The European Dream (7 page)

Granted, a substantial amount of volunteer activity in the religious community is geared toward social services like feeding the poor, providing shelter for the homeless, and making available health-care services to the needy. Still, the overwhelming number of volunteer hours are spent on pastoral and other activity related to the religious institutions’ own perpetuation.

Many proponents of nonprofit engagement argue that civil society organizations are better equipped than government agencies to administer social services to those in need because they are in the communities they serve and are better informed and more motivated to serve their neighbors. All true. The problem is that the volunteer not-for-profit sector in the United States has not been able to provide anywhere near the same level of assistance to the needy and poor that government could were it to play a more activist role—as it does in Europe. And, even with all of the praise heaped on Americans’ civic efforts to provide social services, the fact remains that, in the United States, paid employment in the not-for-profit social services sector still ranks below the average in a comparative study of twenty-two nations. While, on average, one out of four paid jobs in the nonprofit sector in the twenty-two nations studied are in social services, in the United States, only 13.5 percent of all paid nonprofit jobs are in social services.
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None of this is to suggest that America’s civil society is not a formidable force. But much of the motivation behind American civic-mindedness can be traced back to the individualistic and religious roots of the American character. In most of Europe, by contrast, the civil society is far more secular in its orientation and less tied to the Christian notion of individual charity and more to the socialist idea of collective responsibility for the welfare of the community.

Moreover, many of America’s not-for-profit organizations have traditionally served as social supports for the business sector. Adult organizations like Kiwanis Club and Ruritan and youth organizations like Junior Achievement and even 4-H are essentially adjuncts to the commercial arena, even though they are, strictly speaking, nonprofit volunteer organizations.

In recent years, a growing number of observers have begun to notice a steady and even precipitous decline in voluntary participation in the not-for-profit sector in America. Harvard’s Robert Putnam published controversial findings on the decline of the civil society in his book
Bowling Alone
. He attributes the shrinking of American participation in volunteer activity to a number of factors. Putnam believes that approximately 10 percent of the decline in volunteering is attributable to the pressures of time and money, especially on two-career families. Another 10 percent of the decline, according to Putnam, is traceable to suburbanization and sprawl, and the accompanying increase in commuting time, which leaves less time available for involvement in after-work nonprofit activity. The third reason for the decline, however, says Putnam, is the increasing privatization of leisure-time entertainment, and especially the amount of time spent watching television. He estimates that upwards of 25 percent of the decline in civic participation can be connected to electronic entertainment of all kinds. Finally, Putnam argues that half the decline is simply a generational shift, with younger Americans far less interested in giving their time to others and advancing non-pecuniary social goals.
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If he is right, it suggests that the American character has hardened, and that time and money pressures and pursuit of personal pleasure has made us even less willing to look out for the social well-being of our neighbors.

If this is indeed the case—there are those who say that our civic-mindedness has not declined quite as much as Putnam and others imply—then the American Dream would seem to be cocooning even further into the promotion of narrow self-interest, with dire consequences for the well-being of society.

There is, however, another side of the story. It’s not that all Americans are selfish, are lazy, want something for nothing, and are uncaring toward their fellow human beings. Those Americans exist. There are, nonetheless, millions of other Americans who have worked hard, made good on the American Dream, and shared their good fortune with the less fortunate through personal acts of charity and volunteer activity in the community. But there is also an increasing number of other Americans of good character who have simply given up on the American Dream. They believed. They kept their faith, worked hard, applied themselves, constantly improved their skills, saved and sacrificed for a better future for their children, served their communities, and still came up short. They followed the script, only to find disappointment at the end of the story. While a slim majority of 51 percent of American voters still believe it is possible to live the American Dream, what’s shocking is that a third of all Americans (34 percent) no longer think it is possible.
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For many of them, the price of a lotto ticket has become their only chance of living out the American Dream.

Unfortunately, while the ranks of the overindulged and the undervalued have swollen in recent years, the number of Americans who can still lay legitimate claim to living out the American Dream have dwindled in comparison. The result is that the American Dream has suffered immeasurably, losing much of the power it once enjoyed as the defining story that unites the American people.

T
HOSE WORDS were written by a young nineteenth-century American poet, Emma Lazarus, and are inscribed on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty for every émigré to see.

For millions of disheartened Europeans—and later, refugees from other lands—America was the place where they could leave behind their desperate pasts and begin life anew. Here was the great land of opportunity. For most of America’s first two hundred or so years, the myth and the reality of American opportunity were close enough to go unquestioned. Life was tough for each new immigrant. There were few social supports to help one along in this new world. On the other hand, for those who were determined to succeed, diligent to the task, and disciplined in the American work ethic, chances were fair to good that they could make a better life, if not for themselves, at least for their children.

Up until the 1960s, upward mobility was at the core of the American Dream. Then, the dream began to unravel, slowly at first, but picking up momentum in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Today, the U.S. can no longer claim to be the model of upward mobility for the world. That does not mean that there isn’t opportunity for both native-born and newcomers. But the kind of unfettered upward mobility that made America the envy of the world no longer exists.

What’s so strange about the current situation is the role reversal that has occurred between the New World and the Old World in less than a quarter of a century. Just one hundred years ago, Europe was hemorrhaging its people—millions of destitute souls risked life and limb to recast their fortunes in a new continent. These new émigrés were full of uncertainty but also of hope. They were escaping, for the most part, from a long history of hereditary entitlements and class divisions that kept the rich in power and the poor in their place. They left a continent where behavior was conditioned by the belief that everyone should know and accept his or her status in life and came to a new continent where each person was expected to make his or her own way and follow his or her dreams.

Now it is America where upward mobility is slowing, and millions of Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to live out their dreams. Yet, the great American myth of upward mobility continues to live on, despite mounting evidence that what was once a great dream has become, for many, a relentless nightmare. And what of that Old World, that caste-bound, class-defined purgatory so many millions of people fled from to start over in the American Eden? It is slowly becoming the new land of opportunity. More and more emigrants are choosing Europe over America than ever before. They sense that a tide of sorts has turned and that the quality of life and the chance of making a better life might be at least as good in Europe as in America. It’s here, on the front line of upward mobility, that we first begin to discern some of the many differences that separate the older American Dream from the newer European Dream. The numbers tell the story.

If upward mobility thrives best in a society where there is less of a divide between the very rich and the very poor, then, for sure, Europe is a more promising place for those anxious to move on up. According to the data collected by the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the most authoritative database in the world on income distribution, the United States ranks twenty-fourth among the developed nations in income inequality. Only Russia and Mexico rank lower.
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All eighteen of the most developed European countries have less income inequality between rich and poor. In the U.S., the income of a typical high-income person is 5.6 times the income of a typical low-income person, after adjusting for taxes, transfers, and family size.
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By contrast, the income of a typical high-income person in Northern Europe is only 3 times the income of a typical low-income person, and in Central Europe, the income of high-end earners is between 3.18 and 3.54 times the income of low-income earners.
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While inequality is rising even in Europe, the increase is quite modest—with the exception of the U.K.—compared to the sharp increase in the U.S. in income inequality over the past three decades.
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Wages and related benefits is the single best indicator of upward mobility in society. Of the twenty most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s. The average compensation actually fell by 0.3 percent per year during that decade. In the early 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent. Virtually all of the European countries experienced higher compensation growth. Between 1995 and 2000, the average compensation grew by 1.6 percent in the U.S., still lower than seven other European countries. Much of those gains in the U.S., however, were wiped out with the stock-market plunge in 2000.
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Even during the rapid economic recovery of the second half of 2003, the average hourly wage of nonsupervisory jobs in American offices and factories went up only 3 cents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—barely enough to keep even with inflation. This is the slowest wage growth America has experienced in more than forty years.
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Moreover, the jobs being lost pay around $17.00 per hour, while the new jobs being created pay only $14.50 per hour.
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At the same time, corporate profits, as a percentage of national income, reached their highest level since the 1960s.
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One of the best places to look for signs of upward mobility is the manufacturing sector. Unskilled, semiskilled, and skilled production jobs are often the departure points for moving up the income ladder. In 1979, U.S. manufacturing compensation was the highest of any of the industrialized countries in the world. By 2000, U.S. manufacturing compensation had dropped behind five European countries, and most other European countries had significantly closed the gap.
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When it comes to measuring the inequality ratio of the earnings of high-wage earners (those making more than 90 percent of the workforce) and low-wage earners (those making more than only 10 percent of the workforce), the U.S. now enjoys the distinction of having the highest earnings inequality of the top eighteen nations. Looking at all of the numbers together, Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heather Boushey of the Economic Policy Institute conclude that “income mobility appears to be
lower
in the United States than in other OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries.”
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America, it appears, is the land of opportunity for a small segment of high-income earners and a land of misfortune for many others. There are more poor people living in poverty in America than in the sixteen European nations for which data is available. Seventeen percent of all Americans are in poverty, or one out of every six people. By contrast, 5.1 percent of the people of Finland are in poverty, 6.6 percent in Sweden, 7.5 percent in Germany, 8 percent in France, 8.1 percent in the Netherlands, 8.2 percent in Belgium, 10.1 percent in Spain, 11.1 percent in Ireland, and 14.2 percent in Italy.
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How did America, the land of opportunity, allow itself to slip to the bottom of the rankings among developed nations—and far below Europe—on income inequality and poverty? The answer to that question may lie in our perception of why some people become rich while others remain poor. We Americans have, by and large, adopted a laissez-faire attitude about business and commerce. If we just provide everyone with the opportunity to go to school, allow the free market to rule, and make sure the government doesn’t interfere too much in its workings, the motivated and talented will rise to the top on their own accord. And those that aren’t motivated and/or lack talent will not do well—but that’s the nature of things. America was always meant to be a land of “equality of opportunity” but not a land of “equality of results.” “Sink or swim” goes the old American adage.

In America, we have come to believe that everyone is truly responsible for his or her own destiny. It’s the frontier motif, and it is firmly embedded in our national consciousness. Even those Americans who have transformed the authentic American Dream into a pale replica by seeking instant success and fame still feel they are in charge of their fates. All the contrary statistics and figures in the world are not likely to shake the conviction of a majority of our countrymen that America is still the greatest land of opportunity in the world.