Thoughts on jobs and dignity

Aziz Rana's makes the point here that Obama represents a shift in what we can point to as successful realizations of the American dream. No longer, he says, are the avenues of farming, industrial work, or small business ownership a possible way for large amounts of people to obtain self-respect in society. The modern success story, as realized in Obama, involves going to college and becoming a professional elite, or working one's way up the corporate or political ladder, and in general becoming powerful.

Now, I think somebody being president will always speak to the aspect of the American dream that involves gaining power. As to the story of being worthy of respect without being a bourgeois professional or power broker, I'm not sure that's gone away in America. McCain's campaign certainly showed that. But there is the idea that someone who works in industry as a laborer is living a less successful like than a lawyer, if our guidance councilors' advice is any indication.

But Rana is right to point out that regardless of what we're supposed to aspire to, a lot of people are perfectly happy not to have a flashy job title. They're happy to be a working person, and to provide for themselves or for their families. But this version of the American dream does seem to be getting harder to obtain with the way real wages are going.

I'm not sure I've bought the idea that people are so much worse off now. A lot of people can afford nutrition and technology that they could never afford before. Talking about real wages falling puts the question in materialistic terms, and I'm not sure that the American dream has become less possible in gross accumulation of goods. Consider what an ipod would have cost in 1970. Perhaps what has changed is the minimum level of income for self and social respect has changed, and there lies the problem.