The end of American Dream

I negate the resolution by showing that the American Dream is still alive My opponent asks how we define the American Dream. The most operative word is "dream." According to Princeton's Wordnet, dream means "ambition, aspiration, a cherished desire." [1] The American Dream, or the cherished ambition to improve one's lot in life, often by either coming to America or embracing the American entrepreneurial spirit, is perfectly embodied in the Statue of Liberty's famous inscription: "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." My opponent focuses his case on showing how the short-term economic forecasts for our economy are weak. This is far removed from proving that there is an end to the American Dream. People in America still aspire to greater and greater heights of achievement, and foreigners still look upon America as a land of opportunity. If bad economic recessions spell an end to the American Dream, then it should have ended with the Great Depression, which is far worse than the current recession. My opponent cites the Declaration of Independence's guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as examples of the American Dream. All three are still alive today. We are still guaranteed the right not to be unduly killed in our sleep by our government, unlike citizens of Iran, for example. We still have the right to liberty, to fully express our freedoms, unlike the citizens of North Korea who live constrained, state-regulated lives. We are still allowed the pursuit of happiness – we may do as we like and attempt to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, without anyone coming along to tear us down, unlike the Chinese peasants who, coming to cities to seek economic opportunities, are forcibly removed by the military. My opponent says that homeownership is a good proxy for the pursuit of happiness; however, the founders did not think so. The original John Locke line was the right to "life, liberty, and property." If you read the Federalist Papers, our nation's founders felt that the term "property" privileged the landed elite over the common man and changed the line to "the pursuit of happiness." Owning property is hardly a necessary or sufficient condition for having achieved the American dream. Our founders didn't think so either. In fact, the Time Magazine article he cites is actually about how homeownership is not a desirable goal that Americans should be seeking – notice the title: "the case against homeownership." Barbara Kiviat in that article actually critiques my opponent's raising of homeownership up on a pedestal: "For the better part of a century, politics, industry and culture aligned to create a fetish of the idea of buying a house… by idealizing the act of buying a home, we have ignored the downsides." [2] Charles Morris, in The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown, underscores those downsides. We began to subsidize housing so much that it became too cheap, and people began using homeownership as an investment tool, rather than as a way to attain a quality place of residence. "By 2005, 40 percent of all home purchases were either for investment or as second homes." [3] In addition, we got ourselves into this mess by borrowing against the value of our homes to live beyond our means. Morris furthers that ""[Refinances] jumped from $14 billion in 1995 to nearly a quarter-trillion in 2005, the great majority of them resulting in higher loan amounts. Lower interest rates let you borrow more for the same monthly payment, pay off your old loan, and buy a new car with the difference. By the 2000s, consumers had learned how to ride down the interest-rate curve with abandon, many of them going back to the well again and again." The cult of homeownership actually resulted in the very financial collapse that my opponent bemoans due to over-borrowing and risky lending to finance homeownership (subprime mortgages). The Time article enumerates other reasons why homeownership is bad, such as that owning a home anchors you to a certain place, so you cannot move to the places where the jobs actually exist. Change.org's segment called Poverty in America points out that the current interstate move rate of 1.6 percent is exceptionally low for a recession. [4] The site notes that the U.S. has normally been able to bounce back quickly from recessions because we used to have a flexible labor force that would move around the country to find work – but not anymore. So homeownership is actually contributing to the recession that my opponent claims is hurting the American Dream. If homeownership hurts the American Dream, this turns half of my opponent's case. We should instead aspire (dream) to be a nation of mobile, easily adaptable renters. It's not in the online article, but in the print version of Time there is a chart showing that there is no correlation between homeownership and the economic well-being of a country, by showing that the countries with the highest rental rates often have higher per-capita GDP's than the United States. I'll reserve my refutations to my opponent's outsourcing argument for later, since I am out of characters. It bears reminding at this point that the recession will soon end and the American Dream will continue to burn bright. On the time scale of our country, this recession will be seen as a tiny blip in the economic data. Lastly, the American Dream will continue to inspire well into the future. Fareed Zakaria explains in Post-American World that the United States has the very best educational institutions in the entire world and continues to attract the best and the brightest to go to college and graduate school here. The incredible schools get them to come here, but the American Dream convinces them to stay. Zakaria notes that "Half of all Silicon Valley start-ups have one founder who is an immigrant or first-generation American." By attracting the best and the brightest to America, we will continue to maintain our edge over other nations. Zakaria concludes that "America's potential new burst of productivity, its edge in nanotechnology, biotechnology, its ability to invent the future – all rest on its immigration policy." Our ability to inspire millions around the world to desire a life in America, our "soft power," is what makes us special. People in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, and Bangladesh all stare at their news reports about America and fantasize about a life in America and the wonderful promises made by the American Dream. The American Dream is an ideal – a bright light of hope that can never be extinguished. Even the darkest of times cannot dull its great gleam. The worst Depression in history did not end it. The worst terrorist attack in history could not extinguish it. The American Dream is here to stay. [1] Wordnet 3.0 [2] Time, Case Against Homeownership [3] The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown [4] http://uspoverty.change.org...