Fitzgerald and the American Dream in the 2000's

According to today's current events, 1% of Americans own 40% of the nation's wealth and income inequality is the greatest it's been since the 1920's--Fitzgerald's time.

Fitzgerald believed the American Dream was already over in his time. To him the Dream was the opportunity for a man and his family to enjoy freedom, self sufficiency, and just rewards for hard work. Class was determined by what you made for yourself--not what you inherited. By the 1920's, however, the wealthiest Americans had formed an untitled yet exclusive aristocracy on par with that in Europe and managed to block class mobility, ending opportunities for ordinary people and ending the American Dream.

Three of Fitzgerald's great novels were written in the twenties. Money and class are major themes in each, and The Great Gatsby, in particular, conveys the loss of the American Dream.

Economic changes afterwards, however, had a resetting effect, I believe, and the dream came alive again for the 50's through the 90's. Plenty of new money arose mainly from technology but also from retail and real estate: Hewlett and Packard (HP), Warren Buffet, Sam Walton, and Bill Gates just to name a few of the more famous.

Things were different by the 2000's though. Somehow people became convinced that trickle-down economics works for them, jobs were outsourced, and a housing bubble made people feel richer than they really were--enticing them into debt.

Special interests perverted the American Dream into borrowing money to pretend you own your house whose title is really held by a bank. (You don't own your house until you possess the title)

Then the housing bubble burst, credit collapsed, and we entered the Great Recession. Demonstrations against Wall Street indicate people are catching on to the trickle-down scam. People are realizing the perverted version of the American Dream is false and beginning to feel like Fitzgerald that the dream is lost once again. Maybe it is--temporarily--but maybe this latest recession will have another resetting effect and bring in a new era of prosperity. Realize of course, the next few years are still going to be rough. It may take a decade or two or more to recalibrate the economy. It's bigger and globalized now and special interests are more entrenched now than they were in Fitzgerald's day.

References:
F. Scott Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise. Scribner's. 1920.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and the Damned. Scribner. 1922.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Scribner. 1925.