David McElroy

What does “the American Dream” mean to you? When I was growing up, I saw it as the opportunity that everyone had to build a better life for himself. We defined it as having a comfortable, affluent life and a happy family, but it was very definitely an opportunity — a chance to create a Horatio Alger story in real life.

Today, the idea that poor people can raise themselves out of poverty and into middle-class security and comfort through their own work and determination is considered a myth by many, especially those on the progressive left. They believe that those born into poverty can’t do anything about it. They believe that someone has to give something to those people or they’ll never have anything. The people who believe this have spent most of the last hundred years slowly getting that idea into the public consciousness.

Jack Chambless is an economics professor at Valencia College in Orlando. On the first day of class last fall, he asked 180 students to take 10 minutes to write an essay about what the American Dream was to them and what they expected the federal government to do to help them achieve what they wanted. The results were frustrating, but not surprising.

They all pretty much wanted families, good jobs, houses and money to have comfortable lives. There was nothing surprising there. But when it came to what they expected from the government, the vast majority wanted something for nothing. Among the samples Chambless quotes in his article about the experiment:

Keep Reading

If you’re allergic to bad grammar and poor word usage, you have to be very careful who you hang out with, because it can be dangerous. (In fairness, though, I should point out that there’s a missing comma in the last frame, but maybe the victim is too sick to realize it.)

Keep Reading

We keep hearing about the European debt crisis, but most of us know fairly little about it. All we know is that things are bad enough that The European Union has been considered on the verge of collapse over the issue and that Greece and Italy are the worst offenders. (Ireland is said to be pretty sick now, too.)

So what do we make of this chart from the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget? (Click the chart above if you’d like to see it at a bigger size.) According to the chart, the per capita debt of the United States is already worse than that of Europe’s supposed basket case countries. What does that say about us?

According to Republicans on the Budget Committee, U.S. per capita debt would jump all the way to $75,000 by 2022 under Barack Obama’s proposed budget. Look at the other four charts on that page as well. If those numbers don’t scare you, you’re either too jaded to care or else you believe (as I do) that the debt will never be paid back, because the government will default at some point.

Keep Reading