It’s time to take back the American Dream
It’s time to take back the American Dream. The American Dream has been repeatedly hijacked by too many people in the name of self-interest to remotely resemble what it looked like when it was first coined back in 1931. It is time to separate home ownership from the American Dream. Or, more precisely, it is time to separate the home-debtorship from the American Dream.
Somewhere along the way we went sideways and the American Dream went from being synonymous with equal opportunity to being synonymous with material success. And most of the shift was driven by the crafty marketing folks at your local real estate company, car dealership, big box store and other outlet where you can have a better today by simply financing the future. It’s time to separate the dream from the debt.
I’m calling out the marketers, the hucksters, the politicians, your elected officials, your history teachers, your real estate agent, your greedy friends and everyone across the country that had their hand in the mutation of the American Dream. Yeah - you. The Century 21 marketing department, the NAR and everyone who bastardized the American Dream in an attempt to make a quick buck. I’m calling out the greedy and ignorant Americans who fell in to the rabbit snare of corporate marketing in attempt to keep up with the Jonses by foolishly leveraging their three-digit FICO score for a new Escalade instead of a decent safety cushion. I’m calling out anyone who has taken the American Dream and stretched it, rearranged it and put it back together in to an unrecognizable form that only celebrates the material wealth of a country bent on consumption.
How did Housing Get Dragged in to this?
From Wikipedia on the American Dream:
Although wealth is a generally assumed characteristic of the American Dream, there are other aspects of the American Dream that some would argue are more important than the mere accumulation of wealth. Modarres (2007) explains that a major source of wealth and intergenerational transfer of wealth is real estate. Purchasing a home is perhaps the most important investment many Americans will make. With that statement, it can be assumed that the American Dream can be achieved, but can be achieved to its highest value with the investment in real estate.
This is what has been lost in translation. Americans stopped accumulating real wealth through real estate and started accumulating imaginary wealth (equity) through riding an asset bubble fueled by cheap debt. Americans haven’t been amassing wealth - quite the opposite - they have been gorging on debt.
The American Dream somewhere got twisted from opportunity to an impulsive need to satisfy our material urges at the expense of sound personal fiscal policy. Now with the credit markets in shambles, the housing market no longer able to bail us out of our debt-fueled consumption a whole generation is going to learn the hard way that the American Dream is not about two SUV’s in every garage and a turkey in every pot.
Living the American Nightmare
Listen folks the American Dream is no longer about homeownership. Homeownership is a myth to most people who reside in single family homes. Many are highly debt-burdened and the declining market has sapped whatever remaining equity they might have had. Homeowners are not looking at their homes as the pinnacle of the American Dream. To the contrary many are regarding their under-water McMansion as the American Nightmare - a prison they can’t escape without making some difficult choices that challenge their morals and who they are as responsible citizens.
About a month ago I had numerous people calling me - my friends - who were asking me how bad it would be to walk away from their homes. Rational, intelligent, college-educated folks looking for a way out of the strangle-hold that is their ridiculous mortgage payment. Rest assured that they are not living the American Dream - they are handcuffed to a property that isn’t worth the debt it secures and only promises to provide a life-time of payments with little prospect for true ownership.
It’s time to take back the American Dream.
Can you blame them?
So can you blame the homeowners, tied to a sinking debt-anchor, who think about walking away? They can see the bail out of Bear Stearns, they can see the backing of Wall Street and they wonder aloud, “Where is the relief on Main Street?” And if there will be none they will take matter in to their own hands. For they are using wisdom of the crowds. They know that banks and lending institutions will not shut their doors to an entire generation of consumers who’ve forsaken their credit to rid themselves of the mistake of a lifetime. They are making a calculated gamble that some politician somewhere will come along and rescue them from the effects of credit exhausted in a national spasm of gluttony. We’re all subprime now.
A Call to Arms
So I’m putting out a call to arms for those of you that still believe in the American Dream. That believe that the American Dream is more about opportunity and less about credit. A dream that is based on the chance of real, lasting success and wealth, and not the superfluous symbols of wealth flaunted by the Orange County bourgeoisie. It’s time to take back the American Dream from the NAR, the Century 21’s, the Best Buys and any other company and their marketing department who extols us to just charge it. The American Dream is not about debt - it’s the antithesis of all of the marketing messages that have been bombarding us during the current credit bubble.
Take a Stand
So take a stand. Tell people what you think the American Dream means. Tell them that the American Dream is about opportunity not opulence. Talk about ownership and fiscal responsibility instead of financing and balance transfers. Let’s take back the American Dream. Let’s rescue it from the white-knuckled grasp of credit companies everywhere. Let’s make the American Dream a reality once again and restore its promise to its rightful place in our hearts and minds.