Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

Wealth Ine******y
by Jaime O’Neill | July 22, 2021 - 6:43am

The American Dream has expanded greatly since many of us were young. In those quaint old days, if you had a job that put a roof over your head, a paycheck that allowed you to make a down payment on a motor vehicle, and enough disposable income to take a vacation in that car with your loving spouse, your 2.5 children, and your dog, Spot, you had it made. In the shade.

For a big swath of Americans, even that modest dream is now impossible. You can work two jobs and your spouse can, too, and you still may not be able to rent an apartment, let alone buy a house. As for vacations, fuggedaboutit.

But for a better class of Americans, the dream not only endures, it has become stupendous. Awesome. Glorious. Better than ever. With the luck and pluck of a Horatio Alger hero, you can now dream an American dream far more lavish than that old discarded one.

In fact, if you really want to lay your claim to the 21st century iteration of the American Dream, you'd better look to the skies. If you set your sights on becoming part of the civilian space force, you just might get there from wh**ever low place you now occupy. It's the dreaming that does the trick. A true American is all about the dreaming. Pie in the sky doesn't necessarily await you in the sweet bye and bye. If you've got what it takes, however, it's a dream for this world, not the next.

Even if you're in a homeless encampment under a freeway somewhere, surrounded by several dozen similar wretches, you should be inspired by the selfless examples of space cadets like Buck Branson, Flash Bezos, or Elon Musk, Space Cowboy. These guys, and other heroes like them, raise the bar for the rest of us. And though it's probably unlikely many of us lesser folk can match them in their exalted visions, their super-sized egos, their chutzpah, and their uniquely American penchant for uncontrolled avariciousness, they do give us reasons to take p***e in our country once again. Except for Branson, of course, who gives the Brits p***e again.

Where else could ordinary people presume to even dream of enjoying four minutes of weightlessness at the edge of space? Where but in the country founded on the principle of individual initiative could common folks aspire to becoming almost entirely exempt from the burden of taxation?

But dreaming is cheap. Realizing dreams is more expensive. If your dreams don't include the highest heights, whether they're on Mount Everest or in the vastness of space, your dreams were too modest. Without big dreams, you'll never fly with the big boys. Don't let that tatty old old American Dream contain you. It was always too small. Dream bigger. Much bigger. Then follow your bliss, damnit. Ditch that crummy shopping cart and filthy sleeping bag. Trade in your sack of recyclable bottles and cans for a vision of yourself slipping the surly bounds of earth.

"Freedom," as we know, "is just another word for nothing left to lose." That was according to Kris Kristofferson. He came up with that line way back when he was still drinking far too much, but it can still bring comfort to those with nothing. Now, of course, freedom means having enough money to ensure that the rules don't apply to you. You can buy an army of lawyers. You can build a rocket ship shaped like a phallus. You can flaunt your wealth in ways that would have made an Arab Prince blush. If you have far more money than you can conceive of ways to spend it, with wealth exceeding damn anything and everything money can buy, then freedom is truly yours. If not, probably not. You aren't like to be given the keys to a shiny new rocket ship, but if you play your cards right, the guy at the convenience store may sometimes give you keys to the toilet without too much hassle. And if you have no access to a restroom, you can always go s**t in the woods, like that proverbial bear, so long as you don't get caught by a cop or a forest ranger. If you're black, that could be a death sentence.

You can do better than that. Just reach down and snatch up those boot straps, bub. As Oprah has taught us, "the biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams." Apparently, many Americans dreamt of sleeping under freeway overpasses. And what an adventure that is for them. If they're happy with that, more power to them.

But it might get you out of your muddy rut to heed the wise words of Richard Branson, the Rocket Man who once proclaimed: "if your dreams don't scare you, your dreams are too small." Doesn't that make sense? He had the courage to dream he could become rich beyond the horizons of dream. You, on the other hand, merely dreamt the dream that the 7-Eleven manager would hand over the key to the toilet without a fuss. So here you are, earth-bound, s**tty, and sleeping outside with a bad respiratory problem.

If you'd had the perspicacity of men like America's current crop of private sector dreamers, you might have made it into the stratospheric wealth they know, wealth that soars above the reach of the tax laws. With better dreams, you might have gone where few have gone before, to that heaven above where a very special few pay no taxes at all. Their income tax bracket underwrites most any whim they can come up with.

So, before you give up on that expensive star-struck dream of taking a 16-minute flight to nowhere and back, just remember that such dreams involve the courage to take risks. You have to risk breaking any number of federal and state laws that keep so many people from attaining wealth. As Balzac wrote, "behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

And, as Ayn Rand once wrote: "The question isn't who is going to let me. it's who is going to stop me." Motivational speaker and life coach Tony Gaskins observed, "If you don't build your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs." In the case of Jeff Bezos, that means legions of people rushing around the globe building his wealth with every harried moment and every drop of sweat. No one's going to stop him.

Don't let the roar of traffic overhead diminish your capacity to dream. In fact, if you imagine that freeway noise as the sound of a rocket ship blasting you to the edge of the earth's atmosphere, you might d**g your lazy ass out into the world, grab a couple of minimum wage jobs, live frugally, save every penny you can spare, and look to that glorious day when you too become a space tourist, livin' the dream with a ticket to ride.

Because you're an American, damn it, and you live in a country where your only limitation is the size of your dreams.

Or so we're told.

Now step aboard the Way Back machine and listen to a song that sucks almost as much as these rich bastards do.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Enjoyed this post

When I was a kid, I also enjoyed Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon at the Saturday matinee.

Kevyn

A very pointed essay that describes a second gilded age that we must tear down with tax and labor law reforms the same way we ended the last one and built the greatest middle class in the history of the world. It was done once we need to demand that it is done again.

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

I can equate giving money to already rich people the equivalent piling more dirt on dead people. It benefits neither.

Strycker Loc: The middle of somewhere else.

There is a reason why the wealthy names today are not the same names as the wealthy names 20 or 30 years ago. Wealth is mobile and changes hands often in a capitalist society. Not so much under socialism or c*******m where the wealth goes to the top and stays there.

Justice101

Nice little "bleeding heart" piece. Dreams are nice, but they can't buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, right?
Some ambition and hard work also goes a long way in the mission to "find your dream"

So DREAM ON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89dG8deOCA

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Video unavailable

Justice101

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

For wh**ever reason...same result: 'video unavailable'

Would it possibly be 'Dream On', by Aerosmith

Justice101

I'm very sorry. I copied the url off of the internet. Youtube isn't always my friend.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

It happens. Don't worry about it.