Susan Campbell Saturday 6 June 2015
It’s hard to bemoan the loss of a safety net you never had. The ‘American Dream’ convinced us we could bootstrap our way out of needing one
In a land without a safety net, children go to school hungry while right-wing politicians argue against serving them breakfast at school. Photograph: Randall Hill/Reuters
In 1931, James Truslow Adams, an investment banker turned Pulitzer-winning historian, wrote a book to name an idea that had been floating around since before the United States was a country.
In his book, The Epic of America, Adams coined the “American Dream,” defining it as a notion “of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”
The European upper class, he wrote, would not understand.
The dream says that if you work hard enough, you can make it in the US, and it is a damnable idea if ever there was one. The dream has allowed us to ignore that our social safety net has been shredded into cobwebs, because the dream tells us that if we work hard enough, we won’t ever need a net. And that entirely obscures reality.
Stories about austerity measures in the EU don’t get much attention in the States, mainly because austerity is already our reality. Our safety net is knit together by charities and faith groups which do the work that government could more easily and efficiently accomplish.
We ignore the reality that so many of our fellow citizens aren’t making it – and we ignore that the opportunity for social mobility is greater in other countries than it is here. Through the rose-collared glasses of the American Dream, the people who are falling short simply Are Not Trying Hard Enough. They’ve Earned Their Low Rung On the Ladder. Oh, and: They Are Sucking The Rest Of Us Dry.
That’s by no means the attitude of everyone, but a significant portion of our conservatives (Hello, House Speaker John Boehner. See me waving?) would have us believe that your station in life is entirely of your own making, which is nonsense.
If you were to ask Americans about austerity, we most likely would think you meant personal sacrifice, and we’re not having any of that, either. Back in 1977, our then-President Jimmy Carter appeared on television in a sweater to deliver what he called an “unpleasant talk” to urge Americans to do the radical thing and turn down their thermostats. His talk was not well-received; he was not re-elected.
Here’s what living without a safety net looks like:
Though strides are being made to prevent and end homelessness, our shelters are still full to bursting. In a few pockets around the country – notably, the western state of Utah and my own state of Connecticut – we are attempting to end homelessness by the simplest means possible: housing people. But in many other parts of the country, people would rather volunteer at a soup kitchen than examine the system that created the need for that kitchen in the first place.
In a land without a safety net, children go to school hungry while right-wing politicians argue against serving them breakfast at school, in addition to lunch. That children can’t learn on an empty stomach – that breakfast is an investment in the future – is lost on so many of our leaders.
In a land without a safety net, our budgets are too often balanced on the backs of the most vulnerable: our elderly, our veterans and our people who live with disabilities.
But we love our CEOs, who make, according to a recent AFL-CIO report, 373 times the income of the average American worker. We love them because they are the living proof that the American Dream works. For a handful. Or less. And it helps to be born rich. It helps a lot.
The EU’s riots, its activism that battles austerity measures, could be a powerful lesson for us. But that would mean fearlessly removing our rose-collared glasses, looking reality in the face and joining with the rest of the world to say, “Enough.”
