The US President’s Annual State of the Union Address: Obama Wants To Improve the American Dream

America — so to speak, in pompous terms — is a country of one faith: The poor and rich, black and white, young and old believe it is a country where everyone can make it.

Those who work hard and are not afraid of responsibility will move ahead, and their children will lead better lives than their parents. It was such pompous terms that Barack Obama invoked in his annual State of the Union address, thus recalling the American dream. It is this very dream that is breaking down, exactly at the time of his presidency. Of course, there has never been equality in America. Usually, 10 percent of the richest Americans would own more or less one-third of the country’s wealth. Today however, they own roughly one-half of it. The 2008 crisis has been overcome — the U.S. is developing faster than Europe, corporate and bank profits are astonishing — but the middle class is not moving forward and the average earnings are not going up. These phenomena are destroying the American dream. That is, they are destroying the main cement binding American society.

Obama forces countermeasures. He brought up his health insurance program for everyone — an additional 3 million Americans received insurance; he pressed Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour for the whole country; he raised [federal] office worker wages. He reminded that the White House organized a conference of 150 universities, companies and nongovernmental organizations in order to increase access to good education for the poor. He also promised that by the end of his term in office, 99 percent of American students will have access to fast Internet.

Is that enough for the dream? Unfortunately not because the dark sides of reality lurk in the shadows. There was nothing, or very little, about wire-tapping, the National Security Agency, Guantanamo, prospects for immigrants without papers. The nation is arguing. Asked to comment on the annual address, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner practically limited himself to asking the impressive question: “But where are the jobs?” The video showing his reaction has more hits on the Internet than any of the slogans from the address. Admittedly, unemployment in the U.S. is at 6.7 percent, the lowest it has been in five years — while in the eurozone, it exceeds 12 percent — but what of it?

In America, it does not look like there is agreement between the major political parties. It is hard to count on collective initiatives in Washington, but I am not with those who proclaim the decline of the American era. The number of those employed in the industrial production sector has grown for the first time since the 1990s. The U.S. extracts more oil than it imports from abroad, and — as the president reminded — the U.S. has taken from China the title of the world’s best place to invest. Business thus votes for America, and so it will probably be for the next few years. The grumble about America goes on and on, but others are still miles behind.