THE AMERICAN DREAM - And Economic Reality

COMMENT:  What do you expect when our nation is effectively run by 1% of its citizens?

"Is economic reality wiping out the American dream?" PBS NewsHour 12/11/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  By many measures, the U.S. economy seems to have picked up steam this year.  And the most recent jobs report saw the best results since January 2012.

But many Americans say they are still doubtful about economic opportunity and the ability to move up the ladder.  In fact, a new poll by The New York Times found the public is more pessimistic than it was right after the financial collapse.  Just 64 percent of those surveyed said they still believed it was possible to become wealthy if they started out poor.

That’s a pronounced drop from 2009 and the lowest level in two decades.  The poll also sampled opinions with some surprising answers on a range of economic issues.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, a columnist for The New York Times and editor at large of its DealBook section, joins us now.  He also co-hosts Squawk Box on CNBC.

Welcome back to the NewsHour.

You know, we have been seeing, I guess, coming off the midterm elections that Americans don’t feel good about the economy, despite the statistics that say otherwise. But this poll that The Times has done suggests a much deeper, long-term kind of pessimism.

How do you explain it?

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN, The New York Times:  Well, you know, we wanted to try to look at this concept of the American dream, this concept of mobility, of starting poor and really becoming rich.

We also asked people what they thought rich meant, and I would tell you we thought some of those answers were quite surprising.  You don’t need to be a millionaire in this country to be considered rich.  About 25 percent, 26 percent of the respondents said, if you can make $100,000 or $200,000, that was very wealthy in this country.

But we wanted to look into that mobility issue, and so many people repeatedly said they didn’t think that mobility existed in the same way that they thought it might have existed before.  And, frankly, what was most surprising about it was that people thought that they had a better shot even three years ago, after the financial crisis.

And I think that it’s really a demonstration of the tale of two countries, if you will, when it comes to the economy that we have seen over the past years, which really goes to this larger issue of inequality.