Americans are putting faith in a dream that is no longer attainable in the America that we know today. The American Dream that was once attainable by everyone allowed for a prosperous life in the United States. The economy allowed for the average Joe to get a job out of high school that payed enough to become successful in society’s standards, but times have changed.
I call for the attention of my fellow Americans because today we have to struggle to accomplish more to reach the same level of achievement and security that Americans could easily get 70 years ago– effectively making the belief in the American Dream misleading.
Why is such an attractive and valued belief such a cause for concern? The ability to have a secure job that payed enough for a factory worker to own a home and provide for a family is over. The promise of making it to the middle class is no longer as common than it once was but still so many believe it to be realistic. What is to blame are middle class aspirations in a lower class reality. But why are so many people stuck reminiscing the ease of the past?
Who else to blame besides the government?…
The shrinking of the middle class is not a failure of capitalism. It’s a failure of government. Capitalism has been doing exactly what it was designed to do: concentrating wealth in the ownership class, while providing the mass of workers with just enough wages to feed, house and clothe themselves – EDWARD MCCLELLAND
We can look back at the days when a high school diploma promised many Americans a future that could enable most to reach happiness through success. Those days of the past before the rich began to perpetuate their wealth as many American began to fall into the lower class because of the effects of capitalism.
The fact that the rich earn enough money to save money allows them to make investments that other people simply cannot afford. And investments — whether stones, land, corporate stock or education — tend to bring a positive return- David Leonhart
Leonhart’s assertion basically claims that since wealthy people will remain wealthy because they are able to make investments that others cannot in our economy.
There is still a way to reach the middle class, but it is not the method that the American Dream employs. The way to a securing a job and owning a home is through getting an education but there is a catch. The problem that arises in regards to education is created because of the inability for everyone to become sufficiently educated, therefore contradicting the part in the American Dream that promises anyone can make it.
first law of inequality: education. When a society becomes more educated, many of its less-wealthy citizens quickly acquire an ephemeral but nonetheless crucial form of capital — knowledge — that can bring enormous returns. David Leonhart
This is alarming to me because the promise land that the U.S. is portrayed to be is false. Even more frustrating, we readily accept a belief that is no longer applicable to this time in America. Instead, goals should be redirected to something that can actually be accomplished within today’s economy and educational systems.
Source Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961
The paradox arises in the need for higher education to make it to the middle class. Education is an investment that isn’t feasible like getting a high school diploma; therefore, I believe that the American dream of reaching the middle class is outdated and replaced with the reality that achievement in today’s infrastructure is difficult.
Having it all can’t be done by anyone anymore and because of that, those in the lower class that want to grow up and enjoy what the American Dream has to offer must work very hard to get there. This reality should replace the American Dream so citizens of the United States aren’t given the impression that an easy, comfortable life is capable here, but rather success is achievable through hard work and education.
A more realistic portrayal of what this nation has to offer the up and coming aspiring middle-classers would be to erase the American Dream from the American ideologies and rewrite one possibly titled, “The American Dream in the 21st Century”.
“The American Dream in the 21st Century” could be written as a guide to achieve the stability and success associated with the middle class and incorporate the challenging route to get there. Although less appealing than the American Dream, the revision is realistic in today’s version of the United States.
My proposed revision of the American dream certainly isn’t as encouraging as the old one, but I believe Americans deserve be given realistic expectations to make it to the middle class opposed to putting faith in the past.
For more…
Check out this link for an artist, Francoise Gaujour, for a visual interpretation of the nostalgia surrounding the American Dream.