Is the American Dream Killing You?: How "The Market" Rules Our Lives

by Paul Stiles

Book Overview

Have you ever questioned the hyperactivity, the stress, and the competition of your daily life? Are you constantly fighting the pressures that surround you: the time demands, the way people relate to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060593792
• ISBN13: 9780060593797
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 305 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Man Behind the Curtain Exposed

As a 31 year old mother living in a suburban wasteland, I frequently ponder the destruction of American society. In my crackerbox quality townhouse, freezing in the winter and cooking in the sun (no trees in this tract, cookiecutter development) in the summer, I watch the wind blasting through, blowing litter into our postage stamp sized yards. No mothers are home--instead, they are shuttled via SUV to huge corporate chain day care centers, where they are cared for by bitter, swarthy immigrants. My son and I feel utterly alone. I drive through the ugly, wide roads littered with McDonalds, generic chains and gas stations. Something feels so...empty. Modern life is alienating, lonely, boring, and sick. There is no community. Women are competitive even about mothering. Money rules all. No wonder I dream of buying some wooded acres and starting an organic farm/commune! Paul Stiles is a deeply sensitive and intelligent man, a great writer, and someone with a lot to say about why we are all popping Prozac and junk food these days. I enjoyed the narrative at the beginning--while I didn't agree with every single point, I also live in the DC area suburban wasteland, so I could relate to his points about sprawl, angry commuters, and McMansions. The look at corporate greed and corruption in recent years was eye-opening. Everyone seems to have their fingers in the till, and the result, I predict, will be a 30's scale depression within the next 20 years. I consider moving to New Zealand to escape the coming hard times.

Provides some hard-hitting analysis

Does the Constitution create the framework for the American dream which is contributing to a faster-paced modern world? CEO/former military man Stiles consulted the Constitution and discovered, to his surprise, that aside from authorizing Congress to regulate commerce and mint money, there was no reference to capitalism, corporations, or business at all. So the free market considered a cornerstone of democracy is actually not even mentioned in the key founding documents of our nation! With this information in hand, Stiles discusses the free market's history, how it's remade the American life, and how it may be eroding some of our most beloved human values. From the creation of market-driven culture to the ironies of economics, Is The American Dream Killing You? How 'the Market' Rules Our Lives provides some hard-hitting analysis.

Paul Stiles's Book Should Be Required Reading for Urban Planners

Paul Stiles wrote a book that has made me really think about how the market rules our lives. His book combines urban planning concepts with some sage advice on what makes a "quality of life" or lack of. Local, State, and National politicians would be wise to explore the concepts in Paul's book. Work is not everything and families lives are deeply affected by "the Market". Many parents, exhausted from long commutes because of market "planned" communities, causing horrible traffic gridlock, do not get to spend enough time with their families on a day-to-day basis. Streets that don't cut through to other roads cause massive traffic jams. Yes, it is nice to have your own suburban oasis with dead-end streets and courts, but getting out of typical neighborhoods in the morning commute can be hell because of the ridiculous urban planning, planned largely by developers maximizing their income. Because of the expense of living in the U.S. - wildly inflated housing prices, out of control medical insurance and health care costs, the market has made it nearly impossible in many areas for a Mom to stay at home with her kids. This is important in the first years of a child's life, of course. Part of the expense is artificial with prices being jacked up due to the "encouragement" and self-fulfilling prophecy of the market getting Mothers to work. Many mothers have to work - leaving little kids raised by day-care or neglect, if they can't afford adequate day-care. Even when kids get older, it is nice to have a parent around when they get home from school and today's artificial price inflation in "making a living" has made it impossible for most families to have a "stay at home" parent. From visiting Europe and Israel, I can see how citizens there have national health insurance and private physicians to supplement their insurance, if they have the money. In the U.S., we have mainly private health insurance and if you lose your job you won't have health insurance and even some jobs cannot give their employees health insurance due to rising costs. In U.S., we have expensive fresh baked bread with no preservatives or chemicals, and for much of the U.S., the fruits, vegetables, cheese are fairly expensive, for the best quality. But, we have cheap meat, chicken, pork in the U.S. In Europe and Israel it is the opposite - cheap top quality bread, fruit, vegetables, and dairly products are usually easily available to the typical consumer. The citizens overseas don't have to spend $4.00+ for a decent loaf of freshly baked bread. I have enjoyed the pedestrian-friendly very interesting towns in Europe and Israel. We have our comparable planned communities in the D.C. area and U.S. that attempt to emulate European towns, which were what old U.S. towns were like before suburban hell! But, one has to fight traffic way too much and some of the areas are hopeless with endless homes, too few roads, boring blandness. The list of market ruling our lives in

Most Important Book of the Past Ten Years

Paul Stiles has written a book that needed to be written years ago and in many versions and perspectives. In my modest opinion it is the MOST IMPORTANT book of the past 10 years in addressing the culture in which we live and will die. It should be required reading in our homes, schools, churches, governments and councils generally. Paul Stiles needs to become a household name as a spokesman for Humanity.

The Bottom Line

During the six decades since my birth, I've been endlessly dismayed by the clearing, plowing under, paving over, malling, developing, polluting, trashing, McDonaldizing, and general destruction of every place I've ever cared about in this country. And I've lived in quite a few. The earth's rich bounty of species are dying out one by one, human cultures and diversity are being lost, the poles are thawing, glaciers are melting, and the weather is growing more extreme. This is to say nothing of the ways in which our institutions, morals and manners have degraded in the last fifty years. For years, I've brooded on the question of why we're so rapaciously destroying the living systems of our planet, including our own. What's at the bottom of our seeming disregard for our very survival? If you've yourself asked the same questions, then this book by Paul Stiles can provide you with answers. To put it succinctly, our predicament can be blamed on "the market." Not that the market economy is inherently evil, but that we've allowed it to run away with us. We've displaced paramount considerations of spirit with the maximization of financial profit, thereby letting "market values" become our god. The chapters of this book devote attention to a number of aspects of our lives impacted by our obeisance to the market god. These include family, esthetics, politics, education, religion, entertainment, work, environment, and possibly the most alarming, our fundamental sense of reality. Unlike many books lamenting the present state of our culture, Stiles prescribes a deceptively simple solution. Namely, that we give values of spirit, such as love, beauty, and faith, equal or preferably superior status to the values of market economics and profit. In this reassignment of priorities lies the only hope for our striking a healthy cultural balance that will nudge us back toward a world where true human progress reigns, rather than the prevailing misery and suffering that afflicts so many in our time.