Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

What killed the American Dream?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    What killed the American Dream?

    As recently as the Nineties, the US seemed to be at the vanguard of popular culture, from Twin Peaks to Friends, to The X-Files, and Europe seemed comparatively provincial by way of contrast. Yet somewhere between 9/11 and the Obama inauguration, America's magnetism for the young and ambitious seemed to gradually, but continually, diminish, with Canada and Australia proving popular attractions for jobseekers, and European confidence in individual national standings growing simultaneously. So what changed in the interim that caused the American Dream to wane? Was it the sense that in the Bush era of isolationism, every country had to look out for itself? Had the pre-Internet media carefully doled out only the select aspects of US TV and film, with the digital expansion by contrast causing indulgement to the point of nausea? Or was it simply that in a multi-polar world, America simply lost self-confidence?
    ​​​

    #2
    Assuming your premise is correct, I would guess that reelecting Bush in 2004 was decisive for a lot of people.

    Comment


      #3
      The decline started with Reagan, if you ask me. But then I don't remember the 70s and it didn't exactly seem like a utopia even then. Maybe it is a mythical place that never existed. I mean, the 50s were bright, shiny, powerful, consumerist and accessible - as long as you weren't poor or black.

      Comment


        #4
        The invasion of Iraq and its consequences can't've helped.

        Comment


          #5
          It was never great, particularly for people who weren't white, straight and male.

          But Reagan isn't a bad marker, as he embodied the pulling up of the ladder now so closely associated with Boomers as a class. Proposition 13 in California decapitated public education rather than allowing residential property taxes to rise, his tax cuts as president had similar effects on a broad range of Federal programs (health, education, housing, transport, etc), while he and his henchmen demonised unions and government, establishing neo-liberal dogma as orthodoxy.

          Comment


            #6
            The older I get, the more I realize it was probably always a lie. It was a great story.....it's still a great story....it just isn't true.

            Comment


              #7
              I understand the OP to be focussing on the view from outside. I think the US was still a very attractive destination (I mean for making a new life, not tourism), and I think it probably still is, though significantly less so than it was in, say, the 90s. 9/11 was a big shift, because to a large degree the borders closed then, and have never really re-opened to the same degree. Trump has really finished that process off. Walls, hatred of foreigners, a divided and chaotic nation.

              Comment


                #8
                "The American Dream" was a pile of old bollocks, always, of course.

                I don't remember its being much of a thing, people emigrating from here to the US. Maybe I just never noticed. Australia, yeah sure. And "Europe" (Spain and France). But the US? Not that I recall.
                Last edited by DCI Harry Batt; 22-10-2020, 13:48.

                Comment


                  #9
                  The severe cutback in educational visas (and the decline in demand due to the nativist hysteria) is an important factor in that trend.

                  We are still a magnet for flight capital, though. The Miami paper had a story yesterday about two now local brothers who are thought to have stolen USD 4.5 billion from Venezuela.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by TonTon View Post
                    "The American Dream" was a pile of old bollocks, always, of course.

                    I don't remember its being much of a thing, people emigrating from here to the US. Maybe I just never notice. Australia, yeah sure. And "Europe" (Spain and France). But the US? Not that I recall.
                    Yeah, I don;t think it was a huge thing from Western Europe, just from elsewhere in the world

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Mostly I'm of the opinion that it was a pile of bollocks. I mean, it's always had some appeal, and still has some appeal, for potential immigrants. Mostly because it's a cultural hegemon. But I think 9/11 and Bush was probably a good dividing line. The appeal had begun to fade before then, of course, but the end of the End Of History and the return of a highly visible racism combined with the pointless and illegal wars pretty much took a lot of the rest of the shine out for anyone who's not white, rich and anglophone wanting to migrate.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                        the return of a highly visible racism
                        I know what you mean, it just made me smile. As if racism has ever not been highly visible to its victims.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          There has long been emigration from Western Europe in certain professions (law, finance, medicine.and the sciences) reflecting the less stratified and more open nature of those professions here. There is also a somewhat parallel movement in the arts, but while such people are very much a part of my world, the numbers are quite small on a national level.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Professionally you can account for the drop off in a few ways. Visa's have certainly become trickier which is the main active factor that US Govt has supported; with tech, the workers sought has drifted from Europe to South Asia.

                            I think the fact remains from a pure earnings perspective that the US presents one of the greatest opportunities to educated migrant classes. Similar to the UK, there has also been a drift of native citizens having no interest in manual labor, which creates the (typically illegal) immigrant pull from South America.

                            Another key contributor is that people find the lifestyle in the US less appealing. The opportunity of great wealth is offset by a very tilted scale of work life balance. As generations shift many educated workers are less interested in the sacrifice demanded by US companies - Australia and Canada are significantly more favorable in that regard.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              But Reagan isn't a bad marker, as he embodied the pulling up of the ladder now so closely associated with Boomers as a class. Proposition 13 in California decapitated public education rather than allowing residential property taxes to rise, his tax cuts as president had similar effects on a broad range of Federal programs (health, education, housing, transport, etc), while he and his henchmen demonised unions and government, establishing neo-liberal dogma as orthodoxy.
                              Those things are not unrelated, I think. I suspect a lot of middle-class white people only started to resent benefits and opportunities for the working class when those benefits started going to people who were not white or male. There's some of that in Europe too.


                              I've thought about this recently. Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers did a thing recently where he talked about how America was such a powerful draw for him growing up in Liverpool in the 70s and 80s.* Liverpool has improved somewhat and the US has gone downhill, but he still loves the US for giving him a better life, etc.*

                              But that made me realize that this view of America around the world and, increasingly, in the US itself, will soon disappear and we're eventually going to turn into Britain-in-the-80's. Trumpism is sure as hell not going to make America great again and at some point, hopefully soon, but probably not for decades, 65-70% of America will get that. (The other 30% probably never will).

                              I've also become frustrated trying to explain to my parents, who are not stupid, why America is not the greatest country in the world. I don't know if there's another country that can claim that. I don't accept the premise of the question. But I can understand why people who grew up in the 50s and 60s in the midwest think that. In many ways, the US was the greatest country in the world back then. It was largely by default, of course, after the destruction of Europe and Asia during the war and a few centuries of colonialism everywhere else, but it was booming. And things were bad for non-white/non-cis-straight-males, but they were not as bad as they'd been in the past, so even progressives saw reason for hope. Of course, the MAGA people actually want to destroy all the things that actually made those times good - strong unions, high-taxes, massive infrastructure expenditures, good education, etc. The era they seem to long for is the 1870s.

                              But the difference between now and the past when empires were fading and people were looking for a new home, is that there's nowhere else to go now. I mean, yeah, people can make a great life for themselves in all sorts of places, but there's no new "shining city on a hill" out there like the US was before.

                              Sure, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are very nice, but I don't sense that they're going to bring in the massive waves of immigrants like the US once did (unless global warming makes places like Edmonton and North Bay much more inviting, which could happen.) New Zealand is too small and, TBH, Australia is getting a bit of a reputation for being not-entirely-not-racist as a whole. And it's on fire. Western Europe is better, but "diversity and inclusion" isn't really its brand, is it?

                              Nobody really wants to migrate to China, do they? And Japan is not welcoming to outsiders at all. Singapore isn't a democracy.

                              South America and most of Africa are going to struggle with climate change, I suspect.



                              However, I don't think the US' power in entertainment has really diminished much. Not in absolute terms, at least. It's just that it once had a near monopoly and as in all markets, the first mover inevitably loses market share because there's nowhere to go but down when you start with almost all of it.

                              The worldwide entertainment business as a whole has grown as more people around the world have access to electronic media and, hopefully, the time and cash to enjoy it. It's also a lot cheaper to film or record something than it used to be. And the channels that distribute the stuff - Netflix especially - want whatever content they can get, so inevitably, they'll go for non-English, non-US stuff.

                              But if you look at Spotify's top top downloads, the most downloaded and followed people are almost all singing or rapping in English and they're disproportionately American. Perhaps Spotify isn't used in much of Asia? That might distort it. And K-Pop is a big thing of course, but the US is still punching wayyyy above its weight, in terms of the proportion of the planet's population, in pop music. I suspect the US is also doing ok in jazz and classical, but I don't know.

                              The top-grossing films lists of recent years have a few Chinese movies I've never heard of, but it's still completely dominated by Hollywood movies made in English, mostly by Americans, mostly in the US.



                              *I don't know if a lot of British people immigrated here in the 70s or 80s. It was always easier to go to other commonwealth countries, wasn't it? And then, once the EU got going, much easier to go to Europe. That's done, sadly. There was a bit of a surge in immigration from Ireland in the 90s, but nothing like the numbers 100-150 years ago and I don't know if it was noticeable in Ireland. It was noticeable in Boston.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                They are absolutely related, though the "I got mine" mindset isn't entirely about race or ethnicity.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                  Sure, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are very nice, but I don't sense that they're going to bring in the massive waves of immigrants like the US once did (unless global warming makes places like Edmonton and North Bay much more inviting, which could happen.) New Zealand is too small and, TBH, Australia is getting a bit of a reputation for being not-entirely-not-racist as a whole. And it's on fire. Western Europe is better, but "diversity and inclusion" isn't really its brand, is it?

                                  Nobody really wants to migrate to China, do they? And Japan is not welcoming to outsiders at all. Singapore isn't a democracy.

                                  South America and most of Africa are going to struggle with climate change, I suspect.
                                  I think this actually highlights something from the OP. The options suggested are exclusively "Countries where I don't live that speak English so I can move there without a language barrier".

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Yeah, but that's not only true for people for whom English is their first language - which is an awful lot of people anyway given the reach of the former empire. English is required from an early age in all schools in a lot of Europe and, perhaps, elsewhere (I'm not sure), so for educated people around the world, English-speaking places are going to be generally more appealing than, say, Brazil or Japan.


                                    I've given up most hope of ever living anywhere else. My experience during the pandemic has taught me that complete isolation makes me much more depressed than usual and I know it's very hard for a 50-year-old, especially me, to make new friends in a new city with a different culture. I struggled mightily with it in the far off exotic land of Massachusetts and even struggle with it here, the town where I grew up. How would I make it somewhere else? And certainly, having to learn another language would just put that beyond any hope at all, although I guess language classes would be a way to meet people.

                                    If I had kids, I'd want to move, however. But I don't.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                      Nobody really wants to migrate to China, do they? And Japan is not welcoming to outsiders at all. Singapore isn't a democracy.
                                      Some do, or did. The son of a good friend who seemed unable to flourish in Canada (due mainly to the daily ingestion of vast quantities of BC bud, and an equally unhealthy obsession with chess) left for China about a decade ago to teach English. Now he has a large family and runs his own teaching and translation company.

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Yeah, that does happen. China's economy is growing rapidly and it's enormous, of course, so there's a lot of opportunity there, but the air quality, lack of political freedom and language barrier is kind of a turn-off for most, I'd think.

                                        I know that I would be very lonely there, but I don't know if it's a harder place to assimilate culturally than any other. Aside from just making a living and finding a home, getting along in a new culture can be very difficult. Japan and Korea are, I'm told, hard places to deal with if you're not from there because there are so many unwritten rules etc. But then I've known Americans who've moved there and loved it. On the other hand, Canada and some parts of the US imagine themselves as very open and welcoming, but a lot of people struggle to "fit in." I'm told Scandinavia is like that.

                                        I don't know if these numbers are accurate, but I suspect they are and they back-up the common sense observation that China is losing people faster than it is adding them and that the overall net migration is, not surprisingly, toward OECD countries. Despite Trump and all of those think pieces about Americans moving to Ghana or Canada to escape him, the US is still adding people faster than it is losing.

                                        https://data.worldbank.org/indicator...017&start=2009

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          There was an English guy at the Taiwanese company I visited (back about 15 years ago, I think) who absolutely loved it, though he was older, single with grown-up kids.

                                          Back when I was getting my BA I moved to the States in part because English was the only language I spoke with any sort of fluency (still is). In retrospect that was unnecessarily limiting, at the time it seemed important (I was young and foolish).

                                          Regardless of the drivers of decisions in my youth, I have few reasons to complaint about my life so far, and the ones that I do have I can hardly blame on being in the US.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            If the OP is about popular culture, has that really changed much? Are many more people watching Bollywood movies or Chinese dramas? Are they listening to Russian popular music, or wearing the shirts from French pro sports?

                                            Sure, there's the issue of financing the popular culture - more Chinese co-productions, etc. But so far the superheroes are still American-sourced, and the galactic invaders still seem to find their way to New York before New Delhi. What are we watching instead of Friends? In the English-speaking world, more of the same. Ask your (non-Asian) friends to name Asian actors, who aren't Asian-American.

                                            "American dream fading" needs a much tighter definition than just "the politics is crap". Plenty of non-Americans who hated Reagan loved Dallas and Spielberg.

                                            Where people want to live is another topic entirely, and it's usually "somewhere else".

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              All that.

                                              America is also not very specific place.

                                              It’s too big. Rural Alabama and Darien, Connecticut have some things in common, but not a lot. And neither of them look much like what you’ve probably seen on TV, which is mostly LA and New York.

                                              Of course, that’s true of all countries, but it’s especially true here. The geography is so vast, the economic inequality is so wide and the cultural influences are so diverse.

                                              That’s not as true as it used to be. Regional accents and dialects are blending together. Every place has many of the same national chains.

                                              Not long ago, we also all watched the same TV shows, including the same news and sports, generally. That’s not so true any more, but the new differences aren’t regional. So there are lots of little cultural niches, but the people in those niches tend to be distributed widely.
                                              Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 23-10-2020, 03:36.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                The lack of political freedom aspect is kind of irrelevant as a foreigner though, as in huge numbers of democracies you don't get to vote if you're not a citizen.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  It makes a real difference if one is much more subject to deportation as a result

                                                  Comment

                                                  Working...
                                                  X