Only a dream?

An ABC News/Yahoo News poll revealed that today, only half of us think the American dream — which the pollsters defined as 'if you work hard you'll get ahead' — still holds true, while 43% said that it had once been true. LA Times article

Of course a radio news report of this poll caught my attention as I drove to school this morning.  I was curious about the content of the "dream" people say is not true.  This article tells me: work hard and you'll get ahead.  This is more-or-less how historian Arthur Mann accounted for the fact that there has never been the same sort of socialist movement in the USA as in much of Europe.  I think he called it the roast beef principle, or some such thing.  His point was that Americans believed that they would rise above the limiting conditions and achieve their dreams including having roast beef for dinner.  Both Mann and this poll appear to ground the dream in Eric Foner's notion of economic freedom.  I wonder if the results would have been the same if the definition had pointed more toward moral or personal freedom?

 

The article suggests that lack of faith in the dream is not merely the outcome of the current economic situation, but that it has been coming for sometime.  That suggests that something beyond economic freedom and financial opportunity is essential to the dream, even stated so baldly.