“The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity.”
“ The greatest period, economically, for our country and the time when the great middle class was created was that period from the late forties to the mid-1970s. It was a period in which labor unions were very strong, taxes were much higher than they are now, regulations were much tighter—we had Glass-Steagall in the financial industry, for example—and things worked much better. It was when that began to unravel starting in the mid-seventies, coming all the way up to the 21st century that things went haywire and you see where we are now. ”
(Source: MSNBC)
“ For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor, other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness. ”
(Source: millercenter.org)
“ Rising inequality is beginning to produce a two-tiered society in America in which the more affluent citizens live lives fundamentally different from the middle- and lower-income groups. This divide decreases a sense of community. ”
(Source: The New York Times)
“Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status; they didn’t mind others being rich as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense: the idea that anyone can make it… Social mobility in America is declining.”
“ The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream 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, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position… The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. ”
“ I don’t think that many Americans resent the success of people who make a lot of money fairly earned. I think what bothers people is that the country has gotten so much more unequal over the last 30 years. ”
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
“When generations of immigrants looked up and saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time, one thing they knew beyond any doubt, and that is they were coming to a place where anything was possible, that in America, their children would have a better life. I believe in that America. I believe you believe in that America. Though each of us comes from very different backgrounds, though each of has chosen to walk a different path in life, we are united by one great, overwhelming passion: we love America. We believe in America. The spirit of enterprise, innovation, pioneering, and can-do propelled our standard of living and economy beyond that of any other nation on Earth… We stand for freedom, and opportunity, and hope. The principles that made this nation a great and powerful leader of the world have not lost their meaning; they never will.”
“ May those generations whose faces we cannot yet see, whose names we may never know, say of us here that we led our beloved land into a new century with the American Dream alive for all her children; with the American promise of a more perfect union a reality for all her people; with America’s bright flame of freedom spreading throughout all the world. ”
(Source: bartleby.com)
