Poll: American Dream fading as income gap widens

People in the United States are losing faith in “the American Dream” as income inequality between rich and poor widens, according to a Bloomberg National Poll.

According to the poll, 64 percent of Americans say the US no longer offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, and 68 percent say the income gap is growing.

“There’s a lot of policies that make it easier for the rich to get richer and the poor to go nowhere,” says Ryan Sekac, 26, a mechanical engineer in Westerly, Rhode Island.

“Everyone on both sides of the aisle talks about the American dream,” says Sekac. “Right now, that’s not something everyone in this country can aspire to.”

The poll also shows that among those making less than $50,000, 73 percent say the US economy is unfair. Even 60 percent of those who earn $100,000 or more annually complain about the absence of a fair economy.

In recent weeks, public attention to the rich-poor gap has mounted. Last week, President Barack Obama said that the nation’s economy has become “profoundly unequal” and that this great inequality is a “fundamental threat” to the American society.

Independent experts say many of the gains of the US economy since the recession have been restricted to the wealthy and Obama has done very little to address this issue.

In 2008, the US was the third-most-unequal nation in terms of pay in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) industrialized nations.

On Thursday, thousands of fast-food workers took to the streets to demand higher minimum wages in hundreds of US cities, saying the pay is too low to feed a family and forced most to accept public assistance.

Experts say that a US economy that has sent manufacturing and service jobs overseas, a low-earning but expanding immigrant population, and inheritance tax rules have all added to income inequality.