In late December, my grade 10 students were taking a semester final exam.
It was an American Literature class, with a single essay-type question that they had to respond to, based on various readings that we did last semester.
Their question was this:
“Is the American Dream a myth or a reality?”
The ideas they dealt with include whether wealthy people remain wealthy, and poor people remain poor.
It’s a difficult question to answer.
But even in Canada, according to this Globe and Mail article, it appears that there’s a growing divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” in Toronto, with the casualty being the middle class.
If that’s the case, then what’s happening, economically? Are the middle class getting wealthy, or are they becoming poorer?
And has there been socioeconomic mobility in your family, for example, over the past three generations? Or are you, relatively speaking, in the same comparative relative position that your grandparents were in?