The American Dream

I have seen alot of talk in the American media lately of how the AMerican Dream is errroding. I am a foreigner that revieves all of your media but has no emotional investment in accepting any particular viewpoint, and I simply see the reality exposed to me through your media, and from living in America on and off throughout the decades (I am a dinosaur compared to the average userbase here)

Yes your industries are on the decline. Yes your job market is shrinking rapidly, and has been shrinking for decades. Yes the unions certainly played their part in erroding industries by taking advantage of production spikes in the 40's and 50's when America began to subsidize itself through the war and public projects.

But the ultimate blame rests with the consumer, each one of you has played your part in whittling away your prosperity. Americans chose cheap inferior foreign goods in place of quality domestic goods. Every person who has ever said "Why would I pay $200 for an American tv when I can pay $98 for a japaneese tv?" has helped to topple your country's economic dominance and shrink its markets.

As I said, I am old, and I remember a time in which Japaneese and Chineese products were considered to be a joke, garbage that only the poorest people in my country or in America would even consider touching. Now they are the industry standard.

You want your "american dream" back? You are literally going to have to pay for it. Although now for many industries, it is simply too late.

You can suck it up and buy American or you can trade the future of your country for a few dollars today. Your choice. Nobody else can make it for you, and your government can not reasonably reverse or protect against the inevitable decline of the American economies. A few cosmetic tax shifts and budget adjustments in either direction will NOT reverse these downward trends.
It is up to the consumer, you.

As I said I am not even FROM America nor have I lived there for years, but even I do my part as far as buying American made products goes, not out of altruism of course, but because I enjoy purchasing superior products. And my ability to do so by buying American is shrinking, rapidly.

I could be wrong, but this is how I see it, when all the bells and whistles and soundbytes are stripped away and I simply look back upon what I have seen and experienced within my lifetime.

A dream doesn't erode when it transforms into a nightmare.

To blame the poor for buying cheap products instead of nothing at all is purely ridiculous.  If people had more money they would be happy to buy the higher quality product.  It's a known fact that in just about every industry consumers are more than willing to pay premium prices for premium products.

The reality is that American income has diverged greatly. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Income_Inequality_1967-2003_relative_to_median_%28log_scale%29.svg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg

Over the past several decades the rich have had a growing percentage of the income while the poor and middle class have had a declining percentage of the income.  This sort of wealth accumulation concentrated in the hands of the few is what killed the American dream.  Not thriftiness, you dolt.

This chart shows the income gains from 1979 to 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_gains.jpg

Note that the top 1% of earners saw income rise almost 200% while second bracket (top 20%) saw around a 60% increase.  Everyone below the top 20% of earners did not see a significant rise in wages.  All the while cost of living has risen.

>>3
Income inequality is both irrelevant, and directly caused by the leftist policies you champion.

People are poor because they are dumb and make bad choices, naturally that comes buying the cheap garbage because it's cheaper.

>is what killed the American dream.
Ya nothing to do with marxist jews pushing forced integration, mass immigration, high taxes, shipping all our industries to third worlders, etc? It's those evil rich people!
Of course, when liberals say "rich" they mean exclusively whites, never the jew. It's just an extension of marxist anti-"bourgeoisie" policies. 100 years ago, that was code for whites. And today the leftist uses "rich" interchangeable with white as well.

>>4
Are you seriously blaming all of America's problems on minorities and liberals? You're no different than a nigger.

>>4

Rich Jew???  Shit no one told me, where is my key to the gold room???

>>2

It's not that people haven't always bought the cheapest stuff available, just that before the government would spend money to make sure that our stuff was cheaper in our country.  Tarriffs are a good thing becuase they allow a nation to market their stuff to their people and provide a customer base for the stuff they manufacture.  With the advent of globalism, we decided that was bad, which means that any labor that can be done cheaply overseas will be done overseas, which cuts the legs off of any get out of poverty upward mobility.  You can't get out, becuase you need to have a wage that pays. 

I think this is also behind the glut of college grads -- especially in non-technical majors (english, for example).  When the only ticket is having a degree, then people who wouldn't have ever thought of a degree go to college, which devalues college.  College is like HS was at the turn of the century -- pretty much required.  Which means that the value of a degree goes down.  A business degree is pretty easy to get because pretty much everyone needs one.  And thus it's now so common as to not stand out on a resume at this point.  And so now it's MBAs, though those are becoming fairly common as well.  Sooner or later the rabble will devalue the MA degrees as well, so that a truely great person must distinguish himself with a PhD.  At least until those are handed out like candy.