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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 9. Economic Inequality - 3. The Value Premises
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210 An American Dilemma
terms applicable to the people of the United States, here and now must include:
1. The right to work, usefully and creatively through the productive years.
2. The right to fair pay, adequate to command the necessities and amenities of life
in exchange for work, ideas, thrift, and other socially valuable service.
3. The right to adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
4. The right to security, with freedom from fear of old age, want, dependency,
sickness, unemployment, and accident.
5. The right to live in a system of free enterprise, free from compulsory labor,
irresponsible private power, arbitrary public authority, and unregulated monop-
olies.
9. The right to rest, recreation, and adventure; the opportunity to enjoy life and
take part in an advancing civilization.^
The most convenient way of determining our value premises for the
economic part of our inquiry is, perhaps, to start from the viewpoint of
what the American does not want. The ordinary American does not, and
probably will not within the surveyable future, raise the demand for full
economic equality in the meaning of a ‘‘classless society” where individual
incomes and standards of living would become radically leveled off. Such
an ideal would be contrary to the basic individualism of American thinking.
It covdd hardly be realized while upholding the cherished independence of
the individual. It would nullify the primary responsibility of the individual
for the economic fate of himself and his family. It would rob the individual
of his chance to rise to wealth and power. It would thus bury the American
Dream. It runs contrary to the common belief that it Is the individual’s
hope for economic advancement which spurs him to do his utmost and at
the same time acts as the main driving force behind progress in society.
The strength of these individualistic ideals is extraordinary in America even
today, in spite of the important changes of basic conditions which we
shall presently consider.
Although there is a great deal of inequality of income and wealth in
America, the American Creed has always been definitely adverse to class
divisions and class inequalities. Americans are, indeed, hostile to the very
concept of class.® But the observer soon finds that this hostility is generally
directed only against a rigid system of privileges and social estates in
which the individual inherits his status, and not against differences in wealth
as such. The American demand is for jair offortunity and jree scofe for
individual effort.
In a new nation with rapid social mobility—which is practically always in
an upward direction as new immigrants always fill the lower ranks—^this
way of reconciling liberty with equality is understandable. Social mobility
permitted a relative uniformity of social forms and modes of thinking to
* See Chapter 31, Sections 1 and a.
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