The American/Korean dream

The durable tenant of American mythology is the American dream: lush lawns and well-kept homes, manicured landscaping and gated communities, a crimeless, painless life of upper-middle classdom, of children with good teeth and good schools, husbands (and wives) gainfully employed, and in general, prosperity overflowing with milk and honey. President Reagan referred to it as a “shining city on a hill.”

If you work hard, play by the rules, toil on the good earth, providence will most likely reward your efforts; you’ll become part of the landed gentry, and all will be well.

Smarter people knew better, that the American dream was riddled with inconsistencies and has become more and more difficult to achieve. Race and sex and class aside, financial success in America has become harder and harder to achieve in the last 30 years for many other reasons too but I place the blame where it mostly belongs in democratic societies: the people.

We have elected politicians who believe in trickle-down economics, that the “job creators” should be rewarded for their vast wealth and influence with more of both, that higher and higher concentrations of wealth and power will somehow translate to a better society.

Literally, all the historical evidence, economic data, and socio-political studies show the exact opposite: plutocracies lead to political capture by the plutocrats, destabilization of the social fabric, bloody revolutions and communist regimes.

The American (and Korean) presidential campaigns show this in stark relief, that is, plutocrats vying to represent the “little people.” President Barack Obama, Governor Mitt Romney, and all three Korean presidential candidates are wealthy, and all, except Rep. Moon Jae-in, are millionaires.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were wealthy, so wealth does not preclude advocating for the middle and working classes. And wealth is not a sin. Nor is it a virtue. Wealthy people pressing for policies that aid them and harm the rest of the body politic is where the problems lie.

Many Koreans, especially young Koreans, are coming to the conclusion that a university education and the work and expense of such an endeavor, indeed that society is based on work and merit and not hereditary wealth and privilege, is bogus.

Chaebol, all those family-run corporations in the Korean economy, transfer wealth and power to their progeny, and further expand their influence and economic heft into more and more markets, squeezing out smaller firms and becoming very close to monopolies.

And so, the Korean dream, of upward social mobility powered by merit and hard work, seems more and more disingenuous, no less unreal, or at least highly difficult to obtain, as the American dream from which it was partially patterned from.

The results are in. Upward social mobility in America is at its lowest levels in generations, spurred on by lower and lower taxes on the wealthy, carried interest, low capital gains tax, loopholes, lobbyists and a lazy, apathetic, disengaged voting population, pacified by gadgetry and gimmickry.

As we elect or re-elect leaders of America and Korea, we should think long and hard about the ramifications of the policies they espouse, lest the Korean dream, and the American dream become, perhaps irretrievably, as ephemeral as any nice dream brought on by good wine and a full stomach. <The Korea Times/Deauwand Myers>