An insightful piece worth reading – Two American Dreams by
Ben Fountain
Fountain notes:
“Upward mobility is
indispensable to the American Dream, the notion that people can rise from
working to middle class, and middle to upper and even higher on the model of a
(fictional) Horatio Alger or an (actual) Andrew Carnegie. Upward mobility
across classes peaked in the US in the late 19th century. Most of the gains of
the 20th century were achieved en masse; it wasn’t so much a phenomenon of
great numbers of people rising from one class to the next as it was standards
of living rising sharply for all classes. You didn’t have to be exceptional to
rise. Opportunity was sufficiently broad that hard work and steadiness would
do, along with tacit buy-in to the social contract, allegiance to the system
proceeding on the assumption that the system was basically fair.
The biggest gains
occurred in the post-second world war era of the GI Bill, affordable higher
education, strong labor unions, and a progressive tax code. Between the late
1940s and early 1970s, median household income in the US doubled. Income
inequality reached historic lows. The average CEO salary was approximately 30
times that of the lowest-paid employee, compared with today’s gold-plated multiple
of 370. The top tax bracket ranged in the neighborhood of 70% to 90%. Granted,
there were far fewer billionaires in those days. Somehow the nation survived.”
Meanwhile,
American media has lost all credibility during this election
cycle:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-time-for-tv-news-to-stop-playing-the-stooge-for-donald-trump/2016/09/16/bc66812e-7c28-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-time-for-tv-news-to-stop-playing-the-stooge-for-donald-trump/2016/09/16/bc66812e-7c28-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html