Dreams are the stuff of empire, religion, powerful mythological symbolism. If they were real, they wouldn't be called dreams.

We need to ask whether it's normal that so few control so much, and whether we really like this economic system predicated on perpetual displacement of labor from ever owning any real equity or real estate. Always running in place on the treadmill. It's not a dream that we need. It's the dream that kept us running in place. We need nothing short of a large land ownership redistribution, a re-titling of land. Away from distant entities, banks, speculators, etc. and directly back to localities, real people, real families.

The reason SEIU is growing is because most white Americans won't do those jobs, and the janitor cannot be outsourced.

An example of why unions aren't trusted? The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, IATSE, also represents Canadian labor. And when Hollywood production moved north, IATSE did nothing, because they got their dues either way while many of us struggled to find work. Plus, every contract negotiation cost us more - less OT, no weekend pay, etc. That's just one example of how unions "protect" workers and why workers still don't trust unions.

'We need to restore the promise of the American Dream.' I don't think so.

"The American Dream" is a myth, built on a house of cards. Every wonderful thing that has happened in the past century has been built upon extraction of non-renewable resources, notably fossil fuel, that will soon be in decline.

We need a new "American Dream." One of frugality, of creative ways of re-using some of the billions of pounds of crap that is stored in landfills, of ways of living within the resource budget of Planet Earth.

Want to see the best it can get over the long term? Look to Cuba, which has successfully reduced its fossil fuel consumption over 80% since the collapse of the Soviet Union. http://www.powerofcommunity.org

As long as Americans still subscribe to the US lie, it is the greatest country on earth, we will continue to suffer. New figures out, we work harder and longer than any other industrial country worker. And we have no social net as they do. But we just act like sheep, say we don't need unions. Until we get angry and demand decent treatment we will continue to suffer. Me...I got out of the US almost 20 years ago but I cry for my daughter who is still suffering under the system and insecurity.

The right-wing Christian conservatives have it just the way they want it and intend to keep it that way. After all, their Jesus said the poor will always be with you, so why should we worry? Besides, the really important matters are stopping abortion, stem cell research, gay rights, etc. Also, their constant wars keep most of the rich corporations making gobs of money, so everything is fine, they have the American Dream.

The American Dream died January 2000 and the elections of 2008 will keep it buried. Vote out all incumbants and see the Phoenix rise.

Welcome to the new gilded age where the majority of us our just stagnant wage slaves!

OK. I have been observing for months
The kid gloves are off. I will now post and post and post. I don't give a damn about someone's opinion because I am actively engaged in this world - every fucking second of it.
Why? Because everyday of my life I am helping someone less forunate than me - and it works!!!!! Imagine that. Helping someone in need.
God damn all these senseless philosophic arguments. You're either on the bus or off the bus, as Ken Kesey once said.

"And while many of the ways we used to do business have changed, the American Dream has not.
Today, in 2007, that dream is at risk."

Mr. Stern, apparently you are not fully aware of what it is like "out here", Sir. I'm afraid "The American Dream" has turned into the "American Nightmare" long ago: People working two, three jobs to stay barely afloat; choosing whether to buy medicine or gasoline; hoping the landlord will be willing to wait for rent until you can "catch up";
patching together an old vehicle to get to work to continue the cycle, etc.

And what is the answer, if there is one?

With the 2008 presidential candidates already out there making promises to help "We The People" that we KNOW will die away after January 2009 (EXCEPT for Dennis Kucinich), we begim to feel very much alone, frightened, and angry.
HELPLESS--I believe sums it up.

The only solution I can see is a National strike. BUT, I fear, this will never happen for at least two reasons:
1.) People will fear that missing work will cost them their jobs because of the many waiting behind them. 2.) Getting people to stand together for change on ANYTHING in this country is a million-in-one shot. (Remember the "no pump"
gasoline strike day recntly? Of course you don't because it failed miserably because....)

That leaves the option of electing a "Workers' President" who has the experience of what "We The People" are going through. Again, I bring up the name of Dennis Kucinich. BUT, as I said, trying to get everyone to stand together and take risks for change will probably not happen on primary day or even in my lifetime. We have become a sad country of sheep and lemmings.

BUT what hybridoma said above
above living fully and helping others is onr HELLUVA great philosophy NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BIG PICTURE!!!

My first statement. In recent history, the American Dream was given a death sentence during the M. Thatcher/R. Reagan administrations.
Let's start the argument from this moment in history. I clearly remember the day one man tried to kill President Reagan. The place I was in cheered!!!!
Even in the early 80's., people knew what was up.
Now, let it loose.
Because I am plenty pissed offed.

'We need to restore the promise of the American Dream.' that one sentence says it all. this is one myth that has to die. promise of the american dream..pooh! been there. in support of Andy Stern, to paraphrase abraham lincoln, without labor, capital would not exist.

Incorporate!
before its too late...

Richard Heinberg's newest book has a phrase that sums up our coming future:
trasitioning from the "Age of Excess to the Era of Modesty." Overshoot long ago ended any chance at achieveing the "American Dream." One of the greatest falsehoods in the essay is this contention: "The bottom line is this: the American economy is not a zero-sum game." One look at the current concentration of wealth proves the fact that there are winners and losers, that the US economy is most definately a zero-sum game. That so-called labor leaders and "progressive" blogs continue to promote such lies shows just what their agenda is and who they're in bed with.

The article is bullshit propaganda.

Everyone commenting on this article, knows the facts, statistics, causes and cures, and the American Dream story.

Andy Stern, you are not telling us anything we haven't written about, read about, or worse, living the American Nightmare.

So I ask you, brother Andy, will The Change To Win unions and the AFL-CIO unions give full and undivided support to the friend of labor, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and encourage all trade-unionist (12% of the workforce) and ask the 88% of non-union working people to support and vote for him for President of the United States ? (they will also benefit with DK in the WhiteHouse) If you support union-busting Ruppert Murdock's favorite, Hillary Clinton, then shame on you!

One more subject needs attention. Wars for the sake of the wealthy ruling class. Why haven't you or the other union officials taken a strong stance on the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan? Or support the British, Irish, Canadian and Australian labor unions in boycotting Israels slow genocide of Palestinians and their apartheid regime?

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE, AND STOP KILLING EACH OTHER FOR THE CRIMINALS IN POWER OF ANY COUNTRY WHICH WAGES WAR.

Oh, then we still have Taft-Hartley in place and the recently defeated (in the senate) Employee Free Choice Act.

We are sure making progress in the twenty first century. I can't wait for the next millenium to see how this one turns out.

I realized the death of the American dream some years ago. In my father's time, an ambitious hard worker could start entry-level with a company and "work his way up". Now, you can bust your hump, never miss a day, and when it comes promotion time, they hire a 22 year old college kid as your boss. As anyone can get a degree if you go long enough and keep paying the tuition, (D is for Diploma), you could very well end up working for an educated idiot. "Equivalent experience" is just something that they print in job descriptions. "Four year degree" is really all they want. And alot of the time, your "four year degree" doesn't even have to be relevent to the job. I have seen a Comptroller with a degree in early childhood education, an engineering supervisor with a degree in Phys. Ed., and a manufacturing supervisor with a degree in religious education. This has had a far ranging ripple effect on U.S. productivity. If you know that you have no future, where is the incentive? A paycheck?

I AM LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM!

I truly am, but I had to move to a third world country to do it. In the U.S. I was a serf for a large corporation, every year more work and less pay, more debt. Finally I got all the money I could out of the house, sold everything I had, and moved to the third world. Own two businesses here, about 30 hectares of land total, have a moderate sized house, about 1900 sq ft, a driver and a maid. I make about 1000 usd a month.

So you can live the American dream, you just have to leave teh country to do it.

expat:
I just Googlearthed Cebu in the Phillipines. I guess that's where you are. I lived in a third world country until the crime situation drove me back to the US. Now that criminals have taken over our country, I'm thinking of leaving again before the fireworks start. If I could only bring family and friends along...

Hybridoma:

Yes: do whatever you can, with whatever you have, for as many as you can, for as long as you can ... Pay it forward ... Be a positive force. At the very least, the negative forces will stand out even more.

I too felt the change with Reagan ... in 1982 I was told Federal Law had just changed and if I wanted to sue my employer (Kodak) it was no longer the CORP's duty to prove they acted illegally but MY duty to prove they did ... and if I had 250K ...

Somes lyrics from John Lennon seem appropriate:
"You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that its evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Dont you know that you can count me out?

Dont you know its gonna be
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?

You say youve got a real solution
Well, you know
Wed all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We are doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is, brother, youll have to wait

Dont you know its gonna be
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me its the institution
Well, you know
Youd better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman mao
You aint gonna make it with anyone anyhow

Dont you know its gonna be
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?"

Isn't it ironic that Bush is pushing democracy ,free trade,globilization,et al and it isn't even working here!
I guess in Bush's mind Walmart and Exxon are the American dream plus $3 a gallon gas,two people working on an ever shrinking paycheck,job outsourcing,lack of job security,no health care,porous borders,diminishing personal liberties,police state,fascist,militaristic government. Welcome to the American dream world!! Step right up you to can have what us Americans have!! Your welcome to it cause it sucks!!

"Somes lyrics from John Lennon seem appropriate"

Synchronistically, I was going to cite those lyrics (commenting on another article) as a prime example of the opting out of newly-rich whites of working class origin once the consumerist society pours material rewards upon them.

The invocation of 'the American Dream' brings to mind Edward Albee's play of the same name, and then, of course, the other names given to the American Dream, like Moloch, the Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Interzone, etc.

'The American Dream' has always meant, "Let the bombs fall on them so that we can live protected by missiles & bombers & policemen & spies".

People have fled towards America because the cost of living outside Dreamland is rendered so steep by the inhabitants of dreamland.

We need a human plan, not the narcotic American hallucination.

Funny thing that amerikan dream really. The good times and good livin' were at the cost of everyone else on the planet after your government went really ape shit after inheriting the ruins of your Brit empire WASP cousins. One mafia crime family replaced the old mafia crime family and now it looks like post Iraq as if the whole "protection" racket might be unravelling, thank goodness.

Personally I believe you deserve the same nightmare future that your brutal system of militarist capitalism has foisted on most of the rest of the planet this long long time. If you think that's too harsh then get busy on the streets (revolution is a dirty business) and take back responsibility for the crimes of your vampire nation and pay the war reparations for at least your last half-century of war crimes. It would be a good start and might help to reinstate you to the level of the "good Germans" let's say.

But let's be honest as a mongrel nation you lot are hardly up to it, especially when the national "consensus" or "culture" is shaped and led by the beast of supremacist Zionism, the worm at the heart of the disease called amerika.

The only thing amerikans have in common is their militarism and glorification of war. Take that away and the problem would be solved as you balkanize into your own ethnic enclaves and ghettos, your national guard militias shooting it out for the last of your resources.

Think how happy the rest of the planet would be!

Paul Bramscher--

As you stated, land redistribution is the key.

As Thomas Jefferson prophesied, the people of this country have awakened homeless in a land their grandfathers conquered. (Perhaps the "conquest" was not such a great idea.)

It has been proved beyond debate that economic injustice, the existence of exploited underclasses--and even the existence of the State as the mechanism for exploitation--rests upon the land tenure system. Specifically, it rests upon a land tenure system in which land and natural resources are privately owned by a small elite. Everyone else is expropriated from the land.

Clearly, there can be no moral justification for the private ownership of land and natural resources. Can the elites who claim ownership of the land show any basis for this claim? I.e., did they make the earth? Did the Creator give them the deed?

Those who claim ownership of the earth claim it entirely on the basis of the force of arms and against the rights of all the rest of humanity to subsist--even to occupy space--on the planet, and to use the resources of the earth to sustain life.

Once people have been expropriated from the land through legal preemption, they exist only at the sufferance of those who claim legal ownership. They can live only by going to work for "The Man" and, for all practical purposes, they become slaves.

When ownership of the land is placed in the hands of the few, the above is only one result. Another is the strip-mining of all the earth's resources for profit, rather than stewardship of the land. Yet another is speculation in land--the use of land and natural resources as if they were so many poker chips--again, rather than stewardship of the land.

One ideal of Jeffersonian democracy was that the vast majority of the American people should be freeholders in the land, although there are other possibilities in the way of just systems of land tenure. One of these is simply to allow no possibility of private ownership of land, as in the Native American tradition, acknowledging free access according to use and custom.

Few people understand that land-tenure is the one and only basis for economic exploitation. I would refer others to Nock and Henry George.

Dichterfreund and Karlof'1--

Is the American Dream grabbing all you can get for yourself, at the expense of everyone else? Working the system and stepping on other people's necks to join the exploiting class? Wealth for a few (hopefully ourselves) at the expense of others--the rest of humanity be damned?

Or is the American Dream the dream of personal freedom, personal economic freedom and equality?

Part of the reason we are where we are today is because a majority of the people in this country subscribe to the first description of the American Dream.

Some older writers observed nearly a hundred years ago that Americans were not so much committed to a classless society as they were to a society in which anyone might be said to have the potential to ascend into the exploiting class. The essential idea was not to do away with class divisions and economic exploitation, but simply to give everyone a shot at becoming an exploiter.

This appears to be what most people have embraced as defining the American Dream. If so, maybe it's time to redefine the American Dream--not only within parameters that would be acceptable to conscience and decency in relation to our fellow humans, but also in relation to the earth and its nonhuman creatures.

Pancho--

You've stated the case really well. The American Dream, as a practical matter, was never the dream of freedom and equality, but the dream of privilege at the expense of others.

While it is a lot "nicer" if those others are out of sight in the third world, most of us have not minded all that much if those "others" also included the poor, and the children of the poor, in our own cities and towns, and have been equally diligent in pursing privilege at their expense.

The "nightmare future" you foresee for America is a payback for our crimes.

And yet there's no evidence that Jefferson advocated the abolishing of private ownership altogether in favor of socialism. He, and his ilk, never had to worry about it -- for a number of important reasons and historical dynamics.

* The country was expanding in 1776, not shrinking (due to population pressure).
* Lots of great rhetoric about Enlightenment ideals at that time, though the majority of people on this continent had no political/land rights: Native Americans, women, slaves, indentured servants, poor Europeans.
* He, himself, was fairly well off -- so these ideals were arguably, for him, more abstracted and less a question of immediate survival/well-being.
* Land was available (literally) "for the taking" (away from the Native Americans or competing European powers), so Jefferson never had to face the issues we face today.

My reading is that the European systems since the era of the Vikings (it was a shortage of land that drove Eric the Red, Lief Erikson, etc. out) has been predicated on inherrently unsustainable economics, and we've failed to adjust to higher population densities, and more centralized wealth. The illusory bounty of land & resources that America enjoyed in its first century 1776-1862 (Homestead Act) or so was predicated on lots of open space. We've not changed our economic system, despite a couple magnitudes increase in population density. The upshot is that our system is showing itself for what it is: basically unchanged since the medieval system.

Predicated on centralization of wealth, power and real estate. Inherited wealth, inherited poverty. A landless class of worker-bees, armies serving private interests, etc. We're basically reverting back to feudalism. Any illusion that we were otherwise was the result of nature's bounty on a continent proportionate to a relatively small number of Homo sapiens.

be still my heart at a mention of the great hero Henry George!

bloofer, you rock! i send them here:

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3046/index.html

know of a better introductory website??

i think his stuff on George is terrific for newbies.

every lion cub to this day is born with its birthright to a place to put its feet still intact. not true for humans. society has stolen everyone's birthright to a place to put their feet off them, sans a dime's compensation.

we tragicomedic humans are so soft on injustice!

Dichterfreund: "People have fled towards America because the cost of living outside Dreamland is rendered so steep by the inhabitants of dreamland." I've been trying a long time to put just such a brief phrase around that thought. Well done.

Pancho: most here are aware of the truth of your assessment. It still hurts to be lumped together with all the other Americans in lullabyland. Working inside the system for change got me nowhere and it looks like revolution will be very hard and bitter work. But it won't happen here until a collapse. Lullabyland, remember? Of course we could hasten a collapse...

bloofer makes a point I've made before. Much of the disenchantment of many Americans would disappear if only we flexed our military and corporate mucsle even more firmly and efficiently. They aint lookin for Dennis Kucinich, but Ghengis Khan.

There is no revolution because the haves have convinced themselves they have a decant job and healthcare and the people who do not do not deserve it. Brought to you by the wepuckagain propaganda machine.

bloofer,

"Is the American Dream grabbing all you can get for yourself, at the expense of everyone else? Working the system and stepping on other people's necks to join the exploiting class? Wealth for a few (hopefully ourselves) at the expense of others–the rest of humanity be damned?

Or is the American Dream the dream of personal freedom, personal economic freedom and equality?"

In the term "American dream", the insubstantive -- the dream -- is made a substantive, while the substantive, 'American', with all its immense material complications, is concealed as a modifier.

The practitioners of the Dream-America simultaneously brutally oppress while rhapsodizing about personal freedom. Thus MamaBush could look on her victims and proclaim that their abandonment & destitution were 'working out rather well for them' -- destitution, carnage, etc., fed into the Dream-America, are all interpreted as proofs that freedom is on the march.

PapaBush, back during GulfMurder I, related the story of Iraqi troops surrendering to his stormtroopers, who reassured them "It's all right, we're Americans." PapaBush wept -- this was shortly after the Highway of Death, where I can't recall how many retreating soldiers & refugees were incinerated by a weapon that compressed & then ignited the air above them.

Xavier Onassis--

Thanks for providing a link to Henry George's writings.

I've never tracked down any information about him on the 'net, but read "Progress and Poverty" a number of years ago because Nock referred to his writings in "Our Enemy, the State." All this happened "back in the day"--when you educated yourself by stumbling onto a good book and then exhausting its bibliography. (No Internet, in other words.)

Over the years, I've posted fairly regularly about the need for land reform in the US. Until the past year or so, I never saw anyone else posting on this issue, and I don't believe I ever got a response to any of my posts.

I think the reaction, until recently, to the idea of land reform in the US was, "WTF?" There were a couple of reasons for that, one of which is lack of understanding of how certain land-tenure systems underlie certain forms of government: Some make for oppressive class systems; others make oppressive class systems an impossibility. (I'd have to refer you to Nock on that one. Nock asserted that Henry George did not seem to realize that doing away with private property in land would mean death to the State.)