The American Dream

The American Dream is a desire to escape a brutal economic system. Americans strive to attain wealth because they believe this is the only way to free themselves from an economic system which has eroded the rights of workers and maintains a frenetic regimen that violates aspects of biology. With incomes continually decreasing in a slow, nearly imperceptible creep---noticeable by the need to take on extra work beyond the full-time job---the American is stretched beyond any effective human capacity (read David Cay Johnston's book, "Perfectly Legal," which exposes the growing disparities between the former middle class and the economic elites). When rich people are able to purchase multiple homes (in a nation where not everyone can afford to own a home that no-one can lord over you), it creates a steady inflation of home prices that disadvantage the less economically fortunate. The frenzy at which the wealthy acquire real estate and homes in order to escape tax obligations, and puts abnormal pressure by the not unfamiliar law of supply and demand---on already inflated home prices for everyone (and then those who can afford homes get special tax advantages---called subsidies---from the government. The rates at which the incomes of the poor and middle class increase are simply outpaced by inflation (government spending); wealth accumulation (through advantageous tax structures, self-policed executive incomes, advantageous stock purchasing abilities available only to the super rich, and other disparaging practices); greedy industrialists who sell, for their own personal gain, the jobs-producing intellectual property of their companies to China or other countries (which has the external effect of eroding the production capability of the entire nation); economic recessions created largely by the unscrupulous, sociopathic practices of Wallshington; and other deaths by a thousand cuts. Why don't we create an economic system that isn't a casino? Why is the system built around the players? Because they have the money to influence how the game is played, and instead of being satisfied with their already unreasonable advantage, they continue to skew the game in their favor. Where does that leave the remaining Americans who are barely holding on? They too must find their own casino, which they find in these forms: file a lawsuit, play the lottery, play the stock market (which is where the rich siphon off their money), invent something, create a company you hope to sell off after the IPO, engage in multi-level marketing, or enjoy the delayed payment of credit extension. Nobody wants to work---because work isn't cutting it anymore. Why don't we create an economic system that works for everyone?