The American Dream of upward mobility is dead, thanks to the neoliberal ministrations of capital and government. But a new dream could rise from the mess left by globalization, off-shoring and austerity.

The continuation of the economic crisis of 2008 up to the present has driven home a social trend that has been evident since the late 1970s, the decline of what is usually called "the middle class" and the accompanying American Dream.

The American Dream is the belief that if you work hard, if you are blessed with at least a modicum of ability and have a little luck, you can succeed. That is, you can rise in society no matter how humble your origin to something better in the way of material well-being, economic security, a settled life and social prestige. It is the dream of upward mobility for oneself, or at least for one's children.

The policies that made this suppression of incomes possible came to be called neoliberalism, a public ideology represented by President Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in England. It involved a withdrawal of government from directing the economy, leaving it instead to market forces. This meant deregulation, privatization of the commons and free trade. And that required weakening the collective hand of workers by an assault on unions and social benefits so as to strengthen the hand of capital.

"Free trade" policies of our political elite were a key part of the neoliberal offensive against labor. Trade agreements like NAFTA promoted the export of entry-level jobs to low-wage countries of the global South. With globalization, beginning in the 1980s, those entry-level industrial jobs that had made mobility into middle-income levels possible were the first jobs to be sent offshore, where they could be performed by low-wage workers in the Third World. For instance, hourly compensation costs in manufacturing (wages plus benefits) amount to $1.50 or less in China, compared with $33.50 in the United States. The Economic Policy Institute has recently calculated that in the last decade alone, US trade with China has cost us 2.7 million jobs.