American Dream Thesis Statement

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What’s up with the American Dream
The American Dream is a widespread term used in describing the American Way of Life on the whole, but it is not that simple at all. For many Americans, The American Dream means to become rich and being able to attain everything that one desires only if one works hard enough for it; that is, from rags to riches. To other people however, The American Dream is much more and in fact goes beyond material things: it is, to them, the dream of leading a fulfilling, contented and simple life and the vital features being equality and faith (Cohen-Marks and Stout 825). In addition, The American Dream is about freedom and the United States being the nation of limitless and boundless opportunities. This persuasive essay argues for the view that because of such things as poverty, growing inequality and wealth gap in the country, The American Dream has slipped away and no longer exists: today, attaining it is impossible for most Americans. Thesis statement: The American Dream has become unattainable for many Americans today due to circumstances that are beyond their control.
The belief in America as the land of opportunity, in The American Dream, was well and alive during the 1860s following the publication of the book From Rags to Riches by Horatio Alger which featured a poor man named Ragged Dick who managed to successfully work very hard and move from poverty to opulence and a respectable position. For generations, the aspirations and hopes of American people has been powered by The American Dream. It commenced as a revolutionary but simple idea: every individual has the right to pursue his or her own happiness in life, and the liberty to do his/her best for a better life through fair ambition and hard work (Lallas 166). Over time however, the dream has come to be a symbol of various expectations with regard to making money and possessing material things. In the past decade, a lot of American adults have doubted whether this dream could actually be realized (Mseka 8). These days, the dream is in fact beyond the reach of the working poor in America who have to work 2 jobs in order to insure the survival of their families. The story of rags-to-riches is a lot more common in Hollywood than it is really is on the Main Street. Just six percent of kids who are born to poor parents manage to shift to the very top of the economic ladder (Mseka 9).
If The American Dream denotes a realistic rate of income growth for those who are employed, then many working people cannot expect to attain it. Wright (196) observed that the middle class in the United States has not seen its earnings increase over the past fifteen years. The percentage of families considered as middle-class is in fact declining. Since the economic crisis of the year 2007/08, median income of households has been falling, whereas the earnings for the richest have gone up (Wright 197). This means that The American Dream is becoming more and more impossible to realize for most American people.
In the year 2013, Robert Putman, a political scientist, pointed out that his hometown of Port Clinton, Ohio embodied The American Dream about 50 years ago: it was a place which provided decent opportunity both for the children of factory workers and those of bankers. Fifty years later however, children from rich households park their luxury cars in the Port Clinton High School lot at the side of dilapidated junkers where their homeless classmates reside. These days, The American Dream has become a split-screen nightmare. This clearly demonstrates that The American Dream is in fact unattainable to some groups of people, particularly those in poverty.
It is worth mentioning that The American Dream in recent years has been undermined by a mix of government policies and global economic developments which have extremely broadened the gap between the super wealthy Americans and the rest of Americans. According to the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, the earnings of the richest people in the United States have gone up considerably in the past few decades whereas the earnings of middle-class Americans have actually not changed (Krugman 561). According to Paul Krugman, the America which he grew up in was a moderately equal middle-class American society. Nonetheless, he added that in the previous generation, the United States has gone back to Gilded Age inequality levels. A major reason for caring about inequality is certainly the issue of living standards. Over the last 3 decades, the majority of America’s economic growth has gone to a rich, small minority to such a degree that it is not clear whether the average family in the United States has benefited in any way from technological advancement and the growing productivity which it brings (Krugman 562). The lack of significant economic growth for middle-income and lower-income households is in itself a vital reason for seeking a more equal distribution of income. It is notable that the high rate of inequality in America has turned the United States into a country with a much weakened middle class. This inequality has a corrosive effect on politics and social relations that has become increasingly clear as the United States had shifted deeper into a New Gilded Age (Krugman 563).
Middle-class people in America have been caught up within a rat race, not due to their foolishness or greediness, but because they are striving to provide their kids with an opportunity in a more and more unequal society (Krugman 565). American people often believe that people are able to make their own place in the society. One survey showed that sixty-one percent of American people are in agreement with the statement which says that people get rewarded for their hard work and effort, in comparison to twenty-three percent in France and forty-nine percent in Canada. Nonetheless, in point of fact, the United States has significant inequality of opportunity and results. Even though Americans think that anybody could succeed through determination and working hard, the facts say otherwise (Krugman 565).
In America, mobility is lower than it is in the United Kingdom, Canada and France. There are 2 measurements of economic mobility. There is relative mobility which is understood as the capability of children rising to greater financial status than the one which their parents occupied, for instance when children born in poor households manage to rise to the position of middle class. There is also absolute mobility, which denotes the prosperity and affluence of children in comparison to their parents (Bengali and Daly 3). American people do not have equal opportunity, and opportunity in the United States is also less equal here than it is in other Western countries. The reason for this is apparent. Poor nutrition because of a lack of social support and low income puts Americans at a disadvantage. Poor nutrition serves to derail their chances in life. Moreover, disruptions in life which affect the parents of a child could also make one’s upward mobility difficult – the weakness of America’s social safety net actually makes disruptions such as these more possible and worse if they occur (Williamson 22). Furthermore, there is the extremely uneven quality of basic education in the United States, among other factors. As such, equality of opportunity is for the most part fictitious.
A society with very unequal results is relatively without doubt, a society that also has very unequal opportunities. The high rate of inequality in America serves to impose significant costs on the society which go beyond how it holds down the purchasing power of most American families. Inequality also damages people since it corrupts politics. High inequality levels strain the ties which hold the American people together as a society. There has been a lasting downward trend over the last half a century in the degree to which American people trust either each other or the government; there is convincing evidence that increasing inequality is the reason for the increasing cynicism (Wright 198). Monica Potts, a journalist, conducted a study and found that in recent years, there has been a reduction in life expectancy amongst white women in the United States who lack high-school degrees. This raises important questions with regard to financial prospects amongst the rural poor in America.
Many scholars have pointed out that the past 2 decades have actually altered the balance of power and wealth to big companies and few people who are privileged that even the humble fiscal security which average American people often dream about is turning out to be exactly that: a dream which has little likelihood of realization. Lallas (163) reported that for decades, income inequality has been increasing. In the last 3 decades, the earnings of the top one percent have risen by 154%, whereas the wages of the bottom ninety percent have risen by just seventeen percent. As the quintiles of the economic ladder continue moving further and further apart, climbing them would certainly become more and more difficult. Chances for upward mobility – The American Dream – would fade away as the decks would become stuck against those who are poor and those in the middle-class (Lallas 164). However, other people consider income inequality as something positive, an indication of a robust and dynamic economy which would eventually help everybody (Cohen-Marks and Stout 840). On the whole, The American Dream is becoming impossible to attain thanks to income inequality.
The increasing gap between those who are poor and those who are wealthy has made it more difficult to get ahead. A study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research comprising Chetty et al. (2014) revealed that The American Dream could actually be a dead end for those living and growing up in the wrong places. This study demonstrated that the rate of upward mobility has not changed in the past few 20 years. Nonetheless, this does not imply that there is no problem in the American society. If a person is born to parents who are poor, then that person s...