Losing the American Dream

Legendary guitarist George Benson once sang, “I believe the children are our future…” (Yes, I know that the song was re-recorded by someone else, but her manner of demise leaves me remiss in mentioning her, so I’ll stick to the original.) However, it seems that our future is in trouble. The American dream is slipping away for many of our young people (ages 16-24), and—if this continues—our nation could be faced with third-world conditions with people depending on the government to survive.

Obviously, that is my assessment of the situation. However, to back up my concerns, here are some facts from two recent studies that paint a bleak picture of our nation’s future.

A story reported by Fox News discusses a study by the Southern Education Foundation that showed that “for the first time in 40 years, the majority of public school students in 13 southern and four western states are living at poverty levels.”

The picture becomes a bit darker when you take into account another study published by Opportunity Nation—this study found that one in seven of our young people are neither working nor in school.

So much for taking care of the future.

Now do you understand why I believe that—if this trend continues along with a weak economy—it will lead to disaster for our nation’s status as a world leader? Once the ripple effect is set into motion, the rest of the world could be impacted as well—a once-stable force reduced in stature could lead to global economic instability.

Whether other nations can rise to the task of a stabilizing the global economy is yet to be seen. China’s economy has begun to slow, and Russia—now under the rule of Vladimir Putin—has enough inner strife to make it a rather risky choice as a global economic leader.

Like ObamaCare, there is a drastic difference between hype and reality, as we are now witnessing. 

I often have written about the effects of destabilization and its impact on communities. I believe these studies show the potential to deprive this nation of our future leaders in many areas, such as math, science, and technology. The United States continues to slip in the world rankings regarding education, and these new concerns certainly won’t help matters.

Another disturbing quote from the Fox News story came from Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution, who stated, “We have too many kids who graduate from high school who are not well-educated, they're not good in reading, they're not good in their numbers and they're not prepared to learn a lot more that a company would want them to learn in order for them to work for that company…”

Although the United States spends the most money in the world on education, we tend to get the least “bang for the buck,” as the saying goes. We are becoming a nation of have-nots, to use a colloquialism.

Alas, this situation is not exactly new. As stated in the story, the issue can be traced as far back as 1965, when Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed to single-parent families as one of the leading causes of this still growing problem.

We have become a nation of entitled people, and there seems to be no end in sight to this trend. If there is an attempt to reign in these “tickets to being elected,” as I like to refer to them, we will see an uprising similar to those that have taken place recently in Europe—which is on the verge of its own financial collapse.

Today, it appears that “accountability” is a bad word. Political correctness has run amuck while public apathy eats away at the very fabric that made this nation the most powerful on the face of this planet.

I fear that we are following in the path of ancient Rome. And, if you take the time to study history, you’ll know how that story ended.

I, for one, am not going to grab my proverbial fiddle while the fire rages…