That's the soul of the American Dream. It is what draws people from around the world to our shores; it is what has sustained the optimism of the American people; and it is what has helped build the wealthiest nation in history.
But if you go out and talk to people around this country, they'll tell you, they still believe in the American Dream – they just think it's out of reach.
It's hard to call it the American Dream when fewer than a third of Americans thinks life will be better for their children than it is for them.
It's understandable that they feel that way. For the last 20 years, about half of America's economic growth has gone to the top 1 percent.
Today, the top 300,000 Americans now make more than the bottom 150 million put together.
Productivity is up but median income is down. People are making more, while they're making less. Men in their 30s today earn less in real dollars than the men did 30 years ago. More and more women have gone to work, and now married couples with children are working an average of 10 hours a week more than their parents did. Working families with breadwinners in their 40s are almost three times more likely to fall in to poverty than they were a generation ago.
What does all this mean in real terms? It means that our system rewards wealth, not work.
The gap between CEOs and the average worker is out of sight – today, the average CEO makes 400 times what the average worker makes.
Our tax system has been rewritten by George Bush to favor the wealthy and shift the burden to working families. That is simply wrong – and even those who benefit the most from our current system know that it is wrong.
Warren Buffett once complained that his receptionist loses more of her income in payroll taxes than he does. He called it "class welfare," and he meant welfare for the rich.
The candidate is John Edwards
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