In his article, "Want Meets Necessity in the New American Dream," John Zogby uses a lot of polls conducted to analyze the American Dream. Unlike Fisher who simply split American Dream into materialistic and moralistic, Zogby separated public opinion into four categories: 1. Secular Spiritualists, 2. Traditional Materialists, 3. Deferred Dreamers, and 4. Dreamless Dead.
After all those pages on Fisher, I can't wait to stop typing the words "materialistic and moralistic." I feel like my fingers have developed muscle memories for those two words.
Ok, time to get back on track. According to Zogby's poll in November 2008, Secular Spiritualists made up 37% of the twenty-five thousand voters polls. This was a little surprising, but considering the context of the time, 2008, this made more sense. The Great Recession had just started to occur, and the economy was going downhill. Less people are likely to still believe in the materialistic dream.
In comparison to a poll conducted in June 2007, traditional materialists declined while secular spiritualists increased. Traditional materialists, as we would expect, are made up of people who focus on material success. So as the economy started falling, more people moved on to become secular spiritualists.
What really interested me is why people believed in the American Dream, which the poll showed different results than what I expected. In a poll conducted in January 2009, most "repondents' main reasons for belief in the Dream were faith in themselves and the American ideal of opportunity for those who work for it" (Zogby 111). I expected something related to materialism, for example, the fact that they have jobs to raise their families.
On the other hand, people who said the American Dream was dead "were most likely to blame the powerful" (111). This is similar to Chomsky where the blame is on the elites who killed the American Dream and does not care about the wellbeing of the public.
Looking at both of these together, I noticed that people either believed in themselves or they blamed the powerful for failure. No poll results mentioned something like "our government made sure everyone has a fair chance at success."
As Zogby states, "attitudes about the American Dream are based on how people perceive themselves, America and the major institutions that shape our lives" (112). Because individual perspective of the American Dream relies heavily on personal life experience, we can only draw general conclusions from the polls. However, I think it is safe to say that the public wasn't very consent with the way the government was running.
Some people who didn't believe in the dream are very likely to give up hope and drop out of the workforce. I personally think that it's very important for the government to keep the American Dream alive, or at least make sure people have faith in it. As we learned in this class, the American Dream is getting harder to achieve, the belief of its existence is the crucial driving force for people to strive for better and pushes society forward.
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