BBC: What is today's American Dream?

Is the American Dream still achievable in 2011, amid lingering economic hard times, wars and political discord? Veteran US pollster John Zogby says fewer Americans think it is, but many have redefined what that dream means.

Steadily over the past decade, I have witnessed in my polling a fundamental redefinition of the American Dream, even for that matter, the American character.

While fewer Americans believe that the American Dream still exists for themselves or for the middle class than before (57% compared with 74% just prior to the Great Recession), more Americans say that the American Dream means something different to them than it did before.

Materialism rejected

In the late 1990s, I began probing how Americans define the dream. I discovered in 1999 that about one-third believed the American Dream meant some form of financial success: the acquisition of goods, a bigger house, a home with a piece of land around it and so on. I called them the Traditional Materialists. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12839437

go back to sleep and ... there it is!

Stop rummaging around in the rabbit hole and make sure the coaxial cable is plugged tight into the back of your neck. The Simulation is yours and you are it.

Is America the "land of opportunity"? Not so much.

A new report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) finds that social mobility between generations is dramatically lower in the U.S. than in many other developed countries.

So if you want your children to climb the socioeconomic ladder higher than you did, move to Canada.

The report finds the U.S. ranking well below Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Spain in terms of how freely citizens move up or down the social ladder. Only in Italy and Great Britain is the intensity of the relationship between individual and parental earnings even greater.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/social-immobility-climbin_n_501788.html


The study(pdf):
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/7/45002641.pdf

Lastly, the rise of Secular Spiritualism is born of a trait for which we Americans seldom credit ourselves: a spirit of sacrifice. The continent was not settled by John Wayne and the Marlboro Man but by families who built communities and braved the elements together

I used to have a lot of dreams; become a great illustrator, maybe do some worthwhile personal art, write children's books, have a family, have enough left over to retire and take a vacation once a year. It didn't seem like too much 25 years ago. Now it's like asking for the moon-and then some. I have no family or time for a social life; I work from 15 minutes after I wake up in the morning to 15 minutes before I go to sleep at night, every day, and my peers tell me how lucky I am to find any work at all (even though it pays considerably less than it did 15 years ago). I have so much medical debt that I'll never retire, no vacation in 11 years, and I know that I'm far from alone here. The message from the elite is clear "don't complain about drudgery, don't complain about low wages and long hours- YOU'RE LUCKY TO HAVE ANYTHING AT ALL!" And we believe it.

Don't all people what to better their lives and be safe, etc etc?
Sorry, kind of an obvious idea I guess.

Planning on having a child soon and my biggest fear (we're somewhat financially stable)is that she will receive a subpar education. And that she'll be able to attend college without going into unmanageable debt...
I know a lot of people are probably more practical than me and worry about mortgages and health care. I worry about these things for myself and I personally have given up on my "american dream", but for my future child(ren) it really is about a good education- that's what I want for their american dream.