American Rust: A Novel

Many writers have explored the myth and tragedy of the American Dream, none more famously than Arthur Miller in his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, Death of a Salesman. The myth—that hard work and moral fortitude are the dues for upward mobility—is so ingrained into the national psyche that it has gone largely unquestioned for decades. Only through the work of social critics, activists, and writers such as Miller and Meyer has the myth come under scrutiny. Moreover, rising income inequality and the profit-over-people ethos behind much American capitalism suggest the American Dream is an aspirational slogan with more loopholes than a legal contract. While the dream is still a reality for some, those numbers have been shrinking since the 1980s. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute ranks the United States’ upward mobility as lagging far behind that of other developed countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and even Germany and France (Gould, Elise. “U.S. lags behind peer countries in mobility.” Economic Policy Institute, 2012). However, it wasn’t always this way. Postwar America was home to a thriving middle-class spurred by, among other factors, robust union membership. The 1980s, however, saw a decline in union membership, triggered by a public perception of unions as corrupt, and, with globalization and expanding markets abroad, corporations began to take advantage of cheaper labor costs in other countries.