I don’t want there to be any confusion; I am a patriot. I
believe in the American dream as I was raised to understand it; work hard, so
that later in life I can help my family and further the system which afforded
me the luxury to have a choice. This ideology was imprinted on me by my
grandparents and my mother. I am grateful that I had those strong influences to
mold me, rather than the media and what we call leaders these days. I propose
that the current idea of what America is for is not only facilitating our
decline as a nation, but that it is a byproduct of the mutating standards glorified
by our politicians and media. I would define the popular view of the American
dream as more money for less work, physical work to be specific. Television
tells us that we are to grow up right, go to college, get a job behind a desk,
get promoted, get married, get promoted more, save enough to retire, and then
retire happily; unless of course you win the lottery.
I recently had the opportunity to lobby for HACC at the
capitol building in Harrisburg. After I was finished selling the importance of our
new parking lot, all of the representatives took it upon themselves to share
with us college students their opinions of what is going to be important as far
as the future of our state is concerned. One of the senators told me, “Too many
students are focusing on degrees that won’t really help our current situation.
Everyone wants to be business majors or public relations majors. We don’t need
that. What we need are more welders and people who are willing to go out there
and get the jobs that need doing.” This from a man sitting in an office with
enough decorative value to house and feed several dozen families for God knows
how long. From solid marble fireplaces to the gold trim adorning the walls,
this man was the modern definition of American success, yet he was encouraging
young people to pursue paths that would never lead here. Instead he was glorifying
jobs that require manual labor and little schooling. Initially, I took it like
a slap in the face, but once the anger passed I found myself curious as to why his
advice contradicted his life. I found the path to my answer in Kingsley Davis
and Wilbert Moore’s explanations of class stratification. Davis and Moore tell
us that:
1. Society
must make certain that its positions are filled.
2. Some
positions are more important than others.
3. The
more important positions must be filled by the more qualified people.
4. To
motivate the more qualified people to fill these positions, society must offer
them greater rewards.
What
I believe the senator was doing, was trying to fill what he sees as a gap in
our society. One that he apparently believes is having more of an impact on its
success than his role is. Operating from the perspective that capitalist politics
is little more than sales, I found this admission from the senator to be
somewhat disheartening. They need more lemmings to scuttle around and do work,
so that he can sit in his office, absent the power to hold the system up with
charisma alone. From a Marxist perspective, it was an attempt from a lesser
form of an elite to keep us lower class, community college kids in line and
guide us towards class appropriate work that will enable him to remain comfortably
behind his mahogany desk until a ripe old age.
This
raises the question, why would anyone who has been told their whole life that
they can do anything they set their mind to (thank you Walt Disney), settle for
manual labor? It is that line of thinking that has led us to our current
overpopulation of aspiring white collar workers, and a lack of people willing
or qualified to do blue collar work. Of course there is the small matter of the
previous white collar generation, undamaged by their years spent filling out paperwork,
refusing to retire. This example of cultural lag is magnified by advances in
medical science enabling them to live and remain “productive” longer and an
increased cost of living which prevents them from retiring. The result is what
we see today, people mortgaging their homes on anticipated, merit based
advancement in bureaucracies, not getting them because upward mobility is
stunted by people not retiring and leaving vacant positions, and losing their
homes as a result. Why are red lights not flashing? Why are alarms not going
off? The conflict theorist based answer is that the people on top are not
suffering from the degradation of the lower classes’ standard of living; in
fact, they are thriving off of it. What is a young able bodied person to do
when they are out of options, but seek out entry level, blue collar employment?
The lower the standard of living falls, the easier it is for the elite to
encourage the middle and lower classes to “shut up and color.” The rewards
offered to the middle and lower tiers do not have to be as grandiose and this
allows the upper echelons to maintain their strangle hold on the majority of Weber’s
three P’s of class: prestige, power and property.
In
conclusion, I offer the following data from the 2012 Millennial Values Survey,
conducted jointly by Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown
University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, “A
plurality (45%) of younger Millennials believe that the American Dream once
held true, but not anymore, while 4-in-10 (40%) say the American Dream still
holds true. One-in-ten (10%) younger Millennials say that the American Dream
never held true.” More than half of our up and coming generation thinks that
the American dream is a farce. What is going to happen to the other 40% who
still believe once they actually start trying to get jobs? I found this on the same survey, “Nearly
7-in-10 (69%) Millennials believe that the government should do more to reduce
the gap between the rich and the poor, while 28% disagree.” Hopefully, none of
these young people try lobbying their opinions in Harrisburg, they might be
told to drop the “unneeded” educations they are pursuing and pick up a welding
torch or a gas pump.
