The moral imperative of the dollar

[shereth]

On Wednesday, my sister and her husband invited me over to their house after work for the ostensible purpose of providing feedback on some "business" that they are currently engaged in

Comments

[keoniphoenix]

There is a number of vested interests in the "neoconservative" moment that warrants the offer of the American Dream through really bad business practices. The Republican party itself is a descendent of the Whig Party which is a descendent of the Federalist Party all of which historically were big business protectionists. Though that's been slowly de-emphasized in the modern party, there are still many who come from "Old Money" who cling to those views to protect their business investments. The modern party is starting to be collection of every changing "New Money" but how much of an influence that has on the future of the party is beyond me.

I though really consider the American Dream to be a corrupted ideal. Not one that exists today as the same it was 60 years ago. In the 1950s when it was at its peak, the American Dream was the result of large period of economic growth after World War II. During the war, shortages and restrictions on purchasing goods mean that families were more or less forced to save much of their money. This forced savings entered the economy started in 1947 when much of the war-time restrictions were lifted. The success of the post war economy in the last 60 years has been completely eliminated by large deficit spending and more importantly a dramatically reduced savings culture that became replaced by a chronic reliance on credit, often at the expense of becoming overextended. I'm starting to favor the idea that the reason why our post 2008 recession recovery has been so anemic is because of the excessive credit load on the Millennials and their parents who were harmed by having their creditworthiness wiped out by the housing market and excessive student loan debt, only being made worse by creeping inflation from government spending. And this reliance on credit to obtain symbols of status like a house and a car in the garage, the symbol of the American Dream has become seriously twisted into an almost unobtainable mess.