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Zach Diaz American Dream - VisME is the Swiss Knife for creating Awesome Visual Content and effective story telling.

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What our Founding Fathers made for American citizens.

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"The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement."
James Trunslow Adams

Deep down in the hearts of those who call themselves "American" exists a shared ideal that we commonly refer to as "the American Dream." It is a dream that has shone brighly at times and has faded in others. It is a dream that reflects how things could be different if we choose to operate at our individual and collective best.

Have you ever stopped to define this dream for yourself? Have you ever paused and asked, what is the American Dream to me?

One of the many wonderful things about this notion of the American Dream is that it cannot be narrowly defined. There is no one-size-fits-all interpretation. The variations in definitions abound, limited only by the number of people who choose to actively attempt to define it.

Yet although the concept of the American Dream can't be tightly bound or distilled into a simple list of detailed descriptors, I do believe several characteristics cannot be denied. These include:

Dreaming: We are at our best when we are free to use our imagination, the birthplace of our dreams, to develop creative solutions to daunting challenges.

Acting: We are at our best when we actively do something to make our dreams a reality, willfully exercising the personal responsibility to lead the change we want to see occur in our surroundings.

A Higher Purpose: We are at our best when we choose to lead our lives not for ourselves but for a higher purpose.

Dreaming. When the earliest settlers of this land set off from the Old World seeking refuge in the new, they did so to escape fear and coercion, tyranny and oppression, famine and fighting. Our forefathers wanted things to be different. So they mustered the strength of character to set out to establish a new life in a new land in the belief that this place, America, would be the place where they could grow into the best version of themselves. Their measure of success was less a by-product of focusing on how to overcome their limitations and more a function of tapping into their imagination to develop creative solutions to even the most perplexing problems. Proof positive that we are a country of dreamers who are at our best not when we blindly conform to the norm, but rather when we are thinking more broadly and creatively about our circumstances.

Acting. The freedom to dream of a better life is insufficient in itself to propel us forward. We must do something to transform these dreams into practical action. Those leaders before us who have shed precious blood at Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, Bull Run, Châteaux-Thierry in the Argonne, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan did so for a reason. That is, they recognized that speaking about an ideal and standing up to preserve a cherished way of life are two very distinct things. Rhetoric alone will not make our dreams a reality. Action is required to ultimately move things solidly forward. But as always, someone must lead the change and accept responsibility to go first, to show others the way.

A Higher Purpose. It is easy to make an idol of routine, finding security within the boundaries we build around our lives. Although each day contains twenty-four hours, every single one of these presents an opportunity to contribute to a purpose larger than ourselves. For me personally, that higher purpose is to do what I can, when I can, where I can to try to build value into others' lives each and every day in a multitude of ways. My greatest satisfaction derives from using my God-given talents and skills to be a force for good in my home, workplace, worship space, and community.

So I'll ask you again, have you ever stopped to define this dream for yourself? Have you ever paused and asked, what is the American Dream to me? And if you have, what are you doing today to help make that dream come true?

This post is excerpted from John Michel's new book, Mediocre Me: How Saying No to the Status Quo Will Propel You from Ordinary to Extraordinary. It is now available at online retailers and select bookstores with 100% of proceeds benefiting military charities.

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"The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement." James Trunslow Adams Deep down in the hearts of those who call themselves "American" exists a shared ideal that we commonly refer to as "the American Dream."

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Only 47% of adult Americans have a full-time job.

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The release of the June Jobs' Report Friday was something of a relief for the markets. The Labor Department reported that the economy gained 195,000 jobs in June, which beat economists' expectations. The Department also reported that the economy gained 70,000 more jobs in April and May than it originally estimated. The report, however, also provides clear evidence that the the nation is splitting into two; only 47% of Americans have a full-time job and those who don't are finding it increasingly out of reach.

Of the 144 million Americans employed last month, only 116 million were working full-time. Friday's report showed that 58.7% of the civilian adult population of 245 million was working last month. Only 47% of Americans, however, had a full-time job.

The market's positive reaction to Friday's report is another sign of how far our economic expectations have fallen. If today the same proportion of Americans worked as just a decade ago, there would be almost 9 million more people working. Just in the last year, almost 2 million Americans have left the labor force. With a majority of the population not holding a full-time job, it isn't surprising that economic growth has been so weak.

In June, the number of Americans who wanted to work full-time, but were forced into part-time jobs because of the economy, jumped 352,000 to over 8 million.

The Jobs' Report is increasingly measuring only a part of the American economy. While Friday's report was better than expected, it only measures those who are working or actively looking for work. There is a growing number of Americans slipping through the cracks of the job market.

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Only 47% of Adults Have Full-Time Job | Breitbart

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The release of the June Jobs' Report Friday was something of a relief for the markets. The Labor Department reported that the economy gained 195,000 jobs in June, which beat economists' expectations. The Department also reported that the economy gained 70,000 more jobs in April and May than it originally estimated.

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"Only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top".

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President Obama's second Inaugural Address used soaring language to reaffirm America's commitment to the dream of equality of opportunity: "We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own."

The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible. The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity.

Perhaps a hundred years ago, America might have rightly claimed to have been the land of opportunity, or at least a land where there was more opportunity than elsewhere. But not for at least a quarter of a century. Horatio Alger-style rags-to-riches stories were not a deliberate hoax, but given how they've lulled us into a sense of complacency, they might as well have been.

It's not that social mobility is impossible, but that the upwardly mobile American is becoming a statistical oddity. According to research from the Brookings Institution, only 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners move out of that category, and just 6 percent born into the bottom fifth move into the top. Economic mobility in the United States is lower than in most of Europe and lower than in all of Scandinavia.

Another way of looking at equality of opportunity is to ask to what extent the life chances of a child are dependent on the education and income of his parents. Is it just as likely that a child of poor or poorly educated parents gets a good education and rises to the middle class as someone born to middle-class parents with college degrees? Even in a more egalitarian society, the answer would be no. But the life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in almost any other advanced country for which there is data.

How do we explain this? Some of it has to do with persistent discrimination. Latinos and African-Americans still get paid less than whites, and women still get paid less than men, even though they recently surpassed men in the number of advanced degrees they obtain. Though gender disparities in the workplace are less than they once were, there is still a glass ceiling: women are sorely underrepresented in top corporate positions and constitute a minuscule fraction of C.E.O.'s.

Discrimination, however, is only a small part of the picture. Probably the most important reason for lack of equality of opportunity is education: both its quantity and quality. After World War II, Europe made a major effort to democratize its education systems. We did, too, with the G.I. Bill, which extended higher education to Americans across the economic spectrum.

But then we changed, in several ways. While racial segregation decreased, economic segregation increased. After 1980, the poor grew poorer, the middle stagnated, and the top did better and better. Disparities widened between those living in poor localities and those living in rich suburbs - or rich enough to send their kids to private schools. A result was a widening gap in educational performance - the achievement gap between rich and poor kids born in 2001 was 30 to 40 percent larger than it was for those born 25 years earlier, the Stanford sociologist Sean F. Reardon found.

Of course, there are other forces at play, some of which start even before birth. Children in affluent families get more exposure to reading and less exposure to environmental hazards. Their families can afford enriching experiences like music lessons and summer camp. They get better nutrition and health care, which enhance their learning, directly and indirectly.

Unless current trends in education are reversed, the situation is likely to get even worse. In some cases it seems as if policy has actually been designed to reduce opportunity: government support for many state schools has been steadily gutted over the last few decades - and especially in the last few years. Meanwhile, students are crushed by giant student loan debts that are almost impossible to discharge, even in bankruptcy. This is happening at the same time that a college education is more important than ever for getting a good job.

Young people from families of modest means face a Catch-22: without a college education, they are condemned to a life of poor prospects; with a college education, they may be condemned to a lifetime of living at the brink. And increasingly even a college degree isn't enough; one needs either a graduate degree or a series of (often unpaid) internships. Those at the top have the connections and social capital to get those opportunities. Those in the middle and bottom don't. The point is that no one makes it on his or her own. And those at the top get more help from their families than do those lower down on the ladder. Government should help to level the playing field.

Americans are coming to realize that their cherished narrative of social and economic mobility is a myth. Grand deceptions of this magnitude are hard to maintain for long - and the country has already been through a couple of decades of self-deception.

Without substantial policy changes, our self-image, and the image we project to the world, will diminish - and so will our economic standing and stability. Inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunity reinforce each other - and contribute to economic weakness, as Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist and the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has emphasized. We have an economic, and not only moral, interest in saving the American dream.

Policies that promote equality of opportunity must target the youngest Americans. First, we have to make sure that mothers are not exposed to environmental hazards and get adequate prenatal health care. Then, we have to reverse the damaging cutbacks to preschool education, a theme Mr. Obama emphasized on Tuesday. We have to make sure that all children have adequate nutrition and health care - not only do we have to provide the resources, but if necessary, we have to incentivize parents, by coaching or training them or even rewarding them for being good caregivers. The right says that money isn't the solution. They've chased reforms like charter schools and private-school vouchers, but most of these efforts have shown ambiguous results at best. Giving more money to poor schools would help. So would summer and extracurricular programs that enrich low-income students' skills.

Finally, it is unconscionable that a rich country like the United States has made access to higher education so difficult for those at the bottom and middle. There are many alternative ways of providing universal access to higher education, from Australia's income-contingent loan program to the near-free system of universities in Europe. A more educated population yields greater innovation, a robust economy and higher incomes - which mean a higher tax base. Those benefits are, of course, why we've long been committed to free public education through 12th grade. But while a 12th-grade education might have sufficed a century ago, it doesn't today. Yet we haven't adjusted our system to contemporary realities.

The steps I've outlined are not just affordable but imperative. Even more important, though, is that we cannot afford to let our country drift farther from ideals that the vast majority of Americans share. We will never fully succeed in achieving Mr. Obama's vision of a poor girl's having exactly the same opportunities as a wealthy girl. But we could do much, much better, and must not rest until we do.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, a professor at Columbia and a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist for the World Bank, is the author of "The Price of Inequality."

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President Obama's second Inaugural Address used soaring language to reaffirm America's commitment to the dream of equality of opportunity: "We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own."

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Redlining has made opportunity for minorities minimal in terms of home loans and the whole American Dream.

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TNC focuses in on North Lawndale, a neighborhood in Chicago, to make his point. But it's a similar story across the country.

North Lawndale is an extreme portrait of the trends that ail black Chicago. Such is the magnitude of these ailments that it can be said that blacks and whites do not inhabit the same city. The average per capita income of Chicago's white neighborhoods is almost three times that of its black neighborhoods. When the Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson examined incarceration rates in Chicago in his 2012 book, Great American City, he found that a black neighborhood with one of the highest incarceration rates (West Garfield Park) had a rate more than 40 times as high as the white neighborhood with the highest rate (Clearing). "This is a staggering differential, even for community-level comparisons," Sampson writes. "A difference of kind, not degree." ...

Black people with upper-middle-class incomes do not generally live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Sharkey's research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. "Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods," Sharkey writes, "that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children."

Even here in California, where sometimes we like to imagine maybe things were different.

A few years ago, I came across an academic project to take the old redlining maps and lay them over the cities as they are today in Google Maps. It was run by an interdisciplinary group out of the University of North Carolina. They created a site called T-RACES, or Testbed for for the Redlining Archives of California's Exclusionary Spaces.

I stared and stared at the map of the East Bay because I could see the marks of this discrimination all over the city. My little neighborhood sits right next to a block of red, in a yellow strip, and near a swath of blue. It was an in-between zone, and it still feels that way. Go a few blocks west (downhill) and the neighborhoods are primarily black. Go a few blocks east (into the hills) and the neighborhoods are almost exclusively white.

T-RACES was meant to be a demonstration project, and it looks that way. The maps are difficult to navigate and just have a clunky feel. When I tweeted about them, a data artist named Josh Begley took it upon himself to recode the maps with new technology. And then-after Google broke the way he was doing it-he recoded the maps again for this post.

There are maps for the Bay, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, Fresno and Stockton. I've included Los Angeles here, too, but the rest are available at his site.

The point is: the racist policies TNC explores in Chicago were everywhere.

Here are the codes for the maps:

"Green areas are " hot spots"; they are not yet fully built up. In nearly all instances they are the new well planned sections of the city, and almost synonymous with the areas where good mortgage lenders with available funds are willing to make their maximum loans to be amortized over a 10-15-year period -- perhaps up to 75-80% of the appraisal. They are homogeneous; in demand as residential locations in "good time" or "bad"; hence on the upgrade".

"Blue areas, as a rule, are completely developed. They are like a 1935 automobile still good, but not what the people are buying today who can afford a new one. They are the neighborhoods where good mortgage lenders will have a tendency to hold loan commitments 10-15% under the limit."

"Yellow areas are characterized by age, obsolescence, and change of style; expiring restrictions or lack of them; infiltration of a lower grade population; the presence of influences which increase sales resistance such as inadequate transportation, insufficient utilities, perhaps heavy tax burdens, poor maintenance of homes, etc. "Jerry" built areas are included, as well as neighborhoods lacking homogeneity. Generally, these areas have reached the transition period. Good mortgage lenders are more conservative in the Yellow areas and hold loan commitments under the lending ratio for the Green and Blue areas.

"Red areas represent those neighborhoods in which the things that are now taking place in the Yellow neighborhoods, have already happened. They are characterized by detrimental influences in a pronounced degree, undesirable population or infiltration of it. Low percentage of home ownership, very poor maintenance and often vandalism prevail. Unstable incomes of the people and difficult collections are usually prevalent. The areas are broader than the so-called slum districts. Some mortgage lenders may refuse to make loans in these neighborhoods and other will lend only on a conservative basis."

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood

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TNC focuses in on North Lawndale, a neighborhood in Chicago, to make his point. But it's a similar story across the country. North Lawndale is an extreme portrait of the trends that ail black Chicago. Such is the magnitude of these ailments that it can be said that blacks and whites do not inhabit the same city.

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The gap between the "Rich" and the "Poor" is at an all time high and keeps growing.

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The gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says.

In its 34 member states, the richest 10% of the population earn 9.6 times the income of the poorest 10%.

There is no standard measure of inequality, but most indicators suggest it slowed or fell during the financial crisis and is now growing again.

The OECD warns that such inequality is a threat to economic growth.

The report says this is partly because there is a wider gap in education in the most unequal countries, which leads to a less effective workforce.

OECD member states include most of the European Union as well as developed economies such as the US, Canada, Australia and Japan.

One of the factors that the OECD blames for growing inequality is the growth in what it calls non-standard work, which includes temporary contracts and self-employment.

The OECD says that since the mid-1990s more than half of all job creation in its member states has been in non-standard work. It says that households dependent on such work have higher poverty rates than other households and that this has led to greater inequality.

It also says that tax and benefit systems have become less effective at redistributing income.

On the other hand it says that one of the factors limiting the growth in inequality has been the increasing number of women working.

The report says that one of the few areas where inequality has not been growing in the last 30 years has been Latin America, although levels of inequality were much higher there to start with.

Analysis: Robert Peston, economics editor

The main theory the OECD puts forward for why inequality and growth are negatively correlated is that poorer people invest less in their own education and self improvement - which is why its main anti-inequality prescriptions are government investment in skills and education, and a focus on a promoting better quality jobs.

Strikingly it isn't saying that the best way to greater equality and faster growth is to soak the rich. Instead it wants activism focused on raising the living standards of the poorest, especially the poorest 40%.

It calculates, therefore, that if living standards in the UK for poorer people were raised to the relative levels of France - that if so-called "bottom inequality" was reduced by half of a standard deviation (to use the jargon) - annual growth in national income or GDP would rise by 0.3% every year for 25 years.

That's not to be sniffed at. It would represent increasing our current growth rate by around 13%.
Read more from Robert
One of the best-known commentators on inequality is Prof Joe Stiglitz from Columbia Business School. He told BBC News that the problem was not just with lack of training and education.

"What we've seen, particularly in the last 15 years, is that even those who are college graduates have seen their incomes stagnate. The real problem is the rules of the game are stacked for the monopolists, the CEOs [chief executives] of corporations."

"CEOs today get pay that's roughly 300 times that of ordinary workers - it used to be 20 or 30 times. No increase in productivity justifies this change in relative compensation."

Behind the OECD averages there is a considerable range in the degrees of inequality in each country.

Household wealth

The Gini coefficient is a figure showing how well income is distributed across a country. A coefficient of zero would mean everybody was paid the same amount, while one would mean all the money was earned by one person.

The average across the OECD was 0.32. Chile had the highest at 0.50, indicating that income distribution there was the most unequal, while Denmark was the lowest at 0.25, making it the most equal.

The UK and US were both near the top of the rankings with coefficients of 0.35 and 0.40 respectively.

One of the report's authors, Mark Pearson from the OECD, told BBC News: "It's not just income that we're seeing being very concentrated - you look at wealth and you find that the bottom 40% of the population in rich countries have only 3% of household wealth whereas the top 10% have over half of household wealth."

"So that combination of both wealth and income being very concentrated, it means there is no equality of opportunity in many societies and that undermines our growth."

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The gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. In its 34 member states, the richest 10% of the population earn 9.6 times the income of the poorest 10%.

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Student loans are up a whopping 61 percent and Consumer credit has risen by 22%.

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Amid the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. went into what economists call a "debt deleveraging cycle"-akin to a credit hangover, where the party has ended and everyone there decides to quit drinking cold turkey.

Somebody has clearly turned the lights back on, though, and corporate and individual buying is soaring.

Consumer credit, for instance, surged past the $3 trillion mark in the second quarter of 2013 and continues on an upward trajectory, according to the most recent numbers from the Federal Reserve.

At $3.04 trillion, the total is up 22 percent over the past three years. Student loans are up a whopping 61 percent.

Total household debt, according to the Fed's flow of funds report, is at $13 trillion, nearly back to its pre-crisis level in 2007 and a shade below government debt of $15 trillion.

"We have not solved (anything) when it comes to the deleveraging myth," said Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies. "We have learned nothing."

While the specter of another debt crisis might seem scary, some economists tout it as a healthy sign of a recovery. "In a moment of crisis, that's going to come back to haunt you," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital. "As long as you can support that debt through growth, it's really not a major concern."

That's a big "if," and the prospects of rising interest rates could force borrowers back into their foxholes.

But with the U.S. economy growing at a steady, if unspectacular, 2.5 percent rate, economists are mostly dismissive about another debt crisis hitting.

Gluskin Sheff's noted bear, David Rosenberg, said the rebirth of leverage is actually a reason for optimism. A July analysis Rosenberg released on the topic marked a sharp change in tone for someone who only a few years ago saw an economy not in recession but rather depression.

( Read more: Mile-high millionaires: When should you buy a jet?)

"The building blocks for the consumer to grab the torch are being put together with each and every passing data point as of late," he said. "Don't fight it. Embrace it."

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It's back with a vengeance: Private debt

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Amid the financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. went into what economists call a "debt deleveraging cycle"-akin to a credit hangover, where the party has ended and everyone there decides to quit drinking cold turkey. Somebody has clearly turned the lights back on, though, and corporate and individual buying is soaring.

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49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program?!

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Census: 49% of Americans Get Gov't Benefits; 82M in Households on Medicaid

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Also among the 151,014,000 who received benefits from one or more government programs during that period: 49,901,000 who collected Social Security; 49,073,000 who got food stamps; 46,440,000 on Medicare; 23,228,000 in the Women, Infants and Children program, 20,223,000 getting Supplemental Security Income;13,433,000 who lived in public or subsidized rental housing; 5,098,000 who got unemployment; 3,178,000 who got veterans' benefits; and 364,000 who got railroad retirement benefits.

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The 1960s play "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry, glorifies the idea of the American Dream. The play focuses on a black family struggling to achieve the American Dream in the Chicago area. The family is a family of 5 that lives in a small apartment. The family doesn't make their way up to a house until they get a life insurance check. Ruth and Walter Lee worked the most hours to get the American Dream, yet in the end they still don't have a car or money for Beneatha's or Travis's education. Through this, we can see that hard work can sometimes only get a portion of what we call the American Dream.