The Downside Of The American D Essay, Research Paper

Summary of the Kevin Philips s Essay

The Downside of the American Dream

In the essay The Downside of the American Dream Kevin Phillips brings up the issue that by the end of 80-s the American dream was endangered. By the American dream he means the middle class, a stable family with children, a sense of security in life, a house, a car, college education for kids. He believes that all of that became almost impossible for the average American, especially young married couples, blue-collar workers and single mothers, in spite of some encouraging statistics that showed increase of national per capita income. Kelvin Phillips thinks that this number doesn t display the real life situation because it doesn t take into consideration many aspects like inflation, growing economic polarization of families with different backgrounds, rising percentage of working women, and many others. These aspects affect the overall income growth but they don t bring an average American closer to the American dream .

Inflation gives the impression of higher income and raises national per capita income; however, inflation-adjusted income goes down. The author points at the fact that many families had to give up their dreams about homeownership and college education for children because of skyrocketing prices. Income transfers to the most affluent population of United States while an average pay of industrial workers, especially ones with no more than a high-school diploma, goes down dramatically and causes increase of economic polarization. The situation in big cities like New York and Baltimore with a large percentage of unemployable population aggravates this problem.

The rising number of working women offsets the loss in family income and gives the illusion of well-being; however, in many cases, wives and mothers had to take marginal jobs to support their families financially. Here Kevin Phillips brings up another very sensitive issue. Decreasing dollar income affects the family morals. Leisure time of an average American goes down, families shrink and even break down. Misleading low unemployment rates caused by wrong calculation that exclude a big number of employable Americans and an increasing rate of part-time and temporary jobs interfere with the growing concern of white-collar and blue-collar workers about job security and fear to loose their jobs.

All these facts supported with a lot of statistics make Kelvin Phillips s point of view very strong and ensure the reader that by 1988 the American dream became just an illusory dream for an average American and was much further from its realization then it was back in 70-s.