"FROM RAGS TO RICHES"? ... "AND BACK"?

The "Promise" Betrayed??  

The United States of America is fabled as a country in which a citizen is permitted to rise from "rags" to "riches", based on a combination of toil, dedication, vision, and luck.  The riches achieved most often benefit families that include children who inherit the wealth.  "From rags to riches, and back again; within three generations" is what I was taught to be commonplace in this country.  The first generation created wealth, the second "spent" the wealth and lived an easier life doing that. 
The third generation was often the one that completely squanders the wealth; implicitly because of less dedication, vision, and skill.  The government promised to neither block the aspirations of individuals, nor to protect individuals from foolishly losing the wealth they achieve.

 

The laws and cultural norms were claimed to be drawn so as to support the notion that "anyone" could "make it".  There is a sense, at this point in my life, that this notion is no longer widely held in this country today, compared to what was widely expected by citizens a hundred years ago (1914).  A Great Depression (1933), and a Lesser Depression (2008) have a lot to do with this diminishment of expectation for achieving riches in one lifetime.  Today there is a widening sense that the "deck is stacked" against those not born to wealth.

 

"Caveat Emptor", or "let the buyer beware" seems a somehow "quaint"  notion in the wake of several generations of "shop-a-holics" born and raised after World-War- II.  "Thrift"  is a notion that has been abandoned, as citizens who remember the Great Depression have "passed on".  Consumerism became government policy at a time when a War on Poverty was launched.  That war has been "lost", as was also a War on Drugs; begun a decade later.

 

"Conservative" habits like saving, frugality, and wise investment, have been allowed to fade, while "rolling economic bubbles" have occurred; beginning with the great "Oil Boycott" during Nixon's term in office.  The devastation to the savings of individuals and families has mounted as the "bubbles" became successively more severe and complex.  The complicity of the Federal Government in these events became more commonplace after Lyndon Johnson's term in office, and reached it peak during the Cheney/Bush terms in office.  Voters lost their ability to deal with economic events; as can be seen by comparing the "common sense" of voters in 1948 to the lack thereof in the elections of 2000,  and 2004.  Elections since 2008 have been mired in the devastation of the Collapse of 2008.  We've not yet struggled free, due to the inability of voters to demand and reward clean government, at all levels.  Technology, coupled with the ability of dedicated groups to "solidify" their economic standing, have produced a "stratified" economic social order that trends toward the destruction of the age-old promise of wealth achievement by skilled individuals.

 

Stay Vigilant!  Is the wise management of assets becoming more important than the ability to acquire them? 

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