Whatever Happened to the American Dream?
Type in “American Dream” in Google and you’ll be bombarded by thousands of news reports, articles, history lessons, etc. but what does the American Dream mean? Thankfully, Google takes care of that for us, right at the top of their search:
American Dream: the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.
The key part to this, of course, being the ending of “through hard work, determination, and initiative.”
As a twenty-something-year-old, I’m so sick of logging onto Facebook, Twitter or whatever social media site and seeing my friend’s posts about how the government should be paying for their education, healthcare or whatever the “hot topic” is that week. These are the same friends who drive brand new $20,000 cars, have the newest iPhone and a shiny MacBook Pro. They’re the same people I see posting pictures of themselves hanging out at Starbucks everyday, going to expensive concerts or just sitting at home posting cat videos 24/7.
I’m sorry, but your government owes you nothing. What have you contributed to society that you think you’re so entitled to free handouts?
I saw this gem floating around Facebook the other day and couldn’t help but be flabbergasted. Do people just post these things without even doing any research?
I’ll discuss the education side of this problem, as healthcare is way too complicated to get into and I have a feeling this post will be long-winded as-is:
Part of the reason why people are so apposed to this notion is because the largest European country with free college education (Germany), only has a population of ~8.5 million people between ages 15–24 (10.6% of total population). The United States has ~44 million (13.7% of total population). These numbers don’t even taken into account the amount of people who receive free healthcare in Germany (~85% of the population).
Comparing tax rates shows that individual income tax in Germany ranges from 14–45% with an added sales tax of 19%. Corporate tax in Germany is fairly low at 29.65% in comparison to the US at 35%, plus 0–11% based on state policies. By comparison, income tax in the United States ranges from 0–35.9% (which doesn’t take into the account the amount of people who are actually receiving “negative” taxes, due to welfare programs that give as much as 11% back to low-income families), with sales tax being between 0% and 11.725%, based on the state.
If we’re to look at this Wikipedia article that lists countries by tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, you’d see the following results for the largest of the European countries:
Country — Tax as % of GDP
Denmark — 50.8%
Finland — 43.5%
France — 44.6%
Germany — 40.6%
Norway — 43.6%
Spain — 37.3%
Sweden — 45.8%
United States — 26.9%
That’s a big difference in revenue. Using Germany as the example still, the US is already charging companies significantly more than Germany already, so the only way to make up the difference is by significantly increasing tax on individuals. Sure, they can cut spending in other places to help, but the spending in those other places creates hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans.
Don’t get me wrong, free education sounds great to me (to those who deserve it), but at what cost, is the question.
But wait a second… what if we just give everyone free community college?
Sure, that’s probably far more doable, but community college is already pretty damn affordable and, in most cases, an Associate’s degree really isn’t going to help anyone get a real job. Sure, it might get you a raise at your current low-paying job, but there aren’t many positions out there looking for an associates. While it’s certainly possible to get a decent job with an Associate’s degree, the barrier of entry is far harder now more than ever.
The American Dream is built off the fact that if you work hard for something, you can achieve whatever you desire. If you’re in your mid-20s, especially, and desire to go to college but haven’t made any serious headway in your education since high school, what the hell have you been doing with your life?
There are plenty of ways to get free, or substantially subsidized, college tuition in the United States. They’re called scholarships and grants. It’s not mine, or any other American’s, duty to pay for your tuition when you slacked off in high school and didn’t take your grades seriously.
Media focuses a lot these days on the rising cost of debt coming out of college. Guess what?
- No one forced you to make bad choices in high school that lead to you not being qualified for any scholarships.
- No one forced you to go straight to a university without scholarships, rather than starting at a, much cheaper, community college.
- No one forced you to go out-of-state and pay $20k+ a year.
- No one forced you to fail your classes because you were too busy being social and subsequently had to take the class over again, adding to your debt.
It is completely plausible to graduate college completely debt-free, without the help of your rich uncle. It doesn’t even require that you start preparing for your college career in preschool.
Even though I’ve lead you, readers, to believe that I’m completely against free college up to this point, I’m definitely not. In fact, I think free tuition is a great idea, if the student really deserves it. I’d argue that, if we’re going to pursue free tuition as a nation, that we do it in the form of more available scholarship funding at the university-level (there are thousands of privately-funded scholarships that go un-awarded each year because students are too lazy to find and apply for them). Give the money to the kids who have worked for it and make them continue to work hard to keep their funding; just don’t give it to the C-student who coasted by.
I, and thousands of other Americans, worked hard for our college degrees and the scholarships we received. If we start giving out free tuition to everyone, then the American Dream is truly dead.