Waking Up from the American Dream There has been much talk recently about the phenomenon of 'Wal-Martization' of America, which refers to the attempt of America's giant Wal-Mart chain store company to keep its cost at rock-bottom levels. For years, many American companies have embraced Wal-Mart-like stratagems to control labor costs, such as hiring temps (temporary workers) and part-timers, fighting unions, dismantling internal career ladders and outsourcing to lower paying contractors at home and abroad. While these tactics have the admirable outcome of holding down consumer prices, they're costly in other ways. More than a quarter of the labor force, about 34 million workers, is trapped in low-wage, often dead-end jobs. Many middle-income and highs killed employees face fewer opportunities, too, as companies shift work to subcontractors and temps agencies and move white-collar jobs to China and India. The result has been an erosion of one of America's most cherished value: giving its people the ability to move up the economic ladder over their lifetimes. Historically, most Americans, even lows killed ones, were able to find poorly paid janitorial or factory jobs, then gradually climbed into the middle class as they gained experience and moved up the wage curve. But the number of workers progressing upward began to slip in 1970s. Upward mobility diminished even more in the 1980s as globalization and technology slammed blue-collar wages. Restoring American mobility is less a question of knowing what to do than of making it happen. Experts have decried schools' inadequacy for years, but fixing them is a long, arduous struggle. Similarly, there have been plenty of warnings about declining college access, but finding funds was difficult even in eras of large surpluses. The American dream in this passage mainly refers to ______.