"Ya gotta believe in what you’re doing." "Stand up for yourself." "You gotta think of yourself as a winner, and you will be."
These are the sermons of one of the most popular men in contemporary pop culture, Donald Trump. His reality TV show, The Apprentice, has become an entertainment phenomenon, repackaging and reselling the increasingly elusive American Dream. It is perhaps no coincidence that The Apprentice is wildly popular at this point in American history. Never before has the divide between our nation’s richest and poorest been so large. Never before has corporate corruption and welfare been so flagrant. Therefore, we watch with rapt attention and desperation the unfolding of the American Dream on so-called reality TV, distracted from the fact that the Dream’s rewards are more fiction than fact nowadays.
Not only does hard work not necessarily translate into economic success, but the fruits of opportunity are not shared equally.
The American Dream is possibly the strongest cultural force driving the US worker. It inspires us to work long hours and borrow large sums of money. This dream translates into economic self-sufficiency, manifested through successful entrepreneurship and homeownership. Yet is it truly blind? Are all Americans in an equal position to attain this dream, provided that one has enough ambition and work ethic?
According to the American Dream, increased productivity will lead to higher wages, enhanced wealth, and ultimately, to economic self-sufficiency. Pious sacrifice will reap earthly rewards. As the American working class experience proves however, this is not the reality. Not only does hard work not necessarily translate into economic success, but the fruits of opportunity are not shared equally. This stark reality taints the promise of freedom and justice that we claim as cornerstones of our nation.
(illustration by Victor Velez)
For the vast majority of the US population, the American Dream is not readily available to them. In 2000, the US Census Bureau reported that 31.5 percent of families in this country make a total income of less than $35,000. In most states, this amount of money barely affords rent and food for a family, let alone car payments, health insurance, education costs or, worse, treatment for medical problems. Many middle and lower class Americans, especially single parents, rely on overtime to make ends meet. To make matters worse, the White House and the Labor Department uprooted overtime regulations with the announcement of new regulations that took effect on August 23. Workers who earn between $23,660 and $100,000 will find themselves ineligible for overtime pay if they are reclassified as "professionals, administrators or executives." Currently, $23,660 is only $5,000 above the poverty line for a family of four, and these boundaries have not taken inflation into account. So fewer and fewer workers will be protected by overtime pay as time goes on. These new rules determining eligibility for overtime pay has placed this privilege in jeopardy for over six million workers. Fortunately, the House voted to block this legislation from being enforced, but this is not likely to be the end of the fight. American workers face an uphill battle to erase what many call "the biggest pay cut in history."
Despite the fact that the US is one of the world’s richest industrialized nations, our average per capita income is a meager $21,857. Where is all the wealth to which the American people supposedly have fair and equitable access? It is concentrated at the top. We live in a society in which 1 percent of the population owns 60 percent of stock and 40 percent of total wealth. The top 10 percent of Americans own over 80 percent of all real estate. Consolidation of real estate has partly spurred a housing crisis in many cities as the rich and poor compete for housing, and the rich win for obvious reasons. As a result, the working poor have increasingly been forced into substandard housing that costs upwards of 40 percent and 50 percent of their income. Furthermore, since much of the working poor are in service and retail industries that primarily serve the upper classes, they often can only afford housing far from their place, or places, of work. In her book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich explains that transportation expenses and commutes burden an already-strained budget, and they affect a worker’s job security by impacting punctuality and performance.
The American Dream, with its emphasis on individual enterprise and responsibility, cleverly veils the economic and social forces arrayed against the poor by not recognizing the basic structural problems in suburban sprawl and concentrated wealth. It is convenient to accuse the working poor of being lazy, tardy, foolish with their money, and undeserving of wealth. That is easier than probing the problems of commuting, securing decent child care, and surviving on wages that have been systematically suppressed even as inflation has increased the costs of living. Even well-meaning, socially-conscious Americans are susceptible to judging the poor rather than seeing them as a shameful result of capital accumulation run amok. People in the lowest income brackets are admonished by pop culture icons such as Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil to better manage their money, and yet they are told what to buy to attain the stylish trappings of the American Dream. The Dream’s mixed messages, as they are played out in popular culture, add a psychological burden to an economic one. Not only do the poor struggle to exist on pittance wages, they are constantly bombarded by images selling the elite lifestyle.
And the elite grows ever more elite. Between 1977 and 1999, the top one-fifth of American households enjoyed an increase in income of 43 percent. The bottom fifth of American households lost income at a rate of nine percent. Is this the egalitarian vista of productive, successful, middling farmers and entrepreneurs that Jefferson envisioned two centuries ago?
The Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy published a report that highlights the gross inequities between executive and worker pay: "Executive Excess 2001: Layoffs, Tax Rebates and the Gender Gap." As revealed in the report, executive pay rose by 571 percent between 1990 and 2000. During the same period, workers’ pay rose only 37 percent. The Progress Report article notes, "if the minimum wage, which stood at $3.80 an hour in 1990, had grown at the same rate as CEO pay over the decade, it would now be $25.50 an hour, rather than the current $5.15 an hour."
Why is there such a disparity between the working and upper classes? Are we not working hard enough? The Washington Post notes that business productivity grew by 9.4 percent in the third quarter of 2003, the highest increase since 1983. Workers are working harder, but this has not translated to higher wages. In Progress and Poverty, Henry George asks, "Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages tend to a minimum that will give but a bare living?" Perhaps we should ask corporate executives, whose astronomically high salaries are made possible by the workers’ increasing productivity.
Unfortunately, corporate executives are unlikely to be challenged. In fact, average American citizens more commonly pose the question to themselves. The American Dream, rooted in a Protestant work ethic and assumptions of a level playing field, perpetuates a cultural version of "blame the victim." In his book, The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination, Bradley R. Schiller explains how Americans view poverty:
In colonial America poverty was regarded as the manifestation of vice and sin. Because everyone except Negro slaves was thought to enjoy the opportunity to acquire economic security by his or her own labor, those who did not attain such security were deemed to be morally flawed. Poverty thus became proof of moral bankruptcy, and the poor were treated accordingly.
If success is portrayed as an individual enterprise, then it follows logically that failure is an individual responsibility. There is an under-explored idea in cultural anthropology that argues that psychological trauma results from the gap between cultural expectations (as set forth in myth and ideology) and material reality. As the economic structure polarizes the classes, a surprising number of Americans turn inward, blaming their perceived deficiencies in spirituality and character. This is manifested in movements such as the Promise Keepers, Million Man March and followers of Robert Bly in the 1990s. It is interesting to note a gender difference in social movements. Famous men’s movements tend to focus on accepting internal responsibility for perceived failures. Women’s movements, such as the March to Save Women’s Lives, rightfully lash out at the socio-economic structure that denies universal health care, fair education, and decent and equal living wages.
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Research in the field of psychology has shown that cultural aspirations of monetary wealth can be directly correlated to individual psychological problems. One study, by Tim Kasser and Richard M. Ryan, found that individuals who place high levels of importance on financial success experience more depression and anxiety than those who do not. In a concurrent study, they note that among a sampling of 18 year olds, those who place a high importance on monetary wealth experienced "lower social productivity and more behavioral problems." Carol Nickerson and her associates note that individuals with stronger financial goals generally have lower job satisfaction and lower satisfaction with family life and friendships. Despite the negative personal and interpersonal effects associated with the American Dream, we have not ceased the pursuit of its "promised glory." Against all odds, social and cultural motivations have proven to be an overwhelmingly powerful force in maintaining our drive to achieve financial and material wealth. In a cultural and historical landscape that blindly exalts the motto "reap what you sow," we are driven to sow to exhaustion, attaining amazing levels of productivity. We are, however, shielded from knowing that the sowers and reapers are not the same people.
Modern American cultural expectations, as articulated in the American Dream, arose and evolved from our frontier history (as brilliantly explored by historians Frederick Jackson Turner and Richard Slotkin and contemporary anthropologists, such as University of Central Florida’s Vance Geiger). The Dream presupposes a limitless vista of land and resources that only need be tamed into property and wealth by pioneers with a strong work ethic, upright morality, and courage. In fact, the image of the American West is so powerful that it permeates our economic and political vocabulary without us being conscious of it. Osama bin Laden is "wanted dead or alive." Nations that do not accept US global supremacy are "rogue." To get anywhere you have to "take the bull by the horns."
The vista of never-ending land and resources still serves as a metaphor for urban and rural entrepreneurs wanting to exploit opportunity. Yet, the frontier of opportunity is not so fair. Corporate welfare tips the scales of economic justice significantly in favor of big business. Small businesses fail at a rate of 50 percent, and they are expected to sink or swim in the marketplace. Such small business owners probably do not have significant funds to lobby Congress and the White House like the mammoth Enron, for example. Before Enron failed, it benefited from billions of dollars of tax breaks and subsidies for operations abroad. Further legislation giving Enron financial and environmental free rein (Bill HR 4) was scheduled for a vote in the summer of 2002. Not only do large and small companies play by different rules, average taxpayers subsidize corporate corruption. Small business owners and American workers are expected to conduct themselves with honor, ethics, and fairness in the workplace. Yet, the administration oddly looked the other way as evidence surfaced that Enron was a primary player in manipulating artificial energy shortages that caused massive blackouts and nearly bankrupted the state of California in 2001.
Corporate welfare has made it virtually impossible for small- and micro-businesses to compete in an economy that provides credits, subsidies and favorable trade and labor policies for large corporations. This is particularly true in the agricultural sector. Family farms throughout this country are being run out of business by corporate producers. For example, as a result of decreased profits to agricultural corporations, dairy farmers in New York have been forced to sell their multi-generational businesses. Small citrus and vegetable producers in Florida are continually being driven to bankruptcy, unable to compete against agribusiness companies that thrive on the benefits of corporate economies of scale and farm subsidies. This is not the result of free-market economics.
Government favoritism towards big business limits the potential for micro- and small- businesses to remain competitive in the US market, let alone on the global market. As a result, multi-generational livelihoods, through which socio-economic identity has been formed, are being stripped from the American worker. An independent Florida farmer, like our reigning cowboy Donald Trump, was mentored by his heroic father and believed passionately in his living. When his produce goes under, literally, he has no TV show from which to sing praises about the American Dream.
Yet, despite these outrages, a unified revolt does not seem likely. As a larger workforce competes for a shrinking share of total national wealth, workers are wary of those who seem to outperform. In researching Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich worked a variety of minimum-wage jobs to document whether minimum wage can actually sustain a living (The conclusion? No, unless a single worker holds two or more jobs). She discusses different ways workers "checked" each other in the workplace. A fellow waitress at a diner scolded her for straightening display desserts, explaining that they would all be expected to do it. At Wal-Mart, Ehrenreich and co-workers expected each other to slow to an "arthritic" pace in case a manager conducted a time and motion study. Ehrenreich was continually warned against revealing her full knowledge and capabilities because more productivity would be demanded with no commensurate raise in pay: "The trick lies in figuring out how to budget your energy so there’ll be some left over for the next day." These workers knew better than to think the Dream’s promises were true; hard work brought them few rewards. Not only do fewer and fewer elites own the means of production, but the fundamental mean, labor, has been exhausted and divided against itself. The suppression and psychological battering of labor effectively sap whatever strength labor may have in numbers.
For US workers who dare to "stand up for themselves," they are likely greeted with a resounding, "You’re fired." The 11,000 striking airline workers in 1981 discovered this painful reality when they were fired by the most gifted frontier myth-maker of all, former President Ronald Reagan. The 1981 airline strike, and other failed strikes, demonstrates that even when labor can unite, success and opportunity may still be unattainable. The 1981 strike is compelling in its irony: it was busted by a president who marketed himself as the very symbol of what the American Dream deems possible. President Reagan espoused middle class values of virtuous work ethic and productivity, yet he was hostile to the labor movement. During his presidency, we witnessed the decline of the middle-class and increasing concentration of wealth. The United States exhibited the widest income gap between the rich and the poor of any industrialized country in the 1980s. A recent article in the New York Times reported that this gap is continuing to grow, with the top 20 percent of the US population earning 50 percent of the nation’s wages.
Unequal concentrations of wealth have been a fact of American history since the founding fathers established this republic. Plantation slavery, the industrial revolution, and the military-industrial complex since World War II – all of these were built on the backs of a poor and oppressed majority and used racist, sexist and various other prejudices to justify their modus operandi. Yet, we can challenge the past not to predict the future.
The reality of this country needs to be made into what its founders claimed it should be: "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" for all, not just the chosen few. In The Future as History, Robert Heilbroner notes, in words that echo true today, "We are simply not concerned, beyond a mild lip-service, with mounting an all-out effort to raise the level of national health or civic virtue, or mass living conditions or average education or upbringing." Economic justice is achieved when all our sisters and brothers can share opportunity equally. W.E.B. Du Bois noted in his book, The Souls of Black Folk, "American is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons." One hundred years has not seen the end of that shameful reality.
The American Dream will truly be achievable to all when privilege becomes a thing of the past. When the average American (regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, etc.) has an equal chance at entrepreneurial success against a corporate giant like Wal-Mart. Then and only then has the American Dream succeeded. There is no true American Dream for whom there is no social and economic justice. In the great words of poet Langston Hughes: "Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed/ Let it be that great strong land of love/ Where never kings connive or tyrants scheme/ That any man be crushed by one above." Let us narrow that gap between expectation and reality. Let us transform fleeting symbols into grounded truths.
