at the Univ of Texas Austin, we studied and discussed the death of the American dream as symbolized in such films and books as Easy Rider, The Godfather, Rosemary's Baby, The Graduate, The Feminine Mystique, Revolution from Within and many others. I think we hippies of the 60s were onto how craven, shallow, and hypocritical was the myth of American consumerism, and stereotypical roles for everyone. BTW: back then, my college tuition at a truly world class university was $125 per semester for 15 hours and room/board was about $125/mo. I shudder to think the financial agony that students face now. My bother went to Texas A&M and had no tuition because he was a work/study waiter for an hour every morning at breakfast.

The answer to this problem is quite obvious quite. Raise taxes on the upper 25% and on corporations to fund education. Also end foreign wars, but that's another discussion. America is exceptional all right. Exceptionally controlled by exceptionally greedy oligarchs. America better wake up!

The University gave me another "Hit up the Alumni speeches" on the phone. The young lady said the University is having hard times these days because like everything else, the state of Texas cut their budget. I told her respectfully to tell them to take it out of the football and basketball team's budget!
My pay was cut 30% and the next month health insurance went up 40% in one year! I have a lot of health problems right now and just hope BP will be force to pay soon (not likely)!
Even back in 86, my last year in undergrad, I had to live in a 20' travel trailer at the end of the runway for Bergstom AFB. When the jet would take off from my end, one after another, the afterburners were aimed directly at my trailer. It would shake like it was in a hurricane!

The problem is that everybody wants the other guy to pay for it. You look back at how fortunate you were to get a cheap education... yet your proposal is "raise taxes on the upper 25% and on corporations". Nobody wants to pay for it... so guess who ends up paying... that's right, the kids going to college.

too bad congress doesn't.

I didn't link article yet, but I'm guess it mentions the complete flattening of the middle class.

What middle class?

This is quite disgusting, because the people up there sitting like little cherries atop the 1% are doing fabulous.

Two conclusions that are forgone…

1) There is no middle class.

2) Trickle down economics was a lie then, and a big huge lie now.

Bumper stickers should read, "trickle down worked this way" and have that little cartoon (Calvin and Hobbs era) pissing.

... believe all this is happening. No more American dream for so many. Only mobility going on is downward. So many college graduates can't find a job in their field, forced to work minimum wage jobs (two of them), and so much debt they can't even think about starting a family.

This is NOT progress.

I remember saying to friends as we talked about GOP efforts to undo all the social progress since the New Deal, "It's almost like they're trying to reduce us to a third-world banana republic."

My thinking at the time was that this would be the unintentional outcome of these drooling, political troglodytes and their idiotic efforts. But I've since come to believe that, no, it was (and is) all very intentional. It was always part of the plan.

And like a bunch of rubes at a rigged carnival game promising big, fluffy prizes, most of the American public has fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

... is that young people, born since Reagan, grew up and are growing up thinking this is "normal."

"Distinguished law scholar Elizabeth Warren teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School. She is an outspoken critic of America's credit economy, which she has linked to the continuing rise in bankruptcy among the middle-class. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures" [6/2007"

... I had time to watch this lecture all the way through. I so hope she runs.

can not afford a house, and are paying rent. IT may get to the point most people can not afford a car either. I don't have one, but this city has great transportation choices.

67% of single family homes in the US are occupied by their owners;

http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708

Judging from the poster you replied to's sports team in their signature, I am guessing they're from San Francisco, which is one of the highest (if not the highest) COL city in the country.

I'm from the other side of the country, and I'll never own a house (even if I won the lottery, which would be the only way I could afford it). I simply don't want the responsibility that goes along with homeownership.

that "most people can not afford a house and are paying rent"

I googled "percent of americans that own homes vs rent"

67% ownership of single family homes beats the hell out of 'most people pay rent'

Where you live is not applicable. Sure, in NYC it is 50% of people rent apartments.

That's not what the poster above stated as a fact.

Scroll all the way down on the page I linked above. It has percentage of renters by state. California is only 17%. New York is about 24%

But you have to read between the lines. How many of those 'owned' homes are owned by a landlord who decides to rent them out. For all you know, the 'owned' home could be one of 8 that the person owns and is renting 7 of them out. The housing boom and bust has lead to homes being bought as investment properties as opposed to a place to live. This is a country that tends to reward real estate investors and penalize renters (via the tax code).

And NY and CA are both very big states. Homeownership tends to be higher in rural (and cheaper) areas. Both states have major cities and an abundance of rural areas. Even though they're the same state, Columbia County, NY and NYC are two different ballgames.

There's also a whole generation that is not buying homes at the same rate (and time period) as their elders for numerous reasons (student loan debt, poor job prospects, homes being unaffordable, etc). I'm 34 and the only one of my peers that I know that owns a home (old college friend who I'm in touch with by FB only) is in a very rural area. Most of us have accepted the fact that homeownership before 40 is just not possible and won't happen.

Everyone in the country is destitute or financially screwed. I get it. You win.

Blah blah blaah fucking blah...

and I'm 50. Was never interested. Looks like a PITA.

Now what do we do about it?

I don't care how cute she is.

The natural adversary of the rich isn't the poor, it's the middle class. The poor are in such dire straits that they have to focus all their energies on getting themselves and their families through each day. It's the middle class that have the resources to organize and become a political force and change things.

Want to be safe and comfortable at the top of the heap? Eliminate the middle class. Keep a handful of skilled technicians to keep the system running. Everybody else gets to fight over those minimum-wage yacht-scrubbing jobs.

Looks like we're about there.

How far will we let this go?

lucky.

faster than the 0.1%.

last rich man standing will be?

So true.

lets throw out a Putin and see what happens? apologies in advance.

Articles like this are just "no shit" to many of us.

They always want MORE.

And they continually subvert our democracy to get it.

the world has ever seen. Stop it or it will destroy the world.

minimum wage college grads flipping burgers. This is by design, not by accident.

of the American Dream. As many Americans now believe, she believes that the American Dream means that it's possible to raise from the lower class to the upper class. She even used Barack Obama as an example. I call it the "American Dream: Win the Lottery Style." This meme has been pushed by the 1% to mollify the lower classes. "You too can be part of the 1%." They don't mention that the odds of that happening are 1 in 100 million.

After WWII (the big one) the American Dream was to own a modest home, have one working family member working 40 hours a week with 2 weeks paid vacation, and the opportunity for their children to have a better life, and a modest retirement plan.

The conservatives killed the American Dream, starting in about 1970. Those that lived thru the First Great Republican Depression were about 50 years old or older in 1970. That generation tried to warn us Baby Boomers, but we didn't pay attention. Systematically the conservatives tore down the American Dream.

The people who commissioned it were the same people who pulled Reagan's strings. He was the perfect salesman for their oligarchical bullshit and social reactionism - dumb as a brick and he actually believed it. Reagan was in a delusion of denial long before the onset of Alzheimer's. It's ALL in the Powell Memorandum.

Read it at: http://law.wlu.edu/deptimages/Powell%20Archives/PowellMemorandumTypescript.pdf

to the 1%. Not all conspiracy theories are bunk.

This was about as secretive as the mayor marching down Main Street on St. Patrick's day in front of 10,000 Irishmen and a brace of pipe bands.

that they are going backwards. Especially the poor.

The last lines exhort everyone to vote and get involved before the PTB "saw off" the last leg of the middle class which is gutting Social Security.

"They call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."

The drones won't like it, but sometimes the truth hurts.

Thanks for the roadblocks republicans.

But it wasn't Congress that declined to prosecute the banksters and the torturers, and that failure is the single greatest failure of this administration.

The monied elite, the PtB, want what they have always wanted: A populace with no options and no security, desperate enough to work for pennies or a workhouse bed for the night. Forget selling to the US middle class, they'll sell to the much bigger Asian markets.

Once you realise what their agenda is (and I'm not talking about an overarching conspiracy, simply that the corporate elites tend to have similar goals), everything makes sense. Education gets cut because worker drones only need basic literacy and numeracy. The plebs are pushed into debt because it makes them more desperate. Ditto eviscerating Social Security and welfare (and Clinton must take a lot of blame on that one). Keep them desperate, keep them scared, and you can get away with paying them pennies, or a meal or a workhouse bed.

From Day One.

but hey, you'll got tax cuts for your racism.