An American Dream for All. Not a Reality for Everyone. Research Paper

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An American Dream for All
The question of whether the American dream exists lingers on multiple debates within society. American society seems disintegrated that each person has his/her own definition of the dream. People are hurting when told that they have equal opportunities. It is impossible to believe in equal opportunities when some are treated as special while others are treated merely as part of the system. Aspects such as little savings for retirement, huge debts that hold back startups, and a dissatisfying work-life balance all point to a society that barely follows in the same dream path. While a few believe that America is on the right path in creating opportunities for its people going by the mobility in the labor market and advocacy for minority groups, questions are still raised on the path that the nation explores in as far as its motivation to distribute resources equitably is concerned. Diseases are distributed unequally, college debts keep rising, and social mobility keeps ailing, factors that only shade a bad image in pursuance of the American dream for all.
The Dream
America was founded on the wisdom of founding fathers who defined its people according to what they were and what they would be. The ethos was inscribed in the American dream (Mills 196). The dream would accommodate the ideals that value freedom and individualistic as well as collective upward mobility. Prosperity and success would be part of such a society and hard work would deliver value to society. While part of that dream was achieved in the past with most Americans owning homes and a few forming parts of the labor market, not much pride can be deduced in pursuing the dream.
Not a Reality for Everyone
There are multiple reasons that would expose the assertion that the American dream is a reality for all as a mere illusion. A basic understanding could be rooted in the growth that may have not been precedent after the nation’s independence. At the onset of the 20th century, the American population was barely 190 million people (Chomsky et al. 93). Close to a hundred years later, that number has increased to over 310 million individuals. While such growth could be important in other economic prospects including labor, barely does it reflect any economic growth. That is because it has only led to the deterioration of resources. Natural resources such as land and freshwater keep becoming scarce. Unfortunately, the number of people that require such resources keep escalating. The nation has not increased its landmass by a centimeter. Trade in the global platform is also changing. Nations that were once producers are currently buyers (Mills 104). It means that the economic parlance is changing and so is human nature. Probably, the country is delving into Marx and Engel’s assertion that “the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes” (8). The cold war on production continues. There are battles between socio-economic classes, and the fruits of scarce resources are beginning to emerge from the grounds of climate change. Never on such a struggle should any person believe that the American dream is a reality for everyone. Instead, it is a reality for people who are strong and are enabled to fight for scarce resources.
The American dream is not a reality for everyone because of the foundations in which it is rooted. The founding fathers had a vision for the nation. A vision that each person will be accorded an opportunity to prosper no matter who they are (Chomsky et al. 93). Setting goals would be marked with the ability to achieve those goals and not by the socio-economic backgrounds in which individuals are rooted. It is probable that the founding fathers forgot to include the reality of what it would take to achieve the dream. Barely a century after the declaration, the nation was indulged into slave trade, a trade that would root the nation’s growth into eternal darkness (Mills 74). This happened when every citizen still abode the motivation to achieve the American dream. One then asks questions about how a nation would plan to ground its growth on human rights when it traded actual humans for its economic growth. One cannot forget the socio-and economic disparities that slavery has since indulged the nation. Believing that such a foundation marked the position for achieving the dream for all would be wrong by all means.
Distribution of infrastructure in a nation tells the motivation to secure a place for each individual citizen. Aspects such as healthcare and education influence individual productivity to the nation. At the very least, all people should be accorded an equal chance in pursuing the prospects (Caldwell 206). As it stands, the American dream is reserved for the people who complete their baccalaureate degrees before they are 26 years old or those who develop futuristic application software before they reach their 30. Currently, barely does 2/3 of the students who join institutions of higher learning graduate. One would be more surprised looking at the admissions into the American dream universities. Such universities only admit 10% or fewer applicants (Mills 104). The rest are relegated to pro-profit institutions that indulge them into endless debts and unfinished degrees. If the American dream is anchored on social mobility, then the current education system is doing everything to ruin that future. In healthcare, services are still skewed to favor particular demographic segments. African Americans are 56% more likely to contract prostate cancer than their white counterparts. That data is reflected in a lot more conditions. With all that disoriented data, the American dream keeps looking like a prospect engineered to benefit a few individuals in society. For the American dream to look like a reality for all, it should at least show that it has the foundations to befit the unique individual needs, something that is evidently absent.
The Victims
There are people or specific groups of people whose analyses indicate that they are not aligned in the prospects of the American dream for all. The society cannot be perfect. That is because each society consists of people who have varying needs. The society befits Segmund’s love analogy in which he insists that “love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value” (25). In that context, perfection does not come with love and neither does it come with the nature of the society. However, it does not tell just how much imperfection is good enough for an ideal society. At the superficial level, a society must have a diverse group of people. While...