Decline Of The American Dream Analysis

An Analysis on the Decline of the American Dream Coined by James Truslow Adams in 1931 in response to the economic growth and prosperity experienced in the 1920’s following the end of World War I, the American Dream has served as a source of motivation for working American citizens and a pull-factor for those immigrating to America for decades. Defined as “the ideal that every American citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative regardless of social class or circumstances of birth”, the American Dream acted as an advertisement for democracy, serving as a contrast to other political and economic systems, as America’s free-enterprise system provided the circumstances possible for
A mere five weeks before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy made an attempt to strip the Federal Reserve System of its power to print money and loan it to the United States Federal Government at interest. His Executive Order 11110 pushed for the elimination of Federal Reserve Notes and the wide-circulation of the silver-backed United States Notes. Had Kennedy not been assassinated, this order would have passed and spared the United States the nearly $9 trillion in federal debt accumulated after the discontinuation of United States Notes just six weeks after the Kennedy assassination in 1964. Just as Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee in the 1930’s, said, “This evil institution [ Federal Reserve System] has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the … corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control