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A comment on Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?. Parent comment

Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by kazen44 on Sunday May 10, 2020 @05:42PM (#23136508)
what seems very weird to me (as a non US citizen), is that most working class people in the US seem convinced the 'american dream' is synonymous with being a millionare/billionare and introducing legalization to level the playing field of the latter will hurt their own changes at becoming part of the former.

It might also be the reason social democratic/socialistic parties never got a foothold in the US post world war 2.

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Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by refurb on Sunday May 10, 2020 @06:08PM (#23136750)
is that most working class people in the US seem convinced the 'american dream' is synonymous with being a millionare/billionare

That's true, but I have no idea where it came from. "The American Dream" was never about becoming a millionaire, it was the idea that you could start with nothing and have a nice, comfortable middle class existence in the US.

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Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by Consultant32452 on Sunday May 10, 2020 @05:59PM (#23136669)
It's also interesting how the scale has slid up so much that many people now believe the "American Dream" is to become a millionaire/billionaire. When originally it was merely the idea that if you do the right thing your children will be better off than you were. It wasn't until the gold rush in the 1850s that the American Dream, for some, became this idea of get rich quick scheming.

I can't speak to everyone, but my parents are children of the 50s and their idea of the "American Dream" was the nice house in a safe neighborhood in the burbs.

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Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by scarmig on Sunday May 10, 2020 @08:34PM (#23137676)
Thankfully pretty much everybody still has the ability to buy into a safe neighborhood with a good school district in the Bay Area.
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Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by klipt on Sunday May 10, 2020 @05:58PM (#23136654)
Home ownership is a core part of the American dream, and in pricey places like the Bay Area, you pretty much have to be a millionaire to own a house.

Thanks to inflation "millionaire" doesn't mean as much as it used to. Billionaires are a completely separate class though.

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Re:Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad? by sokoloff on Sunday May 10, 2020 @06:20PM (#23136846)
Exactly. Even setting aside the house prices, if you have exactly a million dollars in your retirement account, you should plan on spending only about $40K-$50K per year from that account. That's hardly a luxurious retirement; yet "you're a millionaire!"
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