I wonder why "Bathed in pervasive, inescapable advertising scientifically tuned to elicit feelings of inadequacy while being bombarded by fear-driven news/politics" didn't make this list?
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Steinbeck
That worked for decades because people truly believed it, but they're seeing behind the curtain now that it's not getting better -- it's getting worse. That future, that they assumed would reach them too, somehow, someway, is gone. The reaction, for some, is anger.
The reason "socialism" never took root in America is because of the way our Constitution separates political powers. Socialism is 100% incompatible with the 10th amendment because you cannot have socialism if wealth is not distributed in an apportioned manner. If States get the authority to legislate on all matters not explicitly defined in the Constitution, then there is no way for socialism to take hold in the US.
Also the expansion of the commerce clause "the switch in time that saved 9" also contributed when used in concert with the 16th amendment see
Even _if_ the courts upheld that point of view, you must keep in mind the incredibly contentious situation that surrounds the ratification and the enforcement of the 16th amendment and its various precedents set. Using such a weak and explosive justification for the implementation of socialism in the US will lead to the most intense political battle ever witnessed by citizens of our declining nation.
Also see how Bernie Sanders plans to use the income tax in his plan to raise max rates to 73% to accomplish wealth redistribution.
> because you cannot have socialism if wealth is not distributed in an apportioned manner
States are fully capable of re-distributing wealth.
Socialism never took root exactly because of what Steinbeck alludes to. Cultural incompatibility.
Socialism: means of production as property of the people.
I don't see a contradiction.
There is absolutely zero compatibility between Socialism and the US Constitution. Say what you will about either - they do not work together. Come back to this completely unrealistic idea in 100 years where there's a chance that social calamity has caused enough destruction that we finally let go of our founding documents. I think the likelihood of such an outcome is extremely unrealistic, though.
Yet you say that "there is absolutely zero compatibility between Socialism and the US Constitution", so perhaps you're thinking of one of the other amendments or some such? Perhaps something involving the protections on property.
Socialism doesn't require that the decisive nexus of power be the national government. Socialism as a model could still take root with the main nexus of public action being at the State level.
Isn't it a good thing that people see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires? How is that any different than seeing yourself as a temporarily embarrassed rock star, or astronaut, or breakthrough scientist, or famous artist, or successful entrepreneur? Is it such a bad thing that we're a nation of dreamers? Go ahead and tell a child that they shouldn't have big dreams because it's silly to believe they might come true, because that's essentially what Steinbeck is doing to the poor in this quote. See how smug you feel then.
Or should we do like the Europeans do and set low expectations rather than suffer the pain of not meeting higher ones? They say that the Danes are the happiest people in the world because they nave notoriously low expectations. I'll take naive optimism over pragmatic pessimism any day of the week.
According to my alarm clock app, they also get the most sleep of any nation on Earth.
No, it's not. Because that's what helps the current millionaires to single them out and make them act in a way that's contrary to their interest.
Not everyone will become a cosmonaut... Or a rock star. That's just a fact. The problem isn't the dreaming - the problem is acting against your own best interests, and spending your political power on chasing lottery tickets.
See: The 2008 election's obsession with Joe the Plumber, and his concern for taxes on people making over $250,000/year. He didn't make anywhere close to $250,000...
And never will.
The great thing about big dreams and lofty goals is that even if you don't reach them you often end up in a better situation. So sure, Joe the Plumber may not have made anywhere close to $250,000, but he made a hell of a lot more than someone not working at all, right? And yeah, little Sally may not become a cosmonaut, but she may land a gig working at SpaceX as an engineer and be on the team that eventually successfully executes a manned mission to Mars.
I'm sorry, but this is what's so great about America. When I hear people, especially foreigners, make fun of the American Dream I can't help but think it's just sour grapes.
You realize most foreigners come here for the American dream, right? I don't know about you but look around. Many Americans, including myself, don't believe in that made up non-sense.
It was a period in world history where everything lined up. In the 50s to 70s, there was enough population but not too much, great economic expansion, and opportunity to be found.
As a generation that grew up with 9/11, two wars, an economic crash unseen in decades, unemployment, and now college debt, don't tell me that I'm not optimistic because that's the only thing I'm running on these days. The dream is dead (never probably existed), but doesn't mean we need to flush all our hopes into the toilet either.
I should have been more specific, but I'm obviously not talking about foreigners who come to America for the American Dream. I'm talking about foreigners who criticize the American Dream despite having never came here to try to pursue it themselves.
And I happen to know a lot of foreigners who came here for the American Dream and actually attained it. They are its staunchest defenders, in fact.
But this is counting your chickens before they hatch. Make $250,000 first... Then advocate for tax cuts to that bracket.
Doing otherwise just makes the advocate a Useful Idiot. [1] You're expending your money and energy to make someone far better off then the majority of the electorate even better off - at theirs, and your expense. I would understand if this is done for selfish reasons - but when you're a pauper, Rockefeller doesn't need your charity.
So by that logic nobody living above the poverty line should ever advocate for policies that benefit those living below it.
Nobody is telling children "don't have dreams". They are saying "Hey you middle-aged Americans who have lost their retirement savings to Enron, WorldCom, 2008, etc, maybe you are getting the short of end of the stick here."
Whether you agree with it or not, the quote is saying that poor people aren't recognizing what is in their own interests and aren't sympathizing with poverty because they do not recognize their poverty as something real.
It is not making fun of the American Dream to point out that many people in the US are poor and will remain poor despite their hopes, dreams and efforts. Limitations on class mobility are real.
You've entirely missed the point of the Joe the Plumber exchange. He was, yes, concerned about taxes, but he was also concerned that the most powerful man in the country would fundamentally see him as an enemy. Look at Obama's response: "It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too..." [1]
At some point between then and now, the Democratic Party abandoned even the pretense of fair-handedness and made establishment of an other (the 1%, corporations, etc.) a core part of their party culture.
What concerns me is that this is happening on both sides of the aisle. Trump is a demagogue. Full stop. He probably doesn't have much more than 30% support of the Republican Party, but he's definitely affecting the tone and topics of the debate.
And we're not talking about vilifying individuals ("Nixon is a sonovabitch!"), we're talking about the rise of all sorts of bigotry against entire demographics on all sides of the political spectrum. Civility is eroding quickly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_the_Plumber#Encounter_with...
Would see which version of him? The barely-middle-class $40,000/year reality of himself, or the make-believe millionaire dream of himself? (Which, in my excuse, is the narrative that the media spun for the next two weeks.)
I have a hard time placing this, but that maybe because I fundamentally disagree with respect to progressive taxation being a declaration of hostilities against the wealthy.
The whole exercise of figuring out which class this guy is in is part of the point I was trying to make, really. Do I have to know his income to figure out how I feel about the guy?
He discussed the idea of buying the company once. Given the state of his finances, the likely situation is that either he was betting on winning the Powerball, or he was just dreaming about buying the company.
He is the poster child for this phenomena!
You're missing my point, which is pointing out the need to find an 'other'.
I'm not sure it's important if Joe the Plumber has identity issues. It is absolutely important if it's normal to treat others like they're crazy, evil, alien, stupid, or nefarious.
I think there's a implicit understanding with this quote that Americans not only have that "American dream", but we also don't expect to work for it. If it was merely a matter of Americans dreaming big and working towards it, then great! But it's not, imo. It's Americans dreaming big, and working their low end 9 to 5, expecting the dream to come true. It's more Dream than Reality. It's a daydream.
Part of dreaming big is understanding that you have to work towards it, or it won't happen. I don't feel like this is happening in America. (As an American)
No, letting your dreams die is not a "part of growing up", good lord, how depressing. Think about what life savings are for a minute. It's literally a bunch of money you save over many years that you only get to spend once you're too old to work anymore. If we all just settled for this very pragmatic dream we wouldn't start companies, create art, or take any significant risks.
> I think there's a implicit understanding with this quote that Americans not only have that "American dream", but we also don't expect to work for it.
That's funny, because that's exactly how I would characterize Socialism; as the ability for anybody to attain the "American Dream" without having to work for it. If the Government could simply hand out American Dreams at the Bureau of American Dreams then why would anyone ever aim any higher? Why would anyone take a risk on anything or try to exceed expectations?
> Part of dreaming big is understanding that you have to work towards it, or it won't happen. I don't feel like this is happening in America. (As an American)
I agree completely, and that's precisely what the American Dream is. If people are misconstruing it as some handout that you don't have to work for then that's a problem and they need a big wakeup call. But I think the American Dream is still alive and well here, otherwise we might not be here on Hacker News keeping up to date with the latest happenings in the startup world and we might not be thinking of or attempting to start our own startups. But we clearly are, and we're doing it at a higher rate than any other country on the planet.
The day the American Dream dies is the day we stop innovating as a country.
It's not impossible to get ahead in a socialist economy, it's just that the bar is raised for the lower classes.
I think you're hitting on a bigger problem with American culture, which is the "hard working" bias. Is the employee who comes in at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better person?
No, just a more easily exploited one.
I know the question was rhetorical. But I felt like answering it because you're absolutely right. Only in the US do you see people hold up themselves as better than others because they let their employer take advantage of them more.
I wonder if working longer than colleagues actually does improve your chance at promotion like so many claim? Or simply means they leave you in that role longer because you're cheaper/more productive?
Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead. If you get too far ahead, your gains are redistributed to those who you have left behind. By that definition, a pure Socialist system will ensure that nobody can ever get ahead of anybody else.
> I think you're hitting on a bigger problem with American culture, which is the "hard working" bias. Is the employee who comes in at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better person?
Ask this a different way: is the athlete who comes to the gym at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better athlete? The answer is, of course, yes. Sports are 100% meritocracies. You either perform, or you do not. The color of your skin, the disabilities you have, the socioeconomic status you grew up with; none of those things factor in. You can either perform better than the opposition, or you cannot. Full stop.
There are very few people that would dispute that, yet for everything outside of sports there's a subsection of the population that has convinced themselves that hard work somehow doesn't equal success. Maybe it's because it's harder for people to relate to entrepreneurial success than it is to relate to success in a sport because the metrics for sports are very well defined.
So if that's the case, to answer your question directly, we need to define the metric for success. In business, that's called profit. The hard working employee is a "better person" (your words) if their work results in greater profit for the company than the person coming in the bare minimum amount of time. If not, then yes, they're wasting their time just like the Athlete would be if their hard work didn't result in better performance in their sport.
As for "where you come from": Can you supply some evidence for that assertion? I'll give you argument (not evidence, I admit) that your claim is false. If it were true, then someone could create a high-performing team simply by selecting people who came from the places that other teams ignore. (Or are you claiming that, for example, there aren't many hockey players coming from Hawaii, even though one would expect that the population would include some with the genetics and talent to be excellent? Well, raw talent means little. Merit means talent and preparation and discipline and coaching and genetics and drive and mental toughness and probably a few things I've forgotten. If you're not going to chase that sport because it's not culturally a thing where you are, then you aren't going to be very good at that sport.)
And I would say that raw talent means a lot, the majority of atheles work hard, but the deciding factor is talent.
Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about.
>Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead.
Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.
May be in the gym. But on the game as a whole? A lot more. Gym work isn't all there is to sports. Just like just writing code isn't all there is to programming. You need to learn new things, read other peoples code, review code, learn a new algorithms etc etc.
Similarly sports people have their stuff to do when they are not actually practicing.
>>Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about.
People who do more work get ahead. This shouldn't even be surprising to you. Because this is common sense. Students who study hard score more marks than students who while away their time with friends.
We could keep handing out free marks to non performing students, subtracting equivalent from performing students to make non performers feel good. But that doesn't change anything about those students. Good students are going to do well in the coming year, with more advanced subjects. And the bad ones will do worse. When they are done with their education, merely marks being same will mean nothing at all.
Check back after a few years, what kind of jobs performing and non performing students are doing. It will be clear to you why that tiny equality exercise can never actually work.
>>Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.
Socialism gives incentives for people to stay in the back, because its assumed those getting ahead are supposed to make up for them.
I have worked for Kroger for a little over a year now. I make 7.55 an hour handling dangerous chemicals; before that, I bagged people's groceries for 7.45. As a bagger, I not only worked hard, I constantly told my supervisor that I was willing to work 40 hours, that I wanted to work a register. They didn't promote me until I gave two weeks notice; my parents convinced me to stay.
Now I get paid ten cents extra to clean floors and cover for absentee cashiers (and, mind you, I'm not actually trained; I had to learn it all myself). Oh, and one of the other janitors cannot figure out basic chemical safety. She is paid just as much as I am, and continues to work as a janitor.
It's not that hard work never pays off. It's that I have a concrete example of hard work not paying off that I see every day.
If min wage is increased to $15 she will be paid exactly as much as you.
My point is, the message that keeping this lady sends is "I don't care if you do your job right". And if that's the message you wanna send, whh should I do my job right? I end up split between doing my job right on principle and knowing it'll get me nowhere.
You have seen hard work paying off. For the level of work that you do. Of course there is no ideal world where a hair cut could be charged the same as surgery. Or someone who write database code, an OS or a search engine algorithm could be charged equally as some one troubleshooting a faulty CD drive in a call center.
What are your contributions? What value are you creating? A clean floor, a good grocery bag may not be that much value. But the guy inventing the floor cleaning chemical, and people selling that for an affordable price are definitely creating a lot of value.
However, basic chemical safety should be valuable--but at Kroger, it apparently isn't, and this drives me insane.
By some definition yes. Some body with that sort of work ethic, definitely would convey a message of discipline, commitment and a degree of attachment to one's job.
I would rate that person far higher than a person who always shows up late and isn't half serious about their job.
Work place isn't adult day care.
some customers would rather be told the wrong information, at the right time of day, than the right information 2 hours later.
i wouldn't have believed it until i saw it myself.
people in general are insane, half of "work" is just catering to insanity.
You hate some odd quote, yet I hate this constantly perpetuated myth regarding socialism.
Firstly, the most "driven" people aren't the wealthiest (though, it can occasionally be a side effect). The research scientist who forgoes money in some fortune 500 firm (or a more lucrative field of study) to instead focus on some obscure species of fauna? Probably way more driven than some sociopath focused on the bottom line.
Second, socialism isn't about handouts. It's about moving the ownership of production from the hands of one central figure to the hands of those actually managing the production. Usually, this would mean shifting ownership to the employee collective, not state ownership (a la communism).
It sounds like you might be making the mistake of equating "social democracy" (universal healthcare, social security, etc) with "socialism". Even if that's the case, I don't see the issue with helping my fellow man with basic health and well-being. It's pretty much the entire reason societies and nations were formed. We're advanced enough to offer it at this point.
Lastly, automation is happening. At remarkable speeds. As we automate more, there's less labor to do. Period. In 50, 100, maybe 150 years; there's not going to be an option. There's a very good chance there will only be work left for the innovators and dreamers (the "Star Trek" model, ascribed to by techno-utopianists), some day. Even if that's not the case, unemployment levels are going to grow, and it's not due to people being "lazy" or "non-driven".
They are means to buy the financial independence to free up your time, which you would have other wise spent on that job. Now you have time and resources to chase your dreams.
To be able to romance with a dream, you need to be pragmatic first.
Any dream of any magnitude requires ingredients most of which people neither have the drive to work for, nor the resources and most give up not long after they start when the realize the magnitude of the struggle the lies ahead in getting to it.
Which is totally fine, because the American Dream has been dead for a long time.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/7-facts-show-american-dream-...
>>Is it such a bad thing that we're a nation of dreamers?
Insofar as those dreams actually help you achieve your goals, no. The problem with the American Dream is the narrative: that anything is achievable if you work hard for it. This could not be further from the truth, and continuing to believe it is actively harmful.
That is a completely ridiculous statement with absolutely no basis in reality.
In Freaknomics they have a chapter titled "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?"[1] - the issue isn't that people are aspirational, it's that they treat success as a gladiatorial contest where there's only one winner and everyone else has to die for you to win. As opposed to "socialism" where everyone can succeed somewhat.
[1]http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/...
What kind of person worries about raising taxes on the rich that cannot pay back taxes and is underemployed? A temporarily embarrassed millionaire. I've lost track of how many people I've met who can barely make ends meet or are deeply in debt and yet hold onto this philosophy.
Isn't it a good thing that people have hope? Yes. But is it a good thing to live in a fantasy world and make decisions based on that fantasy while failing to live up to your obligations in your every day life? No, I think it is a terrible thing. A significant portion of Americans seem to live in a state of delusion. It's stupid for people who are un or under-employed and have no capital to vote for and advocate for those making millions because they themselves think they will get there eventually. This seems to happen quite a bit in America and nowhere else.
A Straw Man
The majority of our income taxes are paid by very high income people. They may also feel that if we tax them too punitively they'll leave or cheat or have less money to start/maintain businesses, etc.
The top marginal tax rate is about %40 right? It used to be 90% in 1960 and 70% in 1980 although these kicked in at much higher amount of wealth than in the modern day. What do people think is 'fair' considering most do not even understand progressive taxes. 100 years ago there was no income tax.
I personally think we spend too much and the main reason I support higher taxes on the rich (especially cap gains over a certain amount) is so it is not as easy to subvert the political system in their favor. I don't know what number is 'fair' though.
Its not a criticism of the American Dream.
> Isn't it a good thing that people see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires?
No; it might be good if people saw themselves as aspiring millionaires, and acted sensible to achieve that aspiration.
The whole thrust of the "temporarily embarrassed" quote is that the subjects see their condition as an inherently temporary condition that will resolve itself, and therefore act as if there interest were the interest of what their fantasized "normal" condition would be once that "temporary embarrassment" resolved itself.
This, however, actively inhibits the realization of that condition -- which is not a "normal" condition to which things will resolve on their own.
That's what the quote is about.
No, because it implies that the only way to better your situation is not just to do well, but to get on top, and make a killing. That is, literally: to have access to wealth and security that is (greatly) disproportionate to what most other have.
Which (by definition) is unobtainable, for the vast majority. And which contributes to what we might call the "hollowing out of the middle." All structural factors (which others have cited as exacerbating factors to income equality in recent decades) aside -- the bottom line is that the middle class life not has not only come under pressure -- it just isn't valued as a goal, or a position to have in society.
How is that any different than seeing yourself as a temporarily embarrassed rock star, or astronaut, or breakthrough scientist, or famous artist, or successful entrepreneur?
Nothing wrong with wanting to achieve something great. If what interests you is the achievement in itself.
But if the only way out of poverty (or middle class stagnation) is to become a "rock star" of some form or another -- that suggests that something is very, very wrong with the incentive and reward structure in a society -- like ours -- that implicitly holds that value structure.
'temporarily embarrassed ___' != 'dream of being ___'
Why would it be embarrassing to dream of being an astronaut? its only embarrassing if you feel you are ENTITLED to being an astronaut.
So yeah, i mean if you feel like entitlement is a positive and cornerstone piece of our society then you should continue disagreeing with the quote...
But regardless, I can't understand how anyone would understand that quote to meant that Americans feel like they are entitled to be Millionaires. Someone being embarrassed about not being something doesn't directly imply that they feel entitled to be that thing. More likely it means that they are working toward something they feel they ought to be able to achieve. Meaning they've always dreamt of themselves being millionaires but have yet to achieve it.
There was a time when the labor movement was strong, Eugene V. Debs was a serious presidential candidate (even being pardoned by the then-POTUS Warren G. Harding over his sedition charge) and radical syndicalists like the IWW were influential.
These proclivities were largely staved off through sleights of hand like Wilson's New Freedom and later the New Deal, which appeared to achieve socialistic ends, but largely through statist and corporatist means that didn't pose much of a threat to the establishment. An interesting example is that the National Recovery Administration part of the First New Deal was originally proposed by the then-president of General Electric, Gerard Swope.
Steinbeck and people of his era had the gentle and naif conceit that something can be done about this. We DID many of those things, and this is the result.
The behavior of our Corporate Overlords is one millionth of the behavior of each of us.
I suspect we do this to ourselves.
Also the news, especially local channels, is so over the top. They had a report on a car that drove off a bridge (it didn't hit any pedestrians), and they then had a "passer by" saying she was now too scared to walk outside.
I had the experience of ... "commuting" between Montreal and Texas in the early '00s ( home was in Texas ) and at that time, TV was enough different that I finally saw it. I knew it was there, but coming home, the television was beyond annoying.
And, of course, I set about finding television that wasn't that way. This means CSPAN, a handful of series in the mold of "The Sopranos" and a few documentaries now and again. Which is nice. But I have a feeling that if everybody does that, it'll collapse.
The "how" is like what Scott Adams talks about with Trump's use of Master Persuader technology. Throw in "The Hidden Persuaders" and the collected work of Marhsall Macluhan too.
Oh, and with vanishingly few exceptions, the popular Internet media are the same or in cases, worse. This site to the exception of course.
The culture is to make people feel constantly needy, so that solutions can be easily sold... there's also very few mental health resources in the US, so the neediness easily festers into a pathology.