The American dream refers to the desire of owning a house. It has to be a house. A condo, townhouse, or the like do not count as much. The desire of owning a house hunts people. They are ready to work, to slave, to die for the house.
The homebuilders are not only selling 4 walls, they are selling dreams. The dream of having a family, of seeing your child grow in the house, of growing old in the house. All these dreams are unrealistic as not many people now can say that they are able to live in one place for the rest of their life, mainly because no one is sure that they will be able to work in the same region for many years.
As prices grew higher and higher, the quality of the houses fell lower and lower. Nevertheless, the American dream is alive and thriving. People dream of having a house. They dream of taking up a large sum of money from the bank and paying the triple or so of this sum over time to the bank in exchange of being the kings of their domain.
Isn't this price too high?
As long as people keep dreaming the dream, builders will keep selling the dream. Nothing will change.
So, millions of people slave their entire life to pay the triple sum to the bank. In exchange they stress out, fall sick, and even divorce. Children do not see their parents, parents do not see their children. They all live in a dream. Their reality of owning the house has turned to be less enjoyable than the dream. Nevertheless they hope that by the time they have paid off the house, they would still have time to enjoy their live in the house.
The children move out.
The husband dies.
The state sells the house and sends the lonely wife to the nursery home, so that there she can receive 'qualified care.' The money for the house pays for the last years of her life. No one visits her as she became a stranger to her children because she was never there for them.
She lived the American dream. They all have. Isn't it time to dream other dreams?
Applause... applause. Great post!!
ReplyDeleteThe American dream began towards the end of the 1950's to early 1960's. Suburbia became the "new black" and America (with the help of V.P. Nixon) hyper-advertised the notion of materialism and wealth by deeming it, "the way of life" (also with the help of marketing and advertising corporations). America stood as the wealthiest country in the world while trying to convert other countries of its capitalistic nature. With credit cards and the population's need for abundance (due to brainwashing), we were definitely down for a downward financial slope. And now look where we got ourselves into... *sigh*
I do think that America has more of a money management problem than "wanting" more money to pay off debts (aka working to exhaustion = $$$).
Oh, if you log in to your account, go to my blog and at the top left hand corner after the blog search text box, there's a "Follow" link. Thanks for wanting to follow my blog. :-)
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