Author Topic: Paradise lost: 60% of US citizens believe American dream is unachievable  (Read 4386 times)

LeonhartGR

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Huge topic but I just needed to point out the obvious of what defines the modern era.


KnifeTheSky77

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From Russia today... let's talk about what it's like trying to get the American dream in Russia-10 percent possibility? The American dream means a white picket fence and a dog right?

Kaldarasha

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I guess in Russia is the average higher of people who have a dog and a white fence, but many of them maybe don't know what a tablet PC is.
However Media never lies, they only give you not the full truth...

Covarr

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I'll be honest, the classic "American dream" is unattainable for most US citizens... and it's their own fault. Hardly anyone here believes in a work ethic anymore, instead spending all their time comparing themselves to others instead of actually accomplishing anything. Then they spend their money recklessly, buying fancy cars on credit they can't afford to repay on a $30K income, spending hundreds a month on entertainment and investing nothing whatsoever into their financial future.

It's easy to blame the wealthiest 1%, but the vast majority of Americans could be far better off than they are if they would take some damn responsibility.

KnifeTheSky77

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Couldn't have said it better covarr, a nice car and a big house are fishing lures banks use to sell stupid people debt. It happens so often it's kind of sad. We've gotten so used to things being easy to attain that we've become lazy and spoiled. The opportunity for the American dream is totally within reach though, for those who go after it.

Tenko Kuugen

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Having a House is pointless
It only increases the space you have so
1) you need to clean more
2) you end up buying more shit to fill that space
3) you get the crazy idea of living with other people who then 1) and 2)

yarLson

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What is the premise of the American Dream anyway?  I don't remember anything like that in the Constitution.  It was probably drummed up by some advertising agency in the early 20th century and has nothing to do with the actual core foundation on which the country was founded.  Not that any of that makes a difference now.  There is virtually no understanding left of why this American experiment was initiated. 

What they don't tell you in history class is that the prime reason for the revolution in the first place was due to corruption of the financial institutions of Britain.  Many quotes from the founders state as much at least.  However bankers from Great Britain were back in business in America a mere 2 decades after we supposedly won the Revolutionary War.  And the result of that is that now we have the Federal Reserve and the IRS; two of the most unconstitutional institutions ever devised.

Anyone who believes you can run any type of functional society on a currency that is valueless except in the conceptual mind has a serious lacking in the discipline of mathematics.  Which is probably why it is a societal norm to loath the practice of it.  I'll paraphrase what FDR once said.  Everything that happens in the political arena is by design.  Don't think for any instant that chance or incompetence has anything to do with it.

Although since most Americans find it hard nowadays to even speak with correct grammar I suppose it is not to difficult for them to imagine that the political leaders are just as careless and fumbling as they are, but this is not the case.  However don't get me wrong.  I still agree with Covarr.  If more people had any sort of work ethic and sense of self control this would have never happened in the first place.  But alas people fall into helplessness and greed, thinking that they need a handout rather than a hand up.  It is a true humanitarian crisis that calls for compassion and re-education.  Unfortunately, those who are educated in this country tend to have very little in the way of compassion for the uninitiated.  When the end goal is to maximize profits above all else, there is very little room for it after all.

In my eyes the American Dream would be something along the lines of liberation from oppressive laws and taxation as well as enlightenment from ignorance and greed and the spreading of that ideal to the rest of the world.  In that respect the American Dream ended almost as soon as it began.  George Carlin said it best.  You'd really have to be asleep to believe it at this point.

Shard

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Yarlson, your avatar is amazing.

Kaldarasha

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What Covarr said would be true if we hadn't a school system which teach us to be that way.
I mean I can condition any dog to do what I want from him in a few hours, if it is in his limits of course. Humans aren't different. There was an reporter from Austria who has researched how the school systems works and he came to the result that around 80% of the children are high intelligent and only 3% after school. I wouldn't blame entirely the school system for it (the psychological profile changes with the age) but it has an involvement on it. Schools have generally a bad budget and teachers are underpaid for the work they do.
The rule is simple you got what you are pay for.
Let's be honest you won't use 90% of what you have learned in school, but that's not important because you have learned that there is a person with authority and everything what this person is true. The other thing you will learn is that a mark B (2) is easier to reach as a mark A (1) and if you are clever and reach very easily a good mark then you will be isolate by the group because it isn't 'cool' to be a nerd. Look at TV how cool nerds are...
We are trained to be mid-ranged, with only mid-ranged dreams we will hopefully reach. But those with money can exit this concept: better schools with better and well paid teachers and being good is a must not an abnormality. Of course there are scholarships for the mid-class citizens, but not enough for all highly talented.
Sadly as it is the money the parents have is very important for the future of the children, there is no equality for everyone. So to say, "it's your own fault that you live an ordinary life." isn't fair. How should they feel responsible if they doesn't have learned it? For them it's to late to change their mind all what we can do is to have hope in our children, but not with this school system which only serves the wealthiest 1%.

"Es ist kein Zeichen von Gesundheit, an eine von Grund auf kranke Gesellschaft gut angepasst zu sein." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

yarLson

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Well I agree with you as well.  I was gonna bring the school into it but I didn't want to write a novel.  As I said the system is set up swimmingly to serve certain people.  Who those people really are we may never fully know.  But it ain't me and my family.  I dropped out of public school and now am pursuing a career that most people would call ludicrous but then again I don't really care.

Education should be abundant and free as well has good organic nourishing foods.  That's why I mentioned compassion.  Our whole system is set up to teach us that everything is scarce and can't be made otherwise from early on.  However the majority of human history has been lived in what's called a gifting economy where what's needed is freely given without expectation or debt.  In fact its the only economic system that has proven to be sustainable for any period of time.

And yet we insanely believe that we can overcome natural law.  The reality is this life was a gift that was freely given to us.  And so we should freely give unto others.  But separation and ridicule in the school systems separates us and puts us into our societal places.  Causing callous hearts and brutal minds when what's truly need is compassion and understanding on a mass scale.

I just don't want to understate the importance of personal responsibility either though.  Which is why I still agree with Covarr.  No matter how much you try to convince someone to be greedy and small minded.  Someone who is truly determined can overcome any unfortunate upbringing and achieve whatever they wish.  I think that has been proven enough times throughout history as well as subjectively in our own every day experience.  If we could take advantage of this on a mass scale amazing things could happen.  Technologies and ideas that have been suppressed could be unleashed in an instant.

Its really stupid honestly.  There are over 174 trillion dollars that have vanished from the US treasury since the beginning of the FED.  There is even a youtube video (will post if I find again) of a senator questioning the head of the Federal Reserve in session about this fact and they can't seem to determine the answer.  I remember the sentiment being something along the lines of "I don't know".  While the senator is understandably perplexed at this answer in saying, "Your the head of the FED so if you don't know, who does?"  And you never saw that on the news did you?

That's over 10 times the national debt over the last 100 years that is completely unaccounted for and your gonna tell me that nothing better than fossil fuels has come along since then.  I mean the only way you could believe this is to be entirely and completely uninformed and impressed with authority.  Which is where school comes in.

And college really gets you.  They make you pay for that shit.  You think your gonna question something that you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire.  In most cases I think not.  We believe our selves to be a scientific society and yet we do not observe and conclude based on those observations.  We digest and regurgitate what we are told to.  Nothing more is needed for menial success in this pathetic excuse for a human society.

Not that I am loathsome of it.  I am not a teenager anymore, I believe in focusing on solutions rather than obsessing over the problem.  But it is disgusting.  I won't blind my eyes to it for the sake of comfort.  It is just bothersome that a vast majority don't know how to find reliable information and worse don't know how to scrutinize that information and abandon it if its found to be out of context with reality.

And even more so, people won't actually go beyond there desk into the world to find their answers anymore.  Everything is in a book or a classroom or a computer.  I believe most of what I do because I have used logic to deduce that the world could be no other way through personal experience.  Seriously deductive reasoning should be taught on the first day of school.  The fact that it is not is telling as it is.  Sure information from different sources helps to find specific problems but the real understanding of the issue comes from within.  Which is sometimes why I think spirituality (not religion) has been mangled into the sorry messy state its in, so people feel lost and follow herds rather than their own damn selves.
« Last Edit: 2014-09-01 02:51:20 by yarLson »