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That guy is the poster child for the Materialistic Self Entitled Baby Boomer Me Generation.

Materialism and greed are literally everything that is wrong with the world.

Spoilied Douchebags like he and his generation are a legacy hangover from post-WW2 America, a time of middle class economic excess greater than any the HUMAN RACE has ever seen.

Americans aren't exceptional in any way.

We just got lucky by being the only 1st world country not in the middle of World War 2 so we reaped ton's of resources and opportunities from that and we have been coasting on it ever since and attributing it to our 'exceptionalism'. Americans love to believe that the individual is greater than his situation. Such bullshit.

You want hard workers look at China. I can't wait until Communist ass China is the next world power and assholes like the guy in the commercial don't understand why 'Mericans aren't exceptional any more.

I'm so grateful that the new American generation's self awareness, global consciousness, hacker ethic, lack of racism, community values, and so many more positive qualities are replacing douchebags like this.

I like how you edited "Self Entitled" into the generational title, just to really drive home the disgust. ;)

I partially disagree, though. I do think Americans are exceptional, even if I haven't settled on exactly how, and I definitely don't think of it as a wholly positive trait. But this juxtaposition from your post is interesting:

Americans aren't exceptional in any way.

Americans love to believe that the individual is greater than his situation.

I don't believe in American exceptionalism. I do however, believe in exceptional Americans.

Honestly, you can look at a poor kid born to a poor family who works his ass off every day.

Then look at a wealthy kid born to a wealty family who works his ass off every day.

Even if they make the same on all of their standardized tests, make the same grades, and go to the same college, and get the same degree.....

Who's going to be more successful with the same amount of hard work?

And sure there's outliers but it's hard to argue that one's situation matters much more than the individual and this bizarre American sense of individual exceptional-ism is really naive.

I think stems from early Puritanical settlers who believed in pre-determinism and God rewarding people Materialistically the better person you are.

I'm pretty successful but I credit my family, being born in a 1st world country. My hard work was the tiniest of all parts of it. Had I been born in Romania or Zimbabwe I would not be where I am no matter how hard I worked. Conversely, I probably could have been way more successful if I had been born in a truly wealthy family.

..this bizarre American sense of individual exceptional-ism is really naive.

That's what I'm getting at, maybe it's exactly that belief that sets us apart, and positing a distinctly American root seems to support the exceptionalist case.

It's like you're almost saying it's naive for the poor kid to believe he can be successful. If that belief is distinctly an American thing then I'm all in on exceptionalism.

Hope springs eternal and there's always the gamble that one will be one of the minority outliers but statistically peoples paths in life are pretty predictable based on their background, family, and birth region.

>Even if they make the same on all of their standardized tests, make the same grades, and go to the same college, and get the same degree.....

>Who's going to be more successful with the same amount of hard work?

Success is tied more to education than anything. Good education just also happens to be tied to wealth as well. So by framing it with them getting the same education, you have actually eliminated most of the advantage the wealthy kid had. Unless you are just defining success as 'being rich', in which case the wealthy kid doesn't even have to be educated.

In the United States, success is much more tied to how successful your parents are than anything else. "Social mobility is dying" isn't just said for one's health.

You're underestimating the power of connections. I would never say that hard work won't make you successful in the US, but coming from a wealthy family creates a lot of opportunities earlier on in life that poor kids will have to work hard to see. Coming from a wealthy, or even upper middle class, family means maybe your summer senior year of high school is spent interning with your uncle's firm instead of working for extra spending money. It means you can ask your parents for career advice (poor parents don't have career advice because they don't have careers). It means you have an idea, from growing up with it, what success in a career path in a developed country looks like. All of these things are tremendously valuable.

YES! Exactly this.

Passing down of beliefs and behaviors is almost more valuable than passing down money.

You're embedding positive or negative behaviors into someone's personality.

1>Passing down the belief that education is valuable

2>Passing down the belief that investing in the future is more valuable than short term spending.

etc.

Also having resources in general is a massive benefit. 1>having security allows wealthy kids to take more risks/reap more rewards.

2>More free time to learn and advance themselves

3>ability to take low paying jobs purely to make connections/build job skills

4>Status is a language that every one understands at a primitive level and so just getting more respect in general which means better promotions, better mates, etc.

I think Americans are exceptional, which doesn't need to mean "the best at everything."

1) Americans are, historically, exceptionally willing to let immigrants integrate. My family is from Bangladesh, my wife's from Oregon, both going back many generations. She could never integrate into Bengali society the way I have been allowed to integrate into American society. She could live there her whole life, and she'd always be "bideshi" (foreigner).

2) Americans are exceptionally optimistic. At its best, Silicon Valley is uniquely American: too naive to know that you can't do that. This is a double-edged sword, of course. Most of the time, "you can't/shouldn't do that" is true.

3) Americans have an exceptional commitment to the rule of law. We're not at a high point in our history in this regard, but we're still a society where the great struggles of our day play out in front of courts, not in riots and mobs.

Now, we're not as exceptional as we used to be. But in large part because Europe spent the last couple of decades becoming more like us. They instituted market reforms, opened up to immigration, rooted out corruption. It's easy to say that America isn't exceptional if you pretend European history didn't happen prior to 1995.

You're right. It's really easy to focus on the negative aspects of America. There's a lot good here.

I just hate the worship of the vague abstract ideals that make us feel good over the complexity and hard truths of reality.

> Now, we're not as exceptional as we used to be. But in large part because Europe spent the last couple of decades becoming more like us.

Or perhaps things were set up really good for the US after WWII? Then eventually a lot of Europe started to catch up to that initial advantage.

In the case of the old Soviet Block, given their past, basically anything that they could have done w.r.t. their markets and governments would have made them more like the US, if they aspired to some kind of democracy and some kind of free market. So I'm not so sure if 'More like the US' is very descriptive.

You can find hard workers everywhere including but not exclusively in America. I suggest you should want to wait before a Communist country becomes the next world power unless you would prefer to be told what to do. Clearly you are angry, maybe for a good reason, but I think your anger is misdirected at Americans.

The ad also inspired several parodies, including this one from Ford. The Cadillac ad is clearly trying to sell to an affluent, white, conservative audience which still believes their hard work and no vacation pays off. In the ad, they show their success with the car they drive. It's a study in market segmentation.

Ford's parody spins it around by focusing on social consciousness, eco-friendliness, and diversity, a better message for their electric vehicle audience. You could look at the ad subject's "dirt from food" startup as a literal circle of life, an homage to organic farming and green living.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAN61QK0aUI

Exactly. It's not so depressing when you realize that Cadillac is selling to generally older people who have already made these decisions. It's a 60 y.o. thinking "I did work hard, and I deserve a Cadillac", not a 25 y.o. thinking "I'm going to bust ass working for the Man so I can drive a Cadillac".

Interestingly, the car is a hybrid, which is barely mentioned in the ad.

> Interestingly, the car is a hybrid, which is barely mentioned in the ad.

Its on the Volt platform. Not quite sure why GM is pushing it to that market segment if they're not touting any of the serial hybrid features.

ELR: Electric Luxury Ride

> Interestingly, the car is a hybrid, which is barely mentioned in the ad.

Technically speaking, both the Ford C-Max Energi and the Cadillac ELR in these ads are extended range electrics. They have smaller batteries than battery electric vehicles, but the gas engine exists only as a generator of electricity.

As I've always said, humans care about narratives. Most people and market segments value the story a car says about its owner over the details of the technology. That's why they don't mention it explicitly.

Right, it's just that the technology is forward-looking while the sales pitch is so regressive. I suspect the target market would actually like it less if they knew more about the technology.

"no vacation"

In the Cadillac ad, the heavily painted individual said two weeks instead of the whole month. Just pointing that out.

"... audience which still believes their hard work and no vacation pays off."

People for whom that premise is untrue will still have reason to believe that it is true. Because the alternative--that they spent a bunch of their lives doing things that weren't really that rewarding--would result in too much cognitive dissonance.

Yes, that is a serious barrier to fixing the problem, though it does seem to affect younger US professionals as well.

From the outside, looking at the US labor market and the way those young professionals often describe their situation in on-line forums, it feels like everyone has Stockholm syndrome. They actually believe that the US is successful because of the appalling working conditions and not in spite of them, and even then they frequently overestimate how successful US business actually is by objective measures.

But no-one wants to speak up from the rank and file, because the cannon fodder who lead the charge rarely survive to enjoy the rewards for their bravery. And given the transparent corruption that seems pervasive in high level politics in the US today, it doesn't seem like the federal government will be doing much to help any time soon. Again, looking from the outside, it seems that a lot of the most promising developments in US politics begin as state-level movements, so perhaps we'll see some leadership from the more progressive states driving incremental improvements for employee conditions over time.

> The Cadillac ad is clearly trying to sell to an affluent, white, conservative audience which still believes their hard work and no vacation pays off.

For that segment of the population, it's true. Educated, rich, old men work more hours than everyone else: http://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/w11895.html

As a European (NL, you know, the country with 5 weeks vacation and a functioning healthcare system) I find the Cadillac ad hilarious. Sure, dude, you go work your butt off and take a loan on your future health. You'll have to deal with all kinds of stress/burnout related health conditions, but at least you got that Cadillac and an underwater home as an inheritance for your kids...

I love the US, and I've met a lot of crazy, driven, motivated and genuinly pleasant Americans. But work/life balance-wise, you're so far behind...

So I just watched it.

> Work hard all your life and when you're cynical, white-haired, old, fat and balding, you'll have a gaudy apartment and the ponciest car to ever ponce out of the poncing factory. And a barf-grey suit, a colour I didn't know existed until now.

Also, you guys would totally be going to the moon every weekend if any of all those money you're making year-round went to NASA and education.

I thought that ad was more "look at me, I'm a crazy hard working American AND I drive electric. They're not mutually exclusive!"

As soon as I read the title of this article I immediately thought of the Cadillac ad.

For some reason, when it was airing, it resonated with me. Perhaps, I'm over worked and realize that these material things aren't really as important as one's health. Then again, I love owning a car and a home.

Its such a conflicting thought.

> "'cause we're the only ones going back up there [the moon]"

If only that were true. In many ways, we're further away from being able to reach the moon (or deeper parts of space) than we were 20-30 years ago[0]

[0]http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/

> That Cadillac ad is awesome. I'd never seen it before.

Watching that commercial filled me with rage and made me want to punch that rich asshole in the face.