N4: American Dream

The American Dream has never just been about getting by when you work hard and play by the rules. It has never just been about affordable groceries. The true American Dream has never been so small, so limited.

The true American Dream is young hope and aspiration. It’s wonder and ambition. It’s imagining a future of great possibilities: new families, new homes, new careers, new creations, new friends, new plans, new adventures. It’s each of us getting to shape our own destiny. It’s the spirit of America.

This is the American Dream that the Counting Class endangers. Counts throttle opportunity, hoard resources, and force their own whims and wants on us all. And Counts act like we’re not smart enough to see their game for what it truly is. They advertise freedom and opportunity for all, but keep real freedom and opportunity for just themselves.

Counts try to sell the American Dream back to Americans as a kind of casino. They promote the possibility for a few of us to win big payoffs. They try to stir up feelings of envy and greed. They sell a shot-to-try-for-a-chance-to-win and call it opportunity.

But Americans know this predatory scam is not the American Dream. Casinos promise the maximum but only deliver the minimum. And Counts are like the casino operators. They aren’t gambling along with the rest of us. They’re counting on the clockwork math that ensures the house always wins. That’s nothing like the equal opportunity that anchors the promise of the American Dream.

Keeping that promise for each new generation takes a real commitment. And young Americans today know we haven’t done enough. They start out in a world where the Counting Class has already amassed extreme money impossible to match. They bear out-of-control costs for education, child care, and housing. They face terribly unclear job prospects. And they can see that Counts are taking apart the public options that would have offered them help and protection.

The extreme money of the Counting Class corrupts the American Dream. Counts shut down our chance to shape our own futures.

We can renew the American Dream for all when we reclaim America’s Public Gains and put them back into our KIRE Engine of Prosperity. We can trim back extreme Money Counts and fuel Public Investment at the American standards of equal freedom, equal security, and equal opportunity.

The pursuit of happiness is the possibility of America. It’s everything from trying to get rich, to enjoying the simple pleasures of life, without constant stress and worry. America is where we each choose our own destiny.