The American Board Game

Alex T. Wolf
5 min readNov 8, 2020

What do we want for the future of America? The road we’re taking now is going to lead us to Hell.

Photo: Breno Assis/ Unsplash

Just imagine that you’re a kid again, out on a hot July Summer Day. You came up with the grand idea of selling lemonade. So you go into the garage and pull out a table. You then grab a piece of paper and a sharpie, writing “ Lemonade 25 cents.” You finish setting up your little lemonade stand and you get down to business.

You’re doing fairly well in the lemonade business making a lot of money. The other kids in your neighborhood see how much you are making from your lemonade stand and want to begin their own lemonade business. Soon, there are eight lemonade stand’s in the neighborhood, causing the price of lemonade to drop.

So you as a single entrepreneur, work two times as hard to create the best tasting lemonade recipe in the neighborhood. But yet, you and the other lemonade stand dictators in the neighborhood realize that it’s impossible to make money from the lemonade stands, even though you work two times as hard.

Sadly in America, this is happening to the working-middle class. No matter how hard they work, they can’t make it through life. There are so many smart, hard-working people working from pay-check to pay-check, stuck in a dead-end job, with no opportunities to advance in the corporate ladder and overall no hope for the future of their lives. Many of their lives are work-sleep-work-sleep-retire-die. With American believing in the saying “ Land of Opportunities”, fewer people today are getting ahead in their lives. They advance up the corporate ladder, because of connections they have-either from family, social status, or money, Not due to their hard-working.

Few Americans feel entitled to communism, while the rest of the Americans work harder. Thirty years ago, many middle-class families were promised flying cars, instead, they got a sixty-five-hour work-week.

To many economists, they argue about two-way different outcomes. One… The American Dream Is Dead. Two… Americans are living the dream.

The American Dream is Dead

Many economists have argued that the American Dream is dead and there is no way we can bring it back. The cost of college tuition increasing 25% in the last ten years and only being obtained by the upper-class. More American blue-collar jobs have been replaced by machines, causing blue-collar jobs to disappear. Student debt causing many adults to be pushed back in the financial folder of their lives, halting their advancement in life- not to mention the opportunity to purchase a house. As a result of this feeling of being “trapped” financially with a little chance of finding a way out. Many unemployed middle-class male workers become unemployed, depressed, overweight, suicidal, and drug-addicts. This causes a huge strain on the healthcare system, or when they seek the treatment they are presented with a high health-care bill, which will turn into medical debt.

Photo: Andreea Popa/ Unsplash

Americans Are Living The Dream

Many economists have explained that America is at an all-time high. That modern Americans are “ living the dream.” That we have larger houses, higher education opportunities, and better employment opportunities. The average American household income is nearly $62,000. Most modern houses are nearly 1,000sqft bigger than 1973 and consumer goods are of higher quality and cheaper due to global trade. And overall that… our ability to treat life-threatening diseases has improved since the 20th century, like cancer and aids.

Photo: Becca Tapert/ Unsplash

The idea of failure to some people will turn them into an outcast. Failure creates a culture of superficial assholes, where certain celebrities are celebrated like some sort of saint just because of their wealth and fame. While Veterans who served their country honorably and ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTED to society end up homeless, cold, and become suicidal. That’s one of the problems in America is we ignore the people who actually shape the future of America like school-teachers, first-responders, and like I said earlier military veterans.

The sad truth is about what America brings to the table is… bad things happen to good people. Everyone suffers from a mistake in the past. The belief of the necessity to maintain hard-work drives many American families, but it is just not enough to get by. First of all, the silver-spoon fed type people in the world don’t handle the idea of working so well. They have such a small-minded belief of when they make a mistake, they don’t blame themselves, but blame the rest of the world for their mistake. As we all know… it doesn’t end well.

Many Americans wonder how they will adapt to this new America in the 21st century. The unfinished story we have already begun to tell about how the future may be worse than the past isn’t fully understood yet. There are still many chapters to the story left to experience.

But the good part of living in America… we can decide our future. And it is up to us to make it a bright future or a dark future.

Footnotes-

  1. Pew Research Center. “The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground.” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project, 9 Dec. 2015, www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2020.
  2. Hess, Abigail. “The Cost of College Increased by More than 25% in the Last 10 Years — Here’s Why.” CNBC, CNBC, 13 Dec. 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/cost-of-college-increased-by-more-than-25percent-in-the-last-10-years.html.

© 2020 Alex T. Wolf | All Rights Reserved

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Alex T. Wolf
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Alex Wolf is a blogger and a writer. He is the author of Society in Repair. www.alextwolf.co.za