A new American dream for a new American century | The Edgy Optimist - Reuters

This opinion piece comes from the "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee" school of thought:

"The wage stagnation for tens of millions of working Americans over the past decades combined with the financial crisis has been painful and even calamitous for millions. In truth, however, the middle class security that has now disappeared only existed for a very brief period after World War Two, when the United States accounted for half of global industrial output and achieved a level of relative prosperity and growth that was substantially higher than in any other country. Before the Great Depression and World War Two, there was no assumption in the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries that the future would be inherently better for one’s children."

It goes on to say:

"...the equation of American economic success until the mid-20th century was not that if you worked hard you would have a stable material life. It was that if you worked hard, you could create such a life. The difference is not semantic; it is fundamental, and for Obama and many, many others, it has become blurred. The equation articulated by Obama and likely shared by a significant majority of Americans is that if you work hard, you should receive economic security and see the same for your children. The flip side of that theory is that if you don’t gain economic security, something is wrong with the system, and government has a responsibility to provide when that system fails.

The belief that something is a given simply by birthright is never a formula for long-term strength. Yet at some point in the last half of the 20th century, the American dream morphed from the promise that you could realize a comfortable life, to a promise that being American meant you would and should realize that. Hence the feeling, held by so many, that promises have been betrayed and the system is broken."

Can we ever develop a culture of responsibility?

Was John Edwards on to something? Regardless of what you think of John Edwards the person or John Edwards the trial lawyer, John Edwards the politician may have been on to something with his focus on The Two Americas, one America for the wealthy and one America for everyone else. Reuters’ Chrystia Freeland (formerly of The Financial Times and a frequent guest on all of the cable news outlets) pens a blog post titled America’s two-speed economy, quite similar to Edwards’ concept of the Two Americas.

The quote from this piece that stands out is the one that essentially sums up our problem in a nutshell:
Yet [CEO of Applied Materials Michael] Splinter’s critique contained its own contradictions: on one hand, he called on the government to spend more on R&D and education, but his chief complaint was that “frankly, our tax rate is not competitive” and that it was likely to increase.

Unless we change our culture from one of entitlement to one of responsibility, the fear of America turning into Brazil, which was raised in the article, will become a reality. It was harsh to use Brazil as an example, considering Brazil has a booming economy and Brazilian companies are buying American companies very aggressively. That said, there is known to be a wide income gap between rich and poor in Brazil (as I’ve witnessed firsthand in India, the other country mentioned in the Slate article.) I’m not knowledgeable enough about it to discuss the culture of responsibility in Brazil but I know whenever there is any talk of communal responsibility versus individual liberties in the United States, we hear misplaced screams of socialism and communism from the right. I’m all for individualism but we have to develop a mindset that we hold our individual pursuits in check if they come at the expense of the society in which we live.

This requires ethical standards, that cannot be applied by a government policy, to become the social norm. Unfortunately ethics are usually not profitable and therein lies the rub. Thoughts?