Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Sunday, November 25th, 2012

It’s Hard to Make it In America: How the U.S. Stopped Being the Land of Opportunity

Author:     LANE KENWORTHY
Source:     Foreign Affairs
Publication Date:     November/December 2012
 Link: It’s Hard to Make it In America: How the U.S. Stopped Being the Land of Opportunity
Stephan:   Here is the hard truth few want to talk about. We, as a country must reorganize ourselves if we are to prosper. This is what happens to all empires. In theory this trend can be reversed, but whether we can end our denial and gather the political will to do so is not clear; some would say it is not likely.

For all the differences between Democrats and Republicans that were laid bare during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, the parties’ standard-bearers, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, do seem to have agreed on one thing: the importance of equal opportunity. In remarks in Chicago in August, Obama called for an ‘America where no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, no matter what your last name is, no matter who you love, you can make it here if you try.’ The same month, he urged the Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action in public universities, putting his weight behind what has been a mainstay of U.S. equal opportunity legislation since the 1960s. Days later, the Republican vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, echoed Obama’s sentiment, saying, ‘We promise equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.’ Romney, too, argued that whereas Obama ‘wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society,’ his administration would ‘ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.’

It is no accident that both campaigns chose to emphasize equality of opportunity. It has long been at the center of the American ethos. And one of the United States’ major successes […]

Read the Full Article