Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to I’m Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today, a conversational, culture-savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world that has gone sideways. We’re here to unpack the issues that boggle our minds, all rooted in a little history, a little culture, a little humor, a little group therapy, and a little humility.
Chris Bevolo (00:00.206)
Welcome to episode 14 of I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today, our conversational, savvy podcast for folks trying to make sense of a world gone kablooey. We're here to unpack the issues that boggle our minds, all with a little history, a little culture, a little humor, a little group therapy, and a little humility. I am Chris Bevolo owner of Bearing 287, an organization fighting to make the world a better place for all.
and the sponsor of show. I'm joined as always by my co-host, Dez, who is a social impact comm strategist by day and who spends her nights remixing history to make sense of the present. How's the present, Des?
the present is gloomy, glary, the son of word. glary, I don't know, dreamy, glary.
Larry, I like that. Or drew me. Larry and drew me. Drew me.
but I am in the American, our first capital of America. So all is looking up for me.
Chris Bevolo (01:13.358)
For some of our leaders or listeners who may not know what you're talking about, what is our first capital of America? The oldest city? No, it's not the oldest city. Go ahead.
center.
It's the oldest Capitol. Santa Fe is the oldest like Capitol in a state in the country. I learned that last year when I.
That right. How is that possible? It wasn't even in the 13 colonies.
Yeah, but you know, one of the other countries that colonized the Americas had made their way up here. So probably. So Spain.
Chris Bevolo (01:44.737)
Bane, probably.
Spain or Mexico, I guess. I don't know, boy. We set a little history. We've now just gone beyond our limits on history. Speaking of history, are you ready to start our, I'm super excited because this is the first time, Des, that we have launched, I'm gonna call it a mini-series. Did you ever watch the mini-series back in the 70s and 80s? You probably didn't because you were not alive in the 70s.
Too far.
Desiree Ep14 (02:15.018)
I was on a live. I do remember the Jackson five, the American dream. That was my first mini-series. Wow. How apropos. Yeah. The Jackson five is the American dream. That was a mini-series that came out like in 90, somewhere between like 91, 92, 93. And I was glued to my TV set that entire week.
You missed the golden era of miniseries because the 70s and maybe early 80s brought us Holocaust, which is where most of America really, I mean, it was a whole miniseries. Roots, I mean, these were cultural touchstones that everybody watched, everybody, because he had three channels back then, and taught us a lot about our history, which interesting now, maybe we should rerun those.
given how we have so many people who are now denying the Holocaust and believe slavery was a good thing. yeah. So those are the mini series. Yeah. Maybe we should watch one of those as a homework assignment for our own and see what, see how it holds up.
Let's be sure.
Desiree Ep14 (03:21.174)
I do need to, I've never watched Roots. It's like one of my biggest shames. It's on my list. just, I finally did, I don't know those stories I try and I tend to avoid because it's like triggering. But we just watched a Mary 12 years of slave. And then I'm like, okay, I need to go back and watch Amistad. And then of course, like now Roots is on that list. So yeah, I will do that.
I am also slipping into a rabbit hole of history. will just share with you. It's, it's, um, how did it start? Oh, my wife got me the latest book by, uh, I can never think of the guy's name, Erik Larson, who wrote, um, Devil in the White City, if you're familiar with that about a serial killer in late 1800s, 1800s during the world fair in Chicago, who murdered dozens and dozens of women, like insane.
And he's amazing. His books are amazing. And so she got me the latest one, which is called
can't think, his names are kind of cliche, right? So it's something chaos of chaos, the boredom of chaos or something, but it's about to lead up to the civil war and for something. And it's just like gripping. It's super gripping. So, I ended up reading another book of his, and I got through that one quicker than the hardcover I got on my Kindle or actually not Kindle because I don't use any more of my Apple books, which was about
Germany in the 1930s through the eyes of our ambassador and his daughter. And his daughter was a party animal who slept with a lot of people. like, again, it reads like a novel and you just like go back in time to when the Nazis were coming to power. it's just, I'm reading that and I'm like, ooh, there's a lot of like analogies to today. So then I'm like, I better kind of read about.
Chris Bevolo (05:14.934)
Nazi Germany to kind of learn how those guys got power since we're, we're seeing some stuff, some Nazi stuff and some white supremacy stuff and some Christian national stuff and some other stuff. And so now I'm reading the rise and fall of the third reich which is a classic historic book. So I'm in the dark days of history.
Buckle up. I've been there. I watched the Hitler's Nazis on Netflix. It's good.
I'm going to watch that too. Is it good? it good? Okay. Well, I mean good in a sense that you learn a lot.
It, it, yes, it, it starting with like world war one and like his role in that of, know, just being a soldier and then just the rise and it you'll, you're going to see some connectivity to today, like all throughout that. is wild. Even the Manosphere, there was their, their version of the Manosphere was going on.
I think it's
Chris Bevolo (06:07.278)
And the thing that's blown my mind is I've just gotten through the part where the his first real kind of rebellious political action, the beer hall pooch. And it talks about the origins of the of the Nazi party were literally like seven dudes in a garage. When Hitler joined, like literally seven dudes in a garage in Bavaria. And that's how it started. And you're like,
If that can, if that can, they can start it with that. anyway, so I brought this up for a reason. We almost forgot, like I segueed and then forgot to tie it in a bow because we're doing our first mini series. We're going to have three episodes, uh, all sharing a common theme, which is the crumbling of American myth. American myth. So for this
Here we are again.
Chris Bevolo (07:03.8)
First episode today, we're gonna talk about the myth of the American dream, which is, know, work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. If you just go to college, you just, you know, you just put your head down, you work. 50 years later, you get to retire to Florida and enjoy your life. And you know what? Everybody in America, and not just everybody in America has that opportunity, but we welcome the world.
to come and share in the American dream. So we're gonna talk about what that is, what that dream really is, how it's been a facade and really kind of bullshit the entirety of the dream and why it's crumbling today. So that's today. And then the second myth in episode two of this series that we're gonna cover is going to be on, God, what's it gonna be on? I forgot already. Where is it?
It's going to be about the crumbling myth of America's global brand that we are that beacon of light and freedom.
cut it out
Thank you. Thank you. It's late in the day on a Monday. So I'm going to be this is going to be rocky one, unlike last night, which was a cool running stream to the mountain glen. This one's going to be more like a like an avalanche of rocks falling over a cliff, perhaps. OK, so that's the second one. And then the third one is going to be about the myth of the American melting pot, which
Chris Bevolo (08:37.038)
It's interesting to me because I think America is a melting pot, but it's really the myth of that we were designed to be a melting pot and that everybody wants us to be a melting pot and sees that as good thing. That is not a myth or that is not a, that's not a reality. It's never been a reality. It's not a reality today. So those are the three things we're going to talk about. Fun. And what to do about them. Cause that's the show is not just about whining and crabbing.
Chris Bevolo (09:07.47)
It's also about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. Are you ready to do that?
Let's do it.
Okay. Okay. So let's just start here because, you know, doing some research on this, I thought was really interesting. I guess I assumed that the American dream is something that goes way, back in our history, maybe even to before the founding of America. And maybe there are elements of it like Horatio Alge's stories.
But the actual term and the meaning of the American dream is swathed in irony. Do you like that use of swathed? Do you think I, it's bundled in irony. It's wrapped with a ribbon. You want to know what the irony is? Okay, so the irony is that this was from a book called The Epic of America written in 1931 by an historian named James Adam.
What is the irony?
Desiree Ep14 (10:01.07)
What is the irony?
Chris Bevolo (10:11.566)
And he actually had a very different thing in mind for the American dream. In fact, you could say he was arguing against what the American dream actually stands for today. He was pushing back in this book against the rising tide of materialism and greed and the focus on money. Obviously it's 1931. It is the heart of the depression. Two years earlier was the collapse of the stock market.
And so his book is about trying to fulfill America's kind of vision of a place where everyone can reach their full potential, regardless of birth or position. But it's not about material wealth, right? It's about just fulfilling lives. And he actually warned in this book about the American dream was kind of going the wrong way.
It said, you know, he observed that the worker was getting trapped in the cycle of earning, sound familiar, not to enjoy life, but to spend, consumerism, so the factory owners could grow rich. Hello, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. So he warned that the current system that he saw was actually widening the gulf between ordinary people and the super rich. So the irony that he labeled what he wanted the American dream
and warned of, hey, don't focus on working hard to get rich. That's that bad path. Literally became the definition of the American dream, which today I think stands for sentiments like hard work equals success. You got to get a good education. If you're loyal, you'll be rewarded. You got to have home ownership. Retirement is what you're aiming for. So, hey, you got to get to that 65 or 70.
That's hilarious. Just where it ended up being because it sounds like just given if
Chris Bevolo (12:09.102)
and that it's all a meritocracy and everybody has an equal chance. So how's that for irony?
Desiree Ep14 (12:25.376)
If I'm thinking about what that time period was, and it was written essentially after the great Gatsby, which is always kind of touted up as that like example of like, well, or also an allegory of this idea of like, just, I'm going to do all these things. So I can amass all this money so I can get the girl and like live the best life, but ultimately ended up destroying oneself. and also of course, like what we're watching on television with the Gilded Age, like we're.
We're seeing that example of like how those folks live. We're not actually seeing kind of some of that underbelly. get glimpses of it, from train daddy who had that whole run in with the guys that were actually building and working on the railroads and like we're dying. And then he was just like, whatever about it. That's like a prime example. That's like essentially the, that's what Zuckerberg is today. That's what, that's what these guys are today. We're seeing that example of that first iteration, maybe not first, but.
yeah.
You know what mean.
Yeah, yeah. And here's another little irony I found in my research. We're not going to go through the whole history of the American dream, but I mentioned some time ago in this starting salvo, this is about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, which is often kind of used as a deflector when anybody raises their hand and says, hey, this isn't working out for me. And somebody says, you just got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Chris Bevolo (13:52.394)
Ironically, and not ironically, I don't think ironically at all, the derivation of pull yourself up by your bootstraps came from the mid 1800s in the media world and the newspaper world, because it was used to describe something impossible and absurd, which it is, because go ahead and try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and see how that goes. Like you got straps in your boot, you're gonna lift yourself off the ground with that. It doesn't work.
Okay.
Chris Bevolo (14:21.46)
So again, it's this thing that like, literally, if you stop and think about it is impossible. It has turned around completely to be about self elevation, meritocracy and the American dreams. Is that have you ever thought of that? I guess I've never even stopped and thought.
There's this little thing called gravity.
Desiree Ep14 (14:41.63)
I haven't, I haven't until just now and I, as you were talking, I did, was like, wait, but how? And yeah, exactly. When you say, next time I hear someone say that, it's like, show me how you did that.
Yeah, show us how that's done, would you please? I don't know if boots have straps anymore. I suppose they do. It reminds me of a, of you know, you know what quote this comes from? See my mind is going over the place Boats don't have breaks, captain.
You do. I'm making a comeback.
Desiree Ep14 (15:15.4)
I don't.
Weekend at Bernie's, one of the funniest lines when they take his boat out and they're trying to, he's trying to like drive the boat and he's gonna crash it. So boots don't have straps, captain. To go with that, I think boots have straps, but nobody's pulling themselves up by that. this is something that, look, so since, let's just go with this first iteration, even though it's probably been in the bloodstream of America for a hundred years before that.
How?
Chris Bevolo (15:46.894)
It is so ubiquitous, Des, it is so, it's just a sacred cow that I think a lot of, not a lot, I think most Americans born here are familiar with and probably buy into the American dream before they even have it described to them explicitly or defined for them because it is just everywhere. It is in government policies that we've had.
And we're going to get into the reality of this, by the way, because the reality is these things actually are as much propaganda as anything. But some of the policies weren't propaganda, but they all went toward this idea of kind of the American dream, right? So you had everything from going back to the GI Bill, which you're going to talk about in a little bit. You used to not be able to go to a bank and get a home loan. And then they opened up federal housing
Association, administration, sorry, and you could go put down 20 % until the, you know, early 2000s, you could put down 0 % and have no job and get a loan. But they made it very easy to buy a home. had Social Security, Medicare, you had the Interstate Highway Act, all of the tax policies, especially starting with Reagan. And there's just so many ways that the tax code is set up.
that kind of propagate this from deductions for home ownership to lower capital gains and on and on and on. So the United States has been trying to support the American dream, right or wrong and in ways that are often not understood. Popular culture, I mean, leave it to Beaver. my gosh, there's a famous clip that goes around TikTok of Wally going out to talk to his dad.
And his dad is barbecuing. I don't know if you've seen this. And he's like, Hey dad, you know how they used to talk. Hey dad, how come you cook on the grill, but mom cooks in the kitchen. And dad goes, well, men know how to cook on the grill and your mom is better off in the kitchen. She's better off at the home. And it's just, it's, know, it's just supporting that whole idea of, men go.
Chris Bevolo (18:08.152)
Go get your job and support your family. That was the American dream. All the movies, all the advertising, all of it. It's almost like you're born with it, Des. We're gonna get into how this dream is bullshit and why it's crumbling today, but is that your experience or is that just a white guy from the Middle West's experience?
Yeah.
Desiree Ep14 (18:37.917)
Well, we all know what the dream is, like what the, you know, it's almost like it's kind of like the pledge of allegiance or what have you. Like you're in school, it's almost like posted on the wall. It's not, but it is. It's posted on the walls of our brains. We're told it's this thing. But if you have an identity outside of, you know, someone like yourself,
how to get there that always remained like this nebulous thing, or you had to figure out what the cheat codes were because of, as you noted around the GI bill and the FHA home lending and all of the stuff was like, well, who got access to that? And it was primarily men and white men and white men only. And so this is coming out of that, of course, the war, know.
these young men that they were saying like, you have to figure it out, pull yourself off the booster. went, wait, wait, wait, wait, we gotta go to war. So can y'all go overseas and like fight this thing for us? And then, okay, yeah, when we come back, I promise we're gonna take care of you. So we get the G.I. bill, give you lump sum of money to either go to school, buy a home, what have you. But that percentage of black men who enlisted or had, not enlisted, who were basically like taken into war.
that was not given to them. think I read somewhere where essentially like only like 2 % or something of the black men who were veterans actually got that. And then with that highway act, essentially it's like, okay, finally there's a black family. were able to, we got this house. We're good to go. have our black neighborhood. We're thriving. We're living their best lives. And I'm speaking of one example of Nashville, my hometown, where this happened. It's the Jefferson street corridor where essentially, wait,
we need to get access to go to the suburbs so that we're building all of these compounds for like the white people. We're gonna take this land, we're gonna seize this land and drive a highway through it and then you're gonna be dispersed. And essentially that same thing happened in every state. So yeah, I'm aware of the dream, but I always knew that I was gonna have to figure out, finagle my own version of it some other way, but then also being of a different identity, especially as like a woman and a queer woman, I was just like,
Chris Bevolo (20:31.236)
Yeah.
Desiree Ep14 (20:45.92)
the system was not built for me. So I'm going to live outside of it on the friends. So yeah, we're aware, but it's different.
I don't understand what the problem is. Des, what's the problem? I don't understand. mean, the American dream's right there. I mean, it's always been right there. It's so accessible, so easy to get a job and
move forward, like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, not for everybody. That is for sure. So, so yeah.
I will add though to your point around the Leave It to Beaver, you know, the counter to that was Betty Friedan's A Feminine Mystique. This book was written in 1963. It was written from the perspective of women actually telling that story. Cause everything else we got the propaganda was from that male perspective. Like, yeah, we're out here cooking and the women are in the kitchen where they belong. And the women were said, no mas, no thank you. But, and in all of that, but.
So much to unpack there, we're focused on the American dream.
Chris Bevolo (21:42.574)
American dream. But the point of this all is that the American dream, let's move into how this has always been bullshit because I think everybody's familiar with what the American dream is. We don't want to belabor it, but it really has always been bullshit. And I've got three ways has been bullshit when we just touched on. But the first is this idea of if you just work hard, you're going to succeed, you're going to be fine. I think there used to be elements of that that were
that were true for many, again, particularly white men, you know, when you have manufacturing job, you stuck with one company, you got a pension, you got healthcare for life, healthcare was no big deal. I'm talking the 50s, maybe into the 60s. You know, it was working out maybe at that point. Also, by the way, the top income tax bracket was like 80%. So if you made over, I don't know how much, you had to pay 80 %
of your income and taxes. So funny how that worked out and why things have turned around, right? So first of all, it's been a bit of bullshit. So some statistics, Economic Policy Institute says that productivity growth from 1979 to 2019. So that is 50 years. I can't do the math. 40 years? 40 years. Productivity has grown 60%.
productivity growth. Median worker compensation has grown over the same period 13.7%. That's insane, right? So in other words, working harder than ever over that time period, but not getting compensated for it. And people feel this now to a degree that's gotten almost to a, not almost, it is at a crisis stage. What we're going to talk about today in a little bit.
Let's see, what else do we got here? The factors that are cited, the American Bar Association interestingly published a study of this, why low wage growth for workers has been the norm for 50 years, if you take it to today. Legislative, regulatory, and corporate policies that constrain labor costs, so that happens in lot of ways, including crushing the unions and collective bargaining, excessive unemployment,
Chris Bevolo (24:08.386)
corporate driven globalization. So I think our friend, Donald J. Trump, was elected in large part from the people that actually suffered from that, who were in the 50s and 60s doing great. So again, think about the white men who had all those jobs in Cleveland and Akron at the factories. The unions went away, all those jobs went overseas, and now those people who were in felt
pretty entitled to what their parents had and what they'd seen, saw that go away. So they saw Donald Trump, somebody who spoke to that, right? CEO compensation, 1978, 31 to one. So I can't do the math very well. don't know, $100,000 times 31, 3100,000. What's that? 3.1 million?
Math.
So if the average worker at a company made 100,000, the CEO made $3 million. Now it's 281 to one. Actually, it's higher than that, it's 2024. This is probably, none of this is news to you or our listeners. Is this any of this news to you does?
No, not news to me. And as far as the like how it kind of affects my, my, the black community, right, is from the 1940s through the sixties, you know, we had migration out of the South. So great migration up to areas where there were jobs, where there were these factors you had mentioned in Cleveland and what have you.
Desiree Ep14 (25:46.388)
And especially I'll look at the example of Detroit, you know, the big automotive motor city. were thriving. That was one of, one of the few examples of, black American life history where we were living that dream. did have that deluxe apartment up in the sky where we had these great paying jobs and we had that taste of middle-class. And it's like, okay, wow, we can achieve the American dream. But just to that point where you just mentioned is like the rug is pulled out from under.
and you don't have access to that because all of these jobs are moved overseas. And so then these areas, this essentially the rust belt, you know, where it's between the Midwest, then also of course, heading into like the Pennsylvania where some of the parts were made, right? That you have this giant collapse. And so then like, I remember in the early 2000s, there's all these stories about the, just the collapse of these areas. And...
That's it.
Yeah, but there are moments of it, but then it's like, it's always like fleeting. That's what it always feels like. It's like you get a taste of something and then like someone just rips it out of your hand immediately. Right. As you get comfortable.
Yeah, and it explains some of the things that I think are, if you just look at them in isolation are nuts that we're seeing from our federal government, from Trump essentially. So like his wind is evil and Stoller is evil and we gotta like go back to the coal mines.
Chris Bevolo (27:17.058)
That is a complete message to the people that lost other jobs in West Virginia, right, from the coal mining. We're gonna put on these tariffs in the completely misinformed belief that that's going to bring all the manufacturing back, right? The manufacturing went away because it was expensive and people could do it cheaper and Americans want a cheaper shit. So if we wanna pay more, then sure, we can bring those jobs back, but I don't think that's gonna happen, right?
So that whole thing is speaking to the failure of the American dream, though it's never put that way when it's, know, like, because of course we're being sold the American dream still to this day, even by, even more so by the right. But I would say also by Democrats, the democratic establishment, right? So there's one other way that I feel like
this thing has failed. So you just touched on it's not equal for everybody, right? So first of all, it's hard work does not equal success. Second of all, the American dream has not been equal for everybody. And I think we've hit that in past podcasts too. Is there more you want to talk about there, Des, or you want to go to the third one?
Yeah, just, mean that even if you do kind of like the example I'd share with Detroit and like just the auto industry, you you get that taste of it and then it's ripped out from you.
you get a taste of that. mean, we talked about this in a past episode about essentially black wall street, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And that's only one example of that, where you, you find and do your own thing. You thrive. And then someone else can't stand to see you succeed. So outside of even just the system, people take it upon themselves to burn it all down to the ground. but like with women, you know, this is also at that time period where, know, we are.
Desiree Ep14 (29:08.992)
getting out into the workforce. Cause for a long time that access came from like, weren't even, it wasn't even legal for us to have like a credit card in our own name or own property or car or what. So of course, like there's like, there's no access for women. And there was some great work for that EPA to get passed, ERA, excuse me, to get passed. like my partner, Karina, just keeps reminding me. She's like, that was never actually passed.
No.
Desiree Ep14 (29:36.524)
so we're still out here kind of not actually protected the way they'd be thing, but I don't even want to put that out there for people to like hear and like take it, take opportunities to use. But yeah, I'll leave it at that.
Now, it's not equal for everybody. I mean, we could spend the whole series on that. we hit it in different ways, and we'll come back to it in different episodes later too. But you talked about before the interstates going through black communities, and like you said, it went through every city. Then you had redlining, and you've got just so much. We had to pass laws to prevent people from discriminating.
And now we're seeing that erased a little bit, not a little bit, but in many ways. So it's just, it's just not equal. It's never been equal. And the third reason why this has always been bullshit and this one you could debate, I suppose, but I stand firmly on the side of a hundred percent. is true is that this is all propaganda, right? The American dream isn't some
you know, authentic, good meaning push that makes America, you know, unique and we're, we're successful because of that. And, and, you know, it's, it's sometimes it goes astray and it's not always perfect, but boy, we really mean it. I firmly believe that this was twisted in the first place from what it was supposed to mean and propagated by those who benefit the most from it, which are the wealthy and the wealthy have
.
Chris Bevolo (31:16.098)
brought this thing up. mentioned a little bit ago, right? Trump tapped into those people that were left behind when the American dream crumbled in the rust belt and middle America and the mining companies and all of that. But he didn't drop the American dream as a promise. He's still selling that bullshit because they need us all to believe
that. First of all, it's a great way to paint anybody who can't succeed as a failure individually, right? It deflects all responsibility from the system if individuals fail, because after all, the American dream is pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right? Work hard, get a
Get a degree, right? You're supposed to be loyal to your company. So if you're not successful, we've talked about this before, I don't want to belabor it, but if you're not successful, that's your fault. So it just kind of like is a great shield against the system. You're gonna say something to us.
Mm-hmm.
Desiree Ep14 (32:28.296)
Yeah. And I also feel like this is also, of course, like if you're trying to tell the story of your America and like how you're thriving so that your business can continue to thrive, it's gotta be in, in dire, straights to something else, which is what we know from Europe, UK, what have you is that, you know, they are navigating more of that class system of where, when you're born or in the caste system from India, when
You are born into a particular class. stay there. You don't jump up. You don't fall down. You stay there. Whereas in America then, because we are built on this whole like mystique of the dream, we have to tell the different story to keep people like plugging through. And that is that dream that you can, you can reach these great new heights. I mean, good luck getting there. but I feel like it's also an indirect counter to that.
Yeah, 100%. And that is a core aspect of the American dream. The mythology of it is that each generation will become stronger from this, right? And you teach that to your kids and then they become more successful than you and it passes along. So I'm gonna...
Before we get to today and why this is now just crumbling around us in terms of a myth, there is a bit from George Carlin and we'll provide a link to the video and maybe if we're smart, we can pull the video in because it's worth watching the whole video, at least the whole clip. It goes for about 10, 11 minutes. And it's George Carlin who in 2005 in one of the stand-up acts that was on, believe HBO.
he just tears down the American dream in terms of essentially this is bullshit. So I'm gonna read to you, I'm not gonna try to be George Carlin, because that's an impossibility, but we'll provide a link to the video so you can listen to it. But this is like right in the middle of it and it picks up and he swears a lot. So I don't know, it does. Should I do like a Jake Tapper and read the swear words just as they came?
Chris Bevolo (34:40.002)
like from the president's beautiful Easter message, or should I bleep them out? Bleep or no bleep?
mean, it's up to you. this, isn't NPR. So.
This. Okay, here we go. It's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe all day long beating you over the head with their media, telling you what to believe what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hardworking people, white collar, blue collar, doesn't matter what the color shirt you have on.
Good, honest, hardworking people continue. These are people of modest means continue to look these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all, at all, at all. Nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. And that's what the owners count on. Cause he goes in the beginning of this fourth wall, he's talking about the owners of the country, which are the rich.
the corporate owners and that kind of thing. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue, I can't go here, D, is being jammed up their A's every day because the owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Desiree Ep14 (36:09.388)
Ooh, this must've been his peak, angry era towards the end of his life. I do remember that, cause his standup was always such incredible on point cultural commentary, social commentary of political commentary. but you see him as the years go on, just get angry and angry, rightly so. so that, this definitely feels peak, end of life, George Garland.
Got it, here it is.
Chris Bevolo (36:16.309)
He's very angry. Yeah.
Desiree Ep14 (36:38.668)
But I feel like today this is more visible than it was at that time. I felt like when I was watching this, granted I was a kid, I didn't know a ton, you know, this 20 years ago. I wasn't exactly clued into what he was speaking about as far as like these leaders. know, I'm like, yeah, there's like rich people out there. There have been through ages, but I didn't think it had been as like just obvious as it is today, especially with our tech overlords. It's like in our face.
And like they're telling us to be invested in them becoming like bigger and badder and stronger and richer and what have you. And I'm like the whole, like this recent, you know, story around like at the open AI stuff. it's like, that's another dream that's being sold. It's like, the dream and the myth and all that of AI. it's like, you all need to be invested in me succeeding for what? So yeah, I felt like what he was saying was a little bit ahead of its time. It was, it spoke to it, but like,
to.
We couldn't see it. I feel like today, if you were to run that special today, it would hit and it would hit hard.
Completely hit hard. And I think, you know, that was in 2005. So not coincidentally, three years later, the financial world collapsed. And it's been a struggle ever since. Not that it wasn't a struggle building up to that, but it's been a real struggle for so many people. And what's interesting to me is this facade is crumbling, right? And sometimes they say the quiet part out loud. And I recall two different times where that happened. Do you remember during COVID?
Chris Bevolo (38:13.646)
where the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, and I can picture him, but I can't think of his name, said he thought older people should just die so they could keep the economy going. Do you remember that?
I do remember that. I wasn't sure who said it, but I remember them being like, why are you all so flippant to just like, yeah, they should die. There's like a recent clip of this young girl who is debating this guy about like essentially like ice and like the ice killings. And she was like, well they contributed nothing to society. And it's like, what these, so like, how could you not care anyways, but yeah.
Bye bye son.
Desiree Ep14 (38:52.554)
Yeah, it's insane the way people can just like wash and just throw other humans away.
Oh yeah, he was arguing for keeping the, like opening up the economy again, because of course that's all that matters to the people have money. And he was saying like, look, if, if, if grandma has to die, I he literally said like, if grandma has to go, that's the patriotic thing to do. It's like, what, like, what are we here for again? And then that reminds me of Dr. Oz, who, I don't know, it's like six months ago, maybe even more recent than that.
And I can't remember what he was announcing, if it was the inverse pyramid or some other bullshit thing they were changing in terms of nutrition. But he said, like, look, if we could just get Americans to live one more year and work one more year, the impact on our GDP would be trillions of dollars. And you're like, ooh, you just
You just moved the curtain a little bit. We kind of saw what you're all about there, Dr. Oz. And so I think you're right. Like those moments may be few and far between, but the explicit propaganda that is trying to get people to be okay with trickle-down economics, holy crap, we didn't even talk about that. Pure propaganda, pure nonsense, right? Hey, if the rich get richer,
Mm-hmm.
Chris Bevolo (40:18.942)
That's gonna, I mean, we should have just known. It's kind of like pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That's impossible. Who wants trickle down? Who wants something that's gonna trickle down to them? Like you got like your palms cupped and you're like, I'm gonna catch some drips of water from the rich and their tax breaks when it trickles down to me. Like that was sold to people by Reagan.
That was sold to people. I'm speaking of trickle down. I'm curious. Doesn't the Mississippi river drive through like Minneapolis is like, it starts up there, right? Like what color is the water at the Mississippi river up there?
blue? what color is water?
Like it looks like.
Well, depends on where it is. I'm thinking about, I, on, on my drive, I was thinking about, always contemplate this every so often. I I'll go to a map and be like, wait, where does the Mississippi river come through? Anyways, I think about the, when I see the Mississippi river, it's usually in New Orleans and that water is murky. And then I think about the fact that I'm like, it's trickling down. Like everyone is pulling what they need from it.
Chris Bevolo (41:02.67)
I know, that's what I mean, I don't know.
Desiree Ep14 (41:27.552)
throwing whatever they want into it. And it just, you know, trickles down that by time it gets to Louisiana, you don't even want to touch it. And then like by time it gets to the Gulf, oil is just being like dropped into it. So like that to me is what I think about when I think about trickle down economics. It's like, this sludge down here in the Gulf. No, thank you. I I'm, I'm going to swim upstream and get the better spring water, but that's what I always think about.
Yeah, I mean, just think about, I'm gonna go into some statistics of why the reality of it is, I think the reality today of how inaccessible the American dream is, is the biggest reason why the facade is crumbling. Because people are realizing like there ain't no way. But also it goes to,
the wealth tax, right? And again, you don't just see Republicans who are typically anti-taxing the rich fighting the wealth tax. You see democratic establishment like Gavin Newsom, who we talked about before, our good old pal, Gavin Newsom. no, we can't possibly tax the billionaires. I mean, they'll leave, they'll do all this stuff. And why should we tax the billionaires, right? Because the more money the billionaires make.
the more jobs they create. And the more jobs they create, it's better for you and I, Des, you see, because there's more opportunity for us. So we got it for those people need to make their money, know, Elon Musk needs a trillion dollars. That's very, very important. And I saw this quote online and I loved it. It's like, the jobs would be there whether the billionaires got a billion dollars or not. But people don't understand how business works, right?
Business is where the jobs come from. The billionaire taking his billion dollars home, he's taking it home. I mean, he might hire a butler or some shit, but he's not hiring thousands of people with his personal earnings. Some of this is so obvious. Like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps is so obvious, but it's everywhere. And again, I think the point is really necessary to make. This is not just
Desiree Ep14 (43:21.348)
Mm-hmm.
Hmph.
Desiree Ep14 (43:33.309)
Huzzah!
Desiree Ep14 (43:37.313)
Thanks.
Chris Bevolo (43:43.946)
a Republican problem. Centrist Democrats, establishment Democrats, this is my belief, as in, what's the word, not emboldened, enthralled to, owned by, is that fair? Corporate donors as the Republicans are. They really are. So nobody's coming to save us unless we change that. And it's looking pretty bad.
I mean, I have all the opinions and mostly the thinking about like the no one's coming to save us like and we can.
It looks pretty bad. You want some stats or do you got some opinions on all that before we get to some stats?
Desiree Ep14 (44:28.416)
get into this a little bit later about like people are kind of making a figuring out a path for themselves. And it doesn't look like the American dream that is vision. But yeah, let's get into some sense.
No, like, so the rich want to build an island. Peter Thiel wants to build an island so he can have a libertarian country and no laws that regulate him. The rich move overseas to avoid taxes. Corporations move their headquarters overseas to avoid taxes. it's brutal. So here's some stats as to why it's so bad today. think many, particularly millennials and Gen Zers are like, what the hell? Well, first of all, we'll start with my age.
which is retirement, right? So you're supposed to work hard so you can retire and just, you know, enjoy the sun and fishing and all the things that you enjoy. So some stats, let's see. 2024 Prudential Insurance found that 55 year old, so that's really close to my age, who are theoretically 10 years away from retirement, because you're theoretically supposed to retire at 65.
have a retirement savings of less than $50,000. Which is, I mean, they need 10 times that, maybe not 10 times that. So if they want to retire, they need at least eight times that. Am I doing my math right? What's eight times 50,000? That's 400,000. Oh, they need way more than that. They need a lot, dude. They need.
I don't know, but... They need a lot more than that.
Chris Bevolo (46:07.854)
A lot more than that. Let me do the math here. 50,000, let's say they had 100,000. You really need two million. So that would be 20 times if they had 50,000. So they need 40 times that if they want to retire and not need money, like income after 65. $2 million may or may not cut it at age 65. And if I, you know, saying that out loud, how many people have $2 million set aside for retirement?
5 % of people, households? I don't even know.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that. I don't know the number, but like, yeah, like we're not taught this. We're taught that like you, you work, you pay into the system. You're paying your, your taxes, you're paying the social security and then you're going to get that back and we're going to take care of you. But then once you actually realize what that number is, you know, the, the money that you get back, that doesn't cover your costs. That doesn't cover.
that roof over your head, that food, which is why you see what happens to a lot of, you know, some of our seniors is that, yeah, you, you end up and perhaps that's why George Carlin ended up so angry. Cause you realize like, my God, I've been duped. did all these things. I did everything I was supposed to do. And I'm still screwed.
Yeah, yeah, I bet George Carlin was doing okay, money-wise, unless he had a gambling problem or a... Maybe. He at least had empathy. Yes.
Desiree Ep14 (47:27.631)
I'm sure you see.
But he understood, yeah, he understood what his other fellow 70 year olds were dealing with and still are dealing with today.
Yeah. So we talk about healthcare and how shitty it's gotten. It's gotten so bad. Premiums jumping on average 20 % this year. Millions of people losing their insurance, both from the ACA because the subsidies weren't renewed. Medicaid. In 2025, the premium
for employer sponsored family coverage was $27,000 a year. That was the, before you get any coverage, like they pay for anything, you have to pay in $27,000. Now most companies pay for some or all of that, but people today are paying on average for a family two grand a month. No doubt about that. And then still have a $5,000 deductible and still have co-pays and co-insurance and all that, right?
So health insurance as we knew was going to happen, but has been accelerated thanks to our current administration is failing America. Minimum wage. When was the last time we raised minimum wage? Des, do you know?
Desiree Ep14 (48:52.26)
Well, let's go back to that healthcare. mean, so about that American myth when it comes to healthcare is like, do have good health, like I don't want it to sound like, our healthcare sucks. Like the healthcare we are making leaps and bounds through science, right? However, our access to that is what's trash. And that if you go to another country or those that are coming here from another country, there's a couple of different stories there. And the fact that, you know, we're talking about like,
Okay.
Desiree Ep14 (49:18.668)
How much do you have to pay where it is actually just accessible to you or in any other country? So what's this great myth about our, you know, the American dream here when you can't actually afford to like keep yourself alive unless you go to another country for procedures or what have you. I will say that in folks that I've talked to that have moved here from other countries, the issue is access from a time standpoint.
there's so many folks that need to get in that like your appointment is your wait time is going to be even worse than it is in the U S but still that you actually have access to that without like going completely into debt to get it. And then.
Yeah, and you could if you if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps you can afford a higher level of care Which still isn't perfect, but that's still better than everybody has everybody has access to emergency care in the United States but
it will throw you to bankruptcy if you don't have insurance. You're gonna be host bagged. Like, that's a minimum of like 50 grand just to walk into an emergency room and have anything done. I mean, that's probably an exaggeration, but it's not too far off. And if you're hospitalized for something serious, add zero to that. So it's not pretty. Student loan debt is incredible. $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loan debt.
We're not mathematicians. It's a lot. We'll just say it's a lot. But that's a part of that myth about like you go to school,
Chris Bevolo (50:43.614)
42.7 million Americans had student loan debt in 2024. That is, I can't do the math. What do we have like 3.6, 360 million people here? So that's like one fifth.
Desiree Ep14 (51:04.192)
You go to college, you'll get that great job. You'll be able to pay it back. And then, some, and then retired at an insert, you know, story trope. And that's just not true, especially as that price of a higher ed grows and grows and grows. And that's a whole business about you going into a school debt. that that's not a part of it either. So, so many like kid younger folks today are saying like they're for going college because like, why would I go into debt?
When I can just figure something out from a whole hustle culture standpoint, which is what we're being taught today, which going back to that minimum wage, like not rising, people are having to figure stuff out on their own. So then you have the rise of gig economy, which was great at first. like, my God, I can use my own assets to go make money by driving someone else or, allowing someone else to rent out my room. But then of course that gets taken over by greed and that any money that you are making from.
driving or door dashing or what have you, those that own that company are taking more and more and more of a percentage of what you're, you, you take home. like now you're still again, taking home pennies and that happens, rinse, repeat, recycle every single time.
every single time. And so where does that leave us with social mobility at the end of the day, right? This is pretty astonishing to me. In 1940, so people who were born in 1940, it was actually when my dad was born, he was born in 1940, 92 % of the people born in 1940 grew up to earn more than their parents. Now,
That's probably cherry picking a year, this research, because I saw this stat everywhere, right? 1940 is an interesting year to pick because following World War II was all, a lot of things we mentioned, the Interstate highways, the GI bill, the boom, like it was the glory years of the United States, the 50s, 60s. And so those people were coming of age during that time as opposed to their parents.
Chris Bevolo (53:13.486)
who had to live through the Great Depression, right? So maybe that's a cherry pick, but in 1984, which is the latest stat I could find of this, which is interesting, this hasn't been updated for however many years that is, 50 % of children born in 1984 grew up to earn more than their parents. So it almost got cut in half and I'm sure it's worse now, 2025 Pew Research Center, 78 % of Americans surveyed.
believe that when children in their country grow up, they will be financially worse off than their parents. 6 % said the same and 16 % say better. So only 16 % of people now say that kids when they grow up are gonna be better off than their parents. That is the end of the American dream right there. Because that is so low.
And we have not even used the devil in two letters, AI. Right? I mean, that's part of why I think the American dream is it's one thing for all this stuff to be happening. And then it's another to go, oh, and I'm also supposed to go in debt for college and work my ass off with three jobs so I can, you know, owe $150,000 and then AI is going to take my job. Or I can't find a job today because
College grads are screwed trying to find a job, particularly in areas that AI has had an impact like the legal world or software engineering. So the death of the American dream, Des.
This is essentially like right now it's like are we experiencing the nail in the head of the death of this, like the nail in the coffin of all of this. But let's talk a little bit, you know, I know we only have a few minutes left, but you know, where does this essentially leave us? And I've, the, from the past, like probably 10 years at this point, I've been kind of paying attention to this.
Desiree Ep14 (55:18.008)
And essentially we're talking about like, I just want to get to a place where I feel okay, comfortable, financially solvent. And that brought us to the rise of hustle culture, the rise of the fire movement, and essentially also the rise of like the expat, you know, I'm like, I'm going to just go overseas to like live this actual American dream that I do not have access to. And so that idea, and that's what I'm struggling with, you know, as a millennial, I'm thinking about like, okay, yeah.
Uh, my parents, know, that age, they could have like had like, is a total exaggeration, uh, video that I had ran across on, on socials, but they were talking about how like, Oh yeah, this is cool. It made sense when your parents were working at a grocery store, they could afford a house and like raise a family on that wage. I am, I have, making like six figures. I also have, I'm making money on the side because I have to like her monetize my hobby so that I can make it extra money so I can pay off these student loans.
maybe then put it down my payment on a house that I can't even afford. That's like super insanely overpriced. That's like not even worth the money. So then just like, and then I'm sitting in my, okay, I got the house, I'm sitting in it, but I'm deeply miserable because all of my time is being spent trying to figure out ways to make money. So then you have, and this has started the fire movement, which is the financial independence retire early. This movement emerges, it started from a book that came out actually in 1992.
this was written by Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez. wrote this book basically kind of given a cheat code, like an outline to like, okay, the system is right. Like they already saw it. This was like, what, 30 years ago, they're like, this is not going to work out for us. We have to figure out a path. And it was basically about like, make as much money as you can save as much money as you can invest as much money as you can so that you can exit out of the hamster wheel
And it's, more based off of some of that math that you were struggling to do earlier of like, what is that number? It's about finding that fire number. What's that? Like whatever X amount of your expenses and then make that a money. let's say like, let's say $1 million is like that number where you scrimp and say, have you invest, you get to that $1 million that saves you and then make it so that you only live off of that 40%.
Chris Bevolo (57:23.93)
Okay.
So let's say you did buy your house like 30 years ago. Now it's like paid off. You can do that because 40, like 40 % of that is essentially like, you know, $40,000 income that you're paying yourself. But knowing because of that 10 % compound interest, it's always going to like stay there and grow. You'll be able to live. That's the theory, but that's if you have your act together and that's if you don't have any kind of like insane catastrophes that happen in life.
But that's what we're kind of dealing with now is like the conversation with AI is like, okay, well, cool. You can then use AI, like all these podcasts, I'm not using AI to like build a business, build a site hustle, build a whatever so that you can get out. And so it's just like, you're just creating more and more of this hamster wheel, this example. And so you're seeing a lot of people just saying, you know what? I'm off. I'm heading to Portugal.
Thank you.
And so is the American dream now looking like us living in another country just to like make ends meet? Because I'm, I'm very much tempted about, of like some of these rents that I'm seeing out in Vietnam that I can have this palace for like $200 a year or something like that. That's an exaggeration, but still like, if you have that access of putting a bit, a little bit of money away or working remotely, you can now then achieve the American dream.
Chris Bevolo (58:41.998)
we're going to talk about that a little bit in the next episode. I think what's interesting is
on someone else's soul. Soil. And soul, guess. Freudian slip,
Chris Bevolo (59:11.02)
The idea of moving abroad is a combination of two things, why it's gaining so much kind of discussion now. And they're so related because you could have always done this. You could have always saved money by moving abroad because it is cheaper for Western Europe, if you want to go with the closest analogy, is cheaper than America in all the ways. Education, you pay higher taxes, sure, but
You get so much from it and just everyday stuff is cheaper. But you could argue, people have argued, but there's an opportunity to get rich here. That's the American dream has helped people. We have freedom here that nobody else has. We don't have corruption here to the degree other countries have, which was mostly true. Of course there was always corruption, but it was always corruption that was like,
It's like little C corruption.
hidden like I Was little see corruption because it was hidden and if you got caught you went to jail, right? All the reasons for staying are kind of crumbling too. So it's like why stay and there are obvious reasons to stay but but but really when you look at those things It's it's hard to argue and the other thing I would say what are we doing about this, right? So it's read books like fire or
Figure out how you're going to get through this. Don't buy into the American dream would be one. Just don't believe that nobody's here to help you. And the American dream, even though it's supposed to be about all by yourself, you are completely in a hole as that goes. Go ahead.
Desiree Ep14 (01:00:57.45)
And that that dream is not anything that anyone wants. The dream is like, okay, house, pick white picket fence, two and a half children, like a dog and what have you. But then like those people, they're miserable. Every television show, every movie that talks about like the suburbs is like the darkest movie you've watched that year. I mean, we touched a little bit of that on like DTF St. Louis and essentially that's the story of like, like we have our lives, they were rich at it, but like, no, that's like.
We didn't even talk about that.
Desiree Ep14 (01:01:27.296)
That's not it. So another part of that is like, do we grieve? Do we just go ahead and grieve this like loss of this myth of this, of this American dream? No.
No, no, this is what this is. This was the other thing I was going to lend to this. First of all, if you want to read a great story or an article, it's called It's Time to Stop Living the American Scam. We'll provide a link in the show notes. It's from a gentleman named Tim Kreeter. And it was in the New York Times in 2022. But it's essentially like, yeah, we just like
Why, who wants to work their ass off for essentially 50 years so they can barely travel and are incontinent? why is that our life? And so that's the other advice I would give. And I'm gonna say that I've got more inspiration from my oldest daughter on this than anybody else who has forsworn the bullshit of the American dream from the get-go.
Like it's all bullshit. Like she just knows, I don't know how she knew that, but she figured out it's all bullshit and she's just living a, I would say a simpler life and enjoying the hell out of it. Right? So she works hard. She's got a, she works hard, but she's not about building a career and getting ahead and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Money is just a means to living a fun life. It's not the end goal. And that's the biggest advice I could give people, which is,
It took me my entire life to realize this, unfortunately, not too late. I'm not 70, but I'm also not 30. And I wish I would have figured this out when I was 30, which is live your goddamn life. Make the money you need to get by. But what getting by looks like does not have to be a three car garage, fricking boat, a vacation to Europe every year. Like whatever
Chris Bevolo (01:03:31.83)
whatever your materialistic needs are that you think they are, rethink those and live life for what it's meant for, community, friends. Most of the stuff that brings you the most joy doesn't cost a damn thing. It's really hard for people to believe that, but I firmly believe it now. to me, that's the ultimate answer is just don't make money the...
Yeah.
the money is the means to the end, not the end. we just really, especially my generation, Gen X, boy, where we taught like, work, work, work, work, work, work, don't even question it. We don't even question it. Why would you question it? Just go. Go, go.
Figure out what your actual personal dream is, what makes you happy, and not about the job, but what is it that actually makes you happy, and strive for that. I guarantee it doesn't always have to be about money.
No, doesn't have to be bought money. Go be a waiter in fricking Paris or something. I suppose Paris is expensive, but not in other towns in Europe, smaller towns, like if you want to go overseas, or go be a waiter in Pella, Iowa or somewhere. don't know. I don't know why I picked Pella, Iowa. All right, so that is a, well, it's very, very random. All right, so that was,
Desiree Ep14 (01:04:53.012)
super random.
Chris Bevolo (01:05:00.63)
episode one of our of our three episode mini series on the crumbling American myths. Next time we are going to talk about what does remind me because I always forget.
My God, we're going to talk about essentially the crumbling of the myth of the American, Americans go our global brand.
with a
Our goal of a brand, because you know what? We are the light for freedom, for liberty, for democracy. We invite all of your wretched masses to come and people will come from all over the world because we are the heroes. We are the light on the hill. We are the good guys, Staz. And that brain is either shooter. And we're going to talk about that. All right. So.
time to wrap. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you, Des, as always. Hopefully this has helped you cope in some way. We did a lot of like exploration and at a minimum, you should be more aware than you were before if you didn't like our recommendations. But listen to them. I think they're good ones. Take time to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you watch or listen to your shows. Give us a five star on Apple podcasts because that helps ensure more people can see.
Chris Bevolo (01:06:19.148)
and hear us, see us now too, because Apple has introduced video. So we're working on that so you can see us. And if you listen to podcasts through Apple, you'll be able to see us as well. Visit Bering287.com for more information on what I'm doing for nonprofits and charities and NGOs, or follow me on Substack to access other helpful content from our network. I'm Chris Bevelo and on behalf of I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here and Bering287.
Thank you for listening. See you next time. Bye.