A Crisis in Social Structure

The United States is a highly prosperous society, but that prosperity is not shared by great wealth and widespread poverty, making economic inequality more brazen today than in our entire history as a country. And with a recent fallout of the financial market, there is grave concern that the disparity that exist between the social classes in America will only worsen – resulting in more homelessness, joblessness, as well as a disenfranchisement among those who were once considered to be America’s financial backbone: The Middle Class, and the Small Business owner – these emerging situations seemingly becoming a puzzling staple of American culture. With these unfortunate rising statistics, the question that now plagues the minds of most Americans today is: What exactly has become of the American Dream?

The American Dream once stood for, at minimum, a steady improvement in standard of living. That is to say, at one point in American history, people could expect a reward for their hard labor. However, great disparities in income and wealth have fastly begun to emanate. And more recently, disturbing trends of wealth inequality and social economic disparities have become even much more disparaging. One only has to look at the recent Wall Street meltdown to realize – something is amiss in American fluency, more germane to most people’s concern is: How did it all begin? And How long will it last?

Most people think of income as a measure of well-being. This is an average way of thinking in most societies. More vital, perhaps, than its role as a source of income, is the security that wealth brings to its owners. In times of economic stress, occasioned by such crisis as unemployment, sickness, or family break up, wealth is an important cushion. Yet wealth inequality in the United States was at a seventy-year high in 1998, with the top 1 percent of wealth holders controlling 38 percent of total household wealth. How did this come to pass?

After the stock market crash of 1929, a gradual and somewhat erratic reduction in wealth inequality of wealth holdings began to develop, this seems to have lasted until the late 1970’s. Since then, inequality of wealth holdings, like that of income, has risen sharply. The rise in wealth inequality from 1983 to 1998 is particularly striking with the share of top one percent of wealth holders rising by five percent. The wealth of the bottom 40 percent showed a drastic decline with almost all the absolute wealth gains in real wealth accruing to the top 20 percent of wealth holders – at best the American Dream has now begun to egress, reflecting more bare-boned elements of life support systems, serving mainly to make life possible, but in no way tolerable or livable. Hardship is now commonplace in today’s America, and little is being done to rectify the situation, forcing a more hard-core reality of the American Dream, these hardships leaving a pejorative effect on the American psyche.

The notion that the U. S. is a special place where any child can grow up to aspire to the American Dream is fastly disappearing. We are no longer a meritocracy where smarts and ambition matter. Instead, the promise that a child born in poverty will remain in poverty is a growing concern, the reality being: the odds that a child born in poverty will climb to wealth is surprisingly becoming non-existent. And Although Americans still think of their land as a place of exceptional opportunity, the evidence starkly suggests otherwise. What is even more true, and equally a concern, is that there are those who hold the view that it is okay to have differences between the rich and poor, just as long as their children have a good chance of grasping the dream that may have eluded them. This continuing belief also serves to shape American politics and economic policy; Americans electing politicians who oppose using the muscle of the government to restrain the forces of widening inequality, these same politicians making the argument that any attempt to lift the minimum wage standard or requiring employers to offer health care insurance would only do unacceptably large damage to economic growth.

Benjamin Franklin perhaps best exemplifies the prototype of the “self- made man.” He is the classic American success story – the story of a man rising from the most obscure of origins to wealth and international prominence. What he believed is what most of our forefathers believed – a pursuit of happiness mainly existed as part of an inalienable right. That is to say, this pursuit was not to be repudiated, but rather embraced as part of a social contract, realizing then that America was at that time, and to be forever viewed, as a place of vast opportunity and growth. Today’s American, however, no longer reflects that standard. It is more rather an existence of egregious
practices and increasingly wide disparities. But nonetheless, Americans must continue above all else, to cherish their self-image, and to at least continue to view this country as a unique land where nothing can put a limit on opportunity, because of all of what America suffers, the dream of the pursuit of happiness will forever stand at the forefront of American ambition. This is of late, all of what one can hope for!