access to medical system, party pretty much
| regularly and relatively good food. They would not be saving
| much after all this, but that probably was because they were
| young people and were not thinking much about saving anyway.
|
| Now, do tell me what does an entry job on a support phone line
| buy you in the US?
|
| One reason for wealth inequality numbers is high immigration in
| Scandinavia. For example, in Sweden, 20% of all residents are
| foreign born immigrants, compared to 14% in US.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Do a present value calculation of the real value of a solid
| pension. You'll get a value well into the 6 figures, if not 7
| figures. Now do a present value calculation of all the health
| insurance premiums a person will have to pay over their
| lifetime. And similar for all the other social insurances
| Nordic citizens get for free.
|
| That's all real wealth that's not calculated in your links.
|
| Or put another way: the Nordic model does not reduce
| inequality, it reduces the consequences of inequality.
| hash872 wrote:
| The US spends over a trillion dollars on Social Security
| annually, plus I believe another $1.4 trillion or so once you
| add up both Medicare and Medicaid. (Fun fact no one knows,
| the US now spends more on healthcare for the elderly than the
| entire famous military budget). So that covers both pensions
| and healthcare (which are never free for anyone in any
| country, you obviously have to pay at some point). So once we
| factor in over 2 trillion dollars of _annual_ US spending on
| pensions and healthcare, I doubt there 's a huge difference
| there
| nadermx wrote:
| Was it ever sustainable?
| tennisflyi wrote:
| Simple math puts renting/owning a(n) apartment/house out of reach
| for many. So, yeah.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _while 92 per cent of children born in 1940 had higher
| household incomes than their parents, babies born in 1980 had
| only a 50 /50 chance of doing better than the previous
| generation._
|
| Come on. The generation which was born in 1940 was born after (or
| arguably during) the Great Depression, and then got to live their
| lives in the world after the hugest world war, from which the US
| emerged as a victor, and mostly intact. In their adult lives they
| encountered the period of American economical and technological
| hegemony, while Europe and Japan scrambled to restore themselves
| after the devastation of the war.
|
| It was really hard for that generation to not live better than
| their parents whose adult life went through the times of the
| Prohibition and the Great Depression. A contrast like this cannot
| occur "naturally", during times of peaceful life and regular
| progress. So the 1980s were a regression to the mean, when the US
| started to face some real competition. As the generation of 1940
| (and even more so, of 1950) got a lot of wealth very quickly, it
| became really hard to compete with them, as assets like land and
| realty had appreciated a lot by 2000s when the generation of 1980
| came of age.
|
| But on topic: the American Dream is defined as <<life should be
| better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for
| each according to ability or achievement>>. IDK about "better"
| and "fuller", but 2000s with their continued technological
| explosion offered a huge amounts of opportunity, admittedly with
| a crash in the end; 2010s seemed to be totally not devoid of
| opportunity, too. The "richer" part was hit hardest; while
| opportunities to go from rags to riches demonstrably existed,
| they hardly affected "everyone". As of "fuller", well, the
| society, to my mind, have become more tolerant and open; I
| suppose that living a "fuller" life as a woman was/is easier for
| a person born in 1980 than born in 1940.
|
| For a more informative comparison, I'd like to compare
| generations of 1890, 1900, and 1920, for instance.
| Animats wrote:
| _" In a country that fundamentally skews more socially
| conservative, the Democratic party has also become too radically
| progressive on social issues such as abortion, immigration and
| LGBTQ rights."_
|
| That put Trump in the White House last time. Re-read the
| Wikipedia summary of the 2016 campaign season.[1]
|
| It will be worse next time. Read "Project 2025", the conservative
| master plan from the Heritage Foundation.[2] Last time around,
| Trump took office with no plan. This time, there's a plan. 900
| pages. Important enough to read. Wikipedia has a summary.[3]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential...
|
| [2] https://www.project2025.org/
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
| lordnacho wrote:
| As a European with substantial friends and family in America,
| yes.
|
| The American Dream is interesting because it's not just "Can I
| make it if I try hard as an American", it's also "would I want to
| go to America, as a foreigner?". To the rest of the world it is
| as much an ideal as it is to Americans.
|
| Now of course there are many people who still try to gain
| entrance to America. Undoubtedly, some of them are leaving places
| with worse opportunities.
|
| But I'm going to take it from my family perspective. My parents'
| generation basically got kicked out of the old country in the
| late 1970s, and ended up spread around various countries.
| Denmark, France, UK, Canada (Vancouver/Toronto), and a large
| contingent in the US (CA, CO, DC). Big family, more cousins than
| I can count. Even more people and countries if we start counting
| family friends and distant relations.
|
| Now and again people meet up. When someone is traveling, whoever
| is around tries to hang out with them. Luckily we have no alcohol
| tolerance so it is cheap to get us drunk.
|
| Inevitably, people end up asking each other what it was like to
| grow up in whatever country it was.
|
| Above everything, two things stick out. University costs a bunch
| of money in America, and health insurance costs a bunch of money.
| Not only that, your chances at secondary school depend a lot on
| where you started out. There is systematic racial bias built into
| the admission system. With the cost being so high, you'd better
| hope nothing bad happens while you're studying.
|
| The health insurance thing is a big deal as well. Get sick, go
| broke. Don't lose your job either.
|
| And what does your day-to-day look like? Well, you walk out on
| the street in SF and there are people using the public streets as
| toilets. There are people in obvious need of psychiatric help
| wandering around cursing their invisible enemies. There are tent
| camps of people who live in the middle of one of the most
| prosperous cities on earth. There are videos of large groups of
| people completely messed up on drugs, just sitting in the middle
| of the street. There are people who loot stores en masse.
|
| The question of "can someone make it if they work hard?" is also
| a question of fairness. What rules have they got in place in
| America, so that people who did well previously do not simply use
| their winnings to keep "winning"? Well, it seems like there are a
| lot of rules that favor the already rich. We hear they can
| arrange their taxes favorably. We hear they can lobby Washington.
| They can get their kids into those universities, something that
| is not so straightforward in other countries.
|
| This is all on top of an electoral system that is not
| proportional representation, for various reasons. It seems to
| favor stasis, with two large parties that have kept everything
| the same for a long while.
|
| Anyway, that's enough for now, getting late here, but there are
| other thoughts to gather on the subject.
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