The tale of the traditional American Dream is dead. Now depending on who you are, it may have never existed, or you may have had a knock off version of it. The idea of the individual family unit having a standard path to a comfortable life is quickly fading away. Now this is not due to some conspiracy for total control but normal changes that happen as a society develops.
It’s time that we accept the new realities that are emerging from the not so subtle changes happing in American society. If we are to avoid total decline in America, we must graduate from the rat race everyone is sick of running and begin to build the new path to the American Dream.
A key indicator the American dream is dead is the current state of our educational system. If you're one of the lucky ones, you're time spent in college paid off and you are now reaping the fruits of your labor. For many people this is not the case. Most people came out the other side with loads of student debt, adding a huge anchor to building any kind of long term wealth. The idea of going to college as the main way of improving ones circumstances is no longer true. Earning a high salary can easily be done by entering into a high demand trade. What was traditionally considered low skilled labor is quickly becoming high skilled. We are at an interesting point in technological advancement, in that we may finally have an opportunity to have robotics do the jobs that would be traditionally for the lower status people of society. The more a machine can do the repetitive labor intensive jobs, the more tech skills will be required, thus making it a high skill job. This will severely limit entry level positions and force new dynamics between the rich and poor. My fear is that millions of people will be left out in the dust as these changes happen to our country, but that is a topic for another article.
The way the majority of Americans built wealth is by owning their home. Current home prices and market conditions are making that very hard for the younger generation to achieve. Even the the traditional sizing of a home is changing, it is just to expesive to build that big dream house that many people simply cant afford. The cost of materials will most likely remain high for the foreseeable future, thus making it more cost effective to build a smaller house.
The concept of working hard to get ahead is also slowly fading away. Your ability to handle different interpersonal situations will heavily out weigh your work ethic, being able to get an employee to do something without the use of intimidation or threat of being fired will be the main skill people will need in management roles. The amount of diversity in the work place is increasing day by day, if you are someone who finds it hard working with different cultures, you will be left behind no matter what you bring to the table.
Now with all these changes happening at such a fast rate it is easy to become a negative Nancy but there is light at the end of tunnel. As the majority of systems in America erode into the past, hopefully better ones will take their place and provide new ways to address the problems that have plagued us throughout human history.
