[Marxism] Steiglitz on the Death of the American Dream

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Death of the American Dream

By: Julio MartÃnez Molina

Email: corresp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
2007-11-02 | 10:44:59 EST
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/columnists/2007-11-02/death-of-the-american-dream-/


The American dream is dead, said famed Nobel Prize laureate in
Economics Joseph Stiglitz a few days ago. The passing of that dream
is seen not only by him, but also by many Americans.

What some forward-thinking social scientists and certain visionaries
once predicted âwhich is not as a prophecy to be fulfilled over the
course of centuries, such as the prophecies of Nostradamusâ but in
the short-term, in the times in which we are now living.

If the idea is still not palpable to millions of those Americans who
still live atop the bubble of hedonism and consumerism, it will
become more so to the degree that this illusion is inevitably
punctured by the heat generated by domestic policies. This also
points to the contradiction of a rÃgime that flaunts the well-being
of its population and to high consumption as its principal badge of
honor.

A system based on voracity and destruction will have no safe harbour,
not even for its own people, to continually employ methods that harm
people. Not only the war, with its blood-soaked dead and wounded
soldiers; or the price of food, which has already become a concern
for very low-income peopleâespecially in this era of the ethanolâ and
other well-known actions are de-legitimizing and tossing the
âAmerican dreamâ overboard.

In a conference last week, Stiglitz said that Americans live worse
than they did 30 years ago. There is no doubt about this, as revealed
by publications such as the Chicago Tribune that draw on extensive
reports showing there are 36.5 million poor people in the United
States â and 47 million currently without medical insurance.

The US Office of the Census announced in September that suffering is
growing among citizens due to this lack of medical insurance, with
another 2.2 million people âamong them 700,000 childrenâ added to the
list of those lacking this basic service.

The same report indicates that, in 2006, more people worked for more
hours to achieve financial balance, and that there was a growth in
the number of families with all their members working full time in
various jobs.

âIt is a moral insult that in the richest nation in the world, one in
every ten families lives in poverty and that almost 50 million
Americans donât have medical insurance,â said Democratic Senator
Barack Obama recently.

Despite everything, a few days later Bush vetoed a bill that looked
to expand medical insurance to millions of children from low-income
families; it had called for a $35 billion increase in funding for the
State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Nor did the US president support the Energy Assistance Program for
Low-Income People, aimed at helping those families to cover their
heating expenses, since the current funding level of that program
allows aid to only 16 percent of those households that are eligible.

Nonetheless, the emperor requested a staggering figure of close to
$200 billion for the war.

Chicago Tribune provided a startling fact: âIn 1987, the fifth
wealthiest portion of Americans collected 46.2 percent of all income;
that figure increased to 50.5 percent in 2006. On the other hand,
while the fifth of the population with the lowest income earned only
3.8 percent of all income in 1987, last year this quintile earned
only 3.4 percent.â

The Nobel Prize winning economist did not exaggerate in what he said
about the American dream, an aspiration realized by a very few and
one that has never been enjoyed by the many sleepless, who continue
to search for it.


====================================
Walter Lippmann
Havana, Cuba
"Un paraÃso bajo el bloqueo"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
====================================

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