Ashley Hanson

The American Dream is Slowly Killing Us Imagine being young again, and you have a dream to sell cookies to your neighbors. So, you make a little cookie stand with your bright and cheerful sign and start baking. On day one, a single person happens to come by and buys a single cookie. Day two brings two people. The third day brings three, and so on. By the end of the month, you’re serving hundreds of cookies to dozens and dozens of neighbors with no sign of demand slowing or stopping. But it just keeps improving! Not only do dozens and dozens of people want a cookie every day, but the cost of ingredients keeps dropping. When you first started, you could get enough ingredients to make a dozen cookies for $1. Another week went by, and you could get two dozen cookies for $1, and then twelve. Within a few short months, you have so much money coming in you don’t know what to do with it. Word spreads about how many cookies your neighborhood sells, and other kids want in. They set up their own cookie stands. Demand skyrockets though so it doesn’t matter. Meanwhile, more and more people are flocking to your neighborhood for cookies, and the cost of ingredients continues to go down. All of the kids realize that it’s impossible to make $0 unless you’re totally incompetent or lazy. Your opportunity to make money selling your cookies only get limited by the energy and time you put in. The only thing planted in the way of you and money is yourself. Not surprisingly, the neighborhood develops a culture. Stories circulate about kids who don’t sell a lot of cookies and kids who do. So and so is a go-getter who can sell cookies 15 hours a day. This kid has no business sense and isn’t able to sell water in a drought; also, they probably eat a good portion of their goods. In turn, the kids start to view life with rose-colored glasses. They start to think that people get what they deserve. Or, people deserve what they get. If they yearn for something more, they should‘ve worked harder or been smarter. Time ticks by. Word of this wondrous neighborhood that now serves thousands of people every single day spreads like wildfire. Kids bus in from neighborhoods far and wide to try their luck making and selling cookies. They take on the worst jobs, like mixing all of the ingredients and taking out the trash because they know that there is endless opportunity waiting. They’ll eventually move up the ladder and start making their own money. This continues for years, and the people selling cookies realize something — there’s something special about their neighborhood. It stands to reason, if the kids are coming in from neighborhoods all over to sell a cookie or two here, there must be something special about the present opportunities. The kids here work three times as hard as anyone else, and they have much more money. One day, things start to shift. First, the kids hear about the kids in an adjacent town who figured out how to make two or three times the amount of cookies while cutting the price in half. It’s not for the kids to compete. Then, rumors swirl about the poor kids are actively stealing customers by undercutting prices. Secondly, the more successful cookie stands have gone and started buying up the less successful vendors. Instead of hundreds of small, independently-owned cookie stands, you now have 10 to 12 extremely rich kids controlling a large portion of the cookie market. In order to cut their costs while bringing in good investor returns, they pay workers less. Instead of leveling with the kids and telling them the truth, they tell them to work harder. After all, isn’t it true that people deserve what they manage to earn? This happens very slowly, especially in the beginning. Kids in the once thriving neighborhood are starting to make less money while working longer and harder than they ever did before. Unfortunately, beliefs fall behind reality. Anyone who loses a significant bit of weight still looks in the mirror and sees themselves as being overweight or obese. And culture? It’s no different. The cookie stand’s economic reality underwent a shift, and it doesn’t have a bright outlook anymore. But, the kids still believe that the underlying culture won’t change. This is where the whispers and the blame game starts. After all, it certainly isn’t the beliefs that are wrong. It simply has to be someone else entirely that is screwing everything up. The kids who took the time to get an education and spent thousands to earn degrees in cookie making and selling saw the kids without an education as inferior and weak-minded people who had no one to blame for their misfortune but themselves. Those hard working kids that started at the bottom and looked up at the more fortunate kids laid the blame at their feet for being unprepared for the setbacks and entitled. The neighborhood divided and started tearing itself apart. Factions were born, and battle lines drawn. These factions were extreme and political and contradictory, but they kept the underlying assumption. The assumption stayed while the world changed. Exceptionalism in America Since the start, Americans have had this idea that they’re exceptional. When you think about it, the United States ​has been​ a historical exception. Look at world history. Try to find another instance where a bunch of industrious and well-educated people essentially been handed a continent full of natural resources and surrounded by vast oceans that protect it from potential invasions. For 300-odd years, the United States was the cookie stand where hundreds and hundreds of people showed up magically, every day. Civilizations in Asia and Europe grew, then peaked and declined several times; the people in the United States never really dealt with this limiting factor. Progress and economic opportunities seemed to be nothing short of God given. The U.S. saw a meteoric rise as a world superpower because of four unique factors that it leveraged and benefited from: ● ● ● Unlimited Cheap Labor ​— Throughout its history, large swaths of the U.S. stayed sparsely populated. The Founding Fathers even believed they had to find ways to get immigrants from around the globe to get to a self-sustaining and robust economy. They built a democratic system that attracted talent. In turn, the cheap labor flowed in, and this continues today. Unlimited Land ​— The United States has always enjoyed a constant state of expansion. It was 100 years from the inception of the country to get stretched from one side to the other. The 20th century brought territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean. Fertile and cheap farmland was everywhere, and natural resources were limitless. Geographic Isolation​ — European and Asian civilizations got invaded and conquered, and invaded and conquered again, wiping whole cultures off the map. Each time this cycle happened, society got set back and had to rebuild while they reconsidered themselves. As a direct result of not experiencing this, ● the United States gained a sense of isolation. We’re nearly impossible to get to, with the exception of Pearl Harbor. Unlimited Innovation​ — The one area the United States got right is the setup that rewards innovation and ingenuity. If you manage to come up with the greatest, latest idea and it’s here more-so than anywhere else in the world, you’ll reap the rewards. Dozens of the greatest technological advances came from brilliant immigrants that were attracted to the United States. The seemingly endless resources, good fortune, huge chunks of land, and innovation gave birth to the American Dream. The American Dream is so simple​. It’s the undying belief that you and everyone around you can become successful beyond your wildest dreams. Ingenuity, work, and determination will get you here. Nothing else can stop you. Not bad luck or external forces. All you need is a large amount of grit and the willingness to bust your ass and work. If you do, you can buy that mansion on the hill with that shiny sports car. In a country that had continually increasing cookie customers, continually increasing labor pool, continually increasing land ownership, and continually increasing innovation, this may have been true. Until recent changes took hold. The American Dream is Going Stagnant Sometime in the future, people will start pointing to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as the catalyst that began the United States’ slow downhill slide from world dominance. But the startling truth is that the U.S. has had deteriorating forces working inside the country for years. When you look at the statistics, the average American is now worse off than there were just a generation removed. Some lay the blame on the younger generation claiming that they are self-centered, entitled, and too fixated on their phones to hold a steady job. There may be a grain of truth to these complaints, but the statistics suggest that the younger generation isn’t to blame. The reason behind this is that there are simply no jobs, especially no middle-class jobs. Statistics show that around​ ​25%​ of people who earned college degrees don’t have a job, and they’re not looking for one. Where, exactly, did we go wrong, and who’s to blame? When you think about it, no one is actually to blame. It’s simply that the beliefs and strategies that founded the United States have finally hit their limitations head-on. ● ● No More Cheap Labor ​— Cheap labor got outsourced. Why would you employ a bunch of local workers when you can build a factory across the world and get your things imported for a quarter of the cost? Detroit is a prime example. No More Land — ​ Around 1900, we ran out of land. After the World Wars, we came to a realization. Why spend your effort and time invading poor countries when you can simply loan the countries money ● and tell them to sell you things dirt cheap? This is essentially what the United States did during the Cold War. Third-world countries could either trade for the United States, or they could let companies come in and use their cheap labor and land. The alternative was to continue to stay impoverished. It worked. But, it’s dried up now, and some even became direct competition. Innovation is Leading to Fewer Jobs — ​ With artificial intelligence and technology’s rise, we don’t need nearly the amount of people to work. Like when you go to the grocery store and the checkout screams at you to swipe your purchases and put them in the bagging area. The world is shifting in that direction. Potentially, this could be millions out of a job. The manufacturing sector is taking a hit too. While the manufacturing output has doubled, it’s done so​ ​without 75% of the people​ it needed before. The cooking party is officially finished. Customers stopped coming in and buying. Any easy money that was once available for anyone to grab is long gone. It’s actually taking a scary turn in the opposite direction. Millions of intelligent, hardworking people are living paycheck to paycheck. They’re working dead-end jobs with little or no advancement opportunities, and they’re pissed off. Fewer people are able to get ahead today, and those that do get ahead don’t necessarily do so because of their education or hard work as much as their socioeconomic status, connections, and luck. The United States has the economic mobility that is lower than almost any other developed country, right in line with Chile and Slovenia. Canada and Australia have much larger economic mobility, as does Denmark, Finland, and Norway. So, if the American Dream is actively dying or dead, what’s the point? In the cookie selling scenario, the kids built their system of beliefs around the line of thinking that success equaled hard work equaled you deserved great things while failure equaled laziness, and you deserved shitty things. It works wonderfully where there is endless opportunity, continually expanding markets, and bottomless resources. But when it shifts, and those golden opportunities vanish, this belief system is now destructive and dangerous. The American Dream leads people to falsely believe that people always get exactly what they deserve. Good things happen to good people, while bad things happen to bad people. Bad things never or rarely happen to good people. Not only is this wrong, but believing in it can turn you into an unsympathetic dick. Everyone will eventually get screwed at some point or another in a huge way. It could be cancer, a death, getting mugged, or developing crippling anxiety, but we all get a lot of crap in our own way. At some level, we all understand this. But​ ​34% of Americans​ have zero savings. None. I know what you’re going to say. “Well, they shouldn’t have splurged their money on frivolous things.” While there may be some truth to that, the labor market is dropping. Wages are stagnant. The cookie customers have vanished, and that changes everything. It means people can now work just as hard or harder than they ever did and earn nothing. Did you know that​ ​45% of homeless people​ possess a job? The American Dream leads people to believe that their only worth is what they manage to achieve. If it’s true that everyone gets exactly what they deserve, we should treat people based on their outcomes. Success turns you into a saint or role model, while failure will turn you into an outcast. This line of thinking creates a superficial and shallow culture where so-called reality TV stars like the Kardashians get celebrated for no other reason other than they’re rich and famous while people like 9/11 first responders, war veterans, and school teachers that change lives outright ignored. The assumption that goes unspoken is that if these people were so great, they would have the means to care for themselves. When the gravy train is going, and new jobs are everywhere, it feels good to believe everyone gets what they deserve. If we’re doing good, it feels good to assume it’s because we deserve it. The truth is, people don’t always get what they deserve. Good people have bad things happen to them every day. Everyone makes mistakes and screws up. The belief that makes us feel like we’re on top of the world when times are good is the very one that makes us feel shame and demonize ourselves when things are bad. Now that the cookies aren’t selling and the opportunities are vanishing into thin air, and people are working harder just to stay in place, more people are starting to skim a tiny bit off the top of the next person to create the illusion that they’re successful, even if they’re not. Whether this means selling fake health supplements on the internet or creating websites that trick you into clicking, it just becomes more justifiable. It starts to get more necessary to support the belief that hard work always wins. When you’re young and in school, you believe everything is right in the world. You go to school, mind your parents, believe people at face value, and assume everything will work out for you. When you’re a teenager, you start to realize it’s bullshit. You recognize the world isn’t fair, and you’ve experienced trauma. Bad things happen to good people. You come to the sobering realization that, in many ways, you’re not as great as you thought you were. Some accept this with grace and maturity and cater themselves to it. Others don’t handle it well. The world won’t conform to their small-minded belief system, and they blame the world instead of the system itself. It doesn’t end well for anyone. Currently, the United States is young. We’re teenagers. We are slowly coming to realize that your idealism has limits, and there are no exceptions. We can’t fully control the future, and things aren’t just. The question is, how well will we adapt? Will we accept and modify our beliefs to match the 21st century, or will be become the angry and petulant scapegoat? The best thing about the United States? We get to decide.