Redreaming the dream
McCarthy, Abigail
Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy REDREAMING THE DREAM ANOTHER RESPONSE TO THE MIDDLE-CLASS CRISIS RONALD REAGAN sees some comparison between himself and Franklin Roosevelt. He lent himself...
...For example, the illustrations President Reagan used at his anniversary press conference turned out to be the stuff of dreams...
...There is no way that we can turn back the clock to the inflation-free, energy-abundant days of yesterday...
...He is vice president and chief economics officer of the huge and influential Bank of America...
...That was not all...
...where twice as many people were fed by volunteers for $6,000 as had previously been fed by bureaucrats with a $50,000 budget was not quite what he described...
...But does Wilson himself have a solution...
...And isn't meeting those needs what Roosevelt did...
...Even as the people set the president right, however, they seemed vaguely sorry that there was reason to do so...
...From education through retirement the American middle class is goinl through a crisis of historic proportions...
...The middle-class dream in its specifics-education, job, a home of one's own, and a care-free retirement - rests on innate human needs...
...It pits government against business...
...These needs, as Wilson claims, can be met in different ways than in that Halcyon period of postwar affluence when it seemed that we could all have everything-but any program for the future must aim at meeting all four needs in the context of today...
...He lent himself willingly to the centennial celebration of Roosevelt's birthday...
...Twenty-four pages of want ads in our local Sunday paper," said the president...
...The house in the suburbs is rapidly becoming a luxury . . . our dream of a secure retirement may turn into a nightmare of economic uncertainty...
...Without reference to Reagan in that pre-election year, Wilson correctly criticized the thinkers of the right on whom the president relies so heavily, and predicted the result of following their policies...
...It is our misfortune that his optimism is based on false figures, bad analysis, faulty illustrations - and, ultimately, a tragically flawed vision...
...Education is no longer the great equalizing force in our society, opening up doors for the children from poor and minority and lower-level middle-class families to climb the social and economic ladders of success...
...His book received too little notice here although it attracted great interest in countries as diverse as Japan, China, France, England, and the Soviet Union, wherever they seek to understand America's relationship to the world economy today...
...But the very core of his argument is most important...
...Said the UP, "Very few listings were for unskilled workers, except for two pages seeking sales personnel, one ad specifically seeking a file clerk, 14 ads looking for delivery drivers, and 10 seeking janitors...
...Reagan as a man does share with Roosevelt an engaging personality and a buoyant optimism about the country and its ability to pull itself out of its problems...
...So far the administration's solutions seem to be destroying that sense of community even more...
...They write with a passion that has been missing from our national debate for two decades...
...Long before the election of 1980 he wrote: "It is a new era...
...Then there were those jobs available...
...It portrays the New Deal social policies of the past as the reason for our problems and posits a return to laissez-faire economics as the solution...
...In the circumstances it is worthwhile to go back and look at Wilson's argument...
...He served as assistant director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and as assistant secretary of HEW in the last Republican administration...
...In time for the next morning's papers wire service reporters had analyzed those jobs...
...For he clings stubbornly to the rough outline of a dream that most Americans share...
...the rungs at the top of the ladder are moving beyond our reach...
...For John Oliver Wilson is not just an observer...
...His Republican credentials are good...
...The low budget was what was left in the interim between the cut-off of funds and their restoration...
...The famous trust fund which was to set up the states to take over the programs being shunted to them by the federal government turned out to be, in projection, about $15 billion short of what the president promised...
...The Vatican denied that the pope's letter to the president could be interpreted as approving the specifics of the administration's actions vis-a-vis Poland...
...Economist John O. Wilson in his book After Affluence, published before Reagan took office, calls that dream "the middle-class dream" and writes that "the erosion of the dream has done more to destroy our sense of community than any other factor...
...That drop-in center in Arizona (remember...
...it adds fuel to the fire of divisive-ness...
...Probably because he is a working business economist his suggestions as to how to achieve a secure pension system seem most completely worked out and ready for execution, as do his ideas for financing home-owning in the future...
...Isn't that what the president cannot see...
...Those of us who long for the more stable and secure Eisenhower '50s are deluding themselves...
...And so on...
...Jobs, yes, but not for the jobless...
...Yes, he does...
...It is this shift from one era to another that has brought about the middle-class crisis...
...It paints the bureaucrat as the enemy and the private entrepreneur as the savior...
...In contrast, more than four pages sought engineers in various technical fields and two more pages were for computer programmers and computer professionals...
...He identifies these needs as 1) the need for economic security, 2) the need for community and a sense of belonging, 3) the need for esteem, and 4) the need for personal growth...
...But in the days surrounding that birthday the contrast could not have been more marked...
...In fact, it does quite the opposite...
...It is a solution replete with innovative proposals, from suggestions as mild as that education prepare for jobs and for change and as radical as that satisfying jobs such as those in academia be rotated by lottery...
...But the dream they offer does little to unify our national community...
...And the elderly in need of hot meals flocking in from programs which had been closed down, accounted for the increase in the number fed...
...The volunteers turned out to be employees working without pay to keep the program going until it could be refunded...
...Jobs are scarce...
...The crisis is real...
...There is no going back...
Vol. 109 • February 1982 • No. 4
