Belief In "The American Dream" Is Falling

The predominant belief in the United States has been that anyone who is willing to work hard has the opportunity to better themselves, and climb the economic ladder as far as they wish. It's what many refer to as the "American Dream". Back in 1952, about 87% of the U.S. population believed that, and as late as 1998 about 81% still believed it was true.

But that was before the GOP's trickle-down policy was kicked into high gear during  the Bush administration -- resulting in the encouragement of job outsourcing, the stagnation of worker wages, the shrinking of the middle class, and the most serious recession since the Great Depression (while the rich received huge tax cuts, and were allowed to gobble up almost all of the country's increase in income from rising productivity).

Now the public's belief in the existence of economic opportunity in America has fallen drastically (as the top chart shows) -- to 57% in 2011 and then to 52% in 2013. And the belief that not much opportunity exists these days has climbed sharply. Currently 43% of Americans believe that economic opportunity (the American Dream) no longer exists.

And while many Americans believe opportunity no longer exists, they also believe the economic system we currently have is not a fair one. After watching the rich get much richer while the workers fall further behind and the middle class grows smaller, creating a vast gap in wealth and income between the rich and the rest of America, many Americans now believe the economic system is slanted to favor the rich (to the detriment of everyone else). The second and third charts above show this significant drop in belief of economic fairness, and rise in believe of economic unfairness in the United States.

It is understandable why this belief in a fundamentally unfair economy is growing. The public has not only seen the wealth and income gap grow much larger, but they have also seen the rich (and the corporations) bounce back quickly from the recession -- while the effects of the recession (high unemployment and a falling median wage) continue to plague most other Americans.

The Republicans sold the American people a fraudulent "bill of goods" with their trickle-down economic policy -- and that failed policy has done serious damage to the American economy. And that policy is not only unfair to most, but is killing belief in the American Dream. We must vote the GOP out of power and change that economic policy before it completely kills the American Dream.

NOTE -- The charts above are from a recent Gallup Poll (conducted between September 25th and October 2nd of 1,000 nationwide adults, with a 4 point margin of error).