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Comment by dandelany | Hacker News Reader

This. I always get annoyed when entrepreneurs eg. on Shark Tank say things like “I quit my job, took out two mortgages on my home, maxed out my credit cards and spent my kids’ college fund on the business. And look at us now, we’re making millions of dollars a year! Don’t give up when failure looks inevitable!”

Probably most of the people who follow this advice to the letter end up financially ruined, they just don’t get a public platform to talk about it…

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Quite. I think Shark Tank is what we call Dragon's Den in the UK (bunch of civilians pitch to zillionares for cash and mentoring in return for a stake in the business - all on TV).

You see some absolute horrors that inevitably will lead to bankruptcy. However you also see some clever folk getting a well deserved leg up.

But I think we agree that for everyone that seems to effortlessly do the American Dream thing, there are 1000s or 100,000s that don't. Then there's the likes of me that have run a rather boring small business for 22 years turning over around £1.2M pa but not exactly setting the world on fire! I can sleep at night and have nearly no debt, so that's nice.

Maybe it's just me getting older, but running a successful small business that pays the bills and supports my family into retirement is what I would consider the paradigm of success for my life. Congrats on your business.

I just want to point out that you’re living the American Dream. I think you may misunderstand the term as it’s generally used.

The phrase isn’t about becoming a billionaire. It’s rooted in the American frontier period, inspired by Protestant values, and is much more aligned with living a happy upper-middle-class life: owning land, a home, enough resources to have a family, and having meaningful or productive work.

I wouldn't even say upper-middle-class. Descended from Irish orphans, jewish refugees, Pennsylvania Dutch coal miners (so the classic Amish Jewish Redhead, without red hair). A relatively safe work environment, owning a home, feeding their family, not having your government try to exterminate you. That was their American dream. You know, the little things.

The American dream was historically a question of upward social mobility both for you from your parents and your children from you. It’s very much a question of economic, social, and political gain. It stood in stark contrast to countries people immigrated from with extremely limited mobility across generations.

In that context it’s clear America is failing due to shrinking social mobility.

The noteworthy part is that the American dream for these people meant mobility from serfdom and abject poverty to a lifestyle that would now be considered abysmal.

For an Irish immigrant it wasn't about becoming a billionaire, it was about making sure your children have enough food to survive a winter.

Social mobility from nothing to basic necessities is still quite high in the US. Maybe not home ownership, but there are a lot of clear paths to be able to feed a family.

That’s only a small part of the story, middle income and even wealthy people also immigrated to America seeking the American dream of upwards social mobility. Even a surprising number of aristocrats immigrated to America seeking their fortune.

I agree they are not the only story, but I think a majority of people would fall under that umbrella. Middle class in 1800s looked a lot different than today.

Fair point, though serfdom largely ended much sooner than mass immigration to America and abject poverty by the standards of the time wasn’t that common.

EX: “In England, the end of serfdom began with the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. It had largely died out in England by 1500 as a personal status and was fully ended when Elizabeth I freed the last remaining serfs in 1574.[6] Land held by serf tenure (unless enfranchised) continued to be held by what was thenceforth known as a copyhold tenancy, which was not completely abolished until 1925 (although it was whittled away during the 19th and early 20th centuries). There were Scottish born serfs until the Colliers and Salters (Scotland) Act 1775 prevented the creation of the status, and 1799, when coal miners who had already been kept in serfdom prior to the 1775 Act gained emancipation.[7] However, most Scottish serfs had already been freed.“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_serfdom#Great_Brita...

See also the discussion of villein status in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_v_Stewart

Defending the decline in living conditions by comparing it to standards from a developing economy is a bad justification. The problem isn't that the US isn't generating wealth, its that its poorly distributed.

The US is full of poor people but the country has never been poor. It's an amazingly wealthy place.

I don't think we are having the same conversation.

Are you seriously claiming living conditions have declined since the mid 1800s?

> and is much more aligned with living a happy upper-middle-class life

As and ethos I think more accurately it has never been about a particular description of "good life", but more about the freedom and opportunity to try and make a better one for you and your family, however you define that.

> and having meaningful or productive work.

Hah, if only.

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