College Research

Steen Anthony

College Research

Short Argumentative

2/23/2016

The True State of the American Dream

  Moving to United States, I have been told countless time that the United State is where I can make my dream comes true. My whole life I have heard that anyone could achieve the dream, and I believe to be true. However, After a couple of years, I learned there are only special occasions that allows people to achieve the Dream.  Even though some Americans believe the American Dream is alive, in actuality, the Dream is slowly decaying to many due to economic, salary, and education inequality.

The American Dream is a goal that the public wonders is still obtainable; nevertheless, supporters of the American Dream will probably argue that the Dream is alive. Brandon King insists that “Many liberal economists and activists say the American Dream is dead, but I say that it’s more alive and important than ever...” (573). King does not just believe the American Dream is alive, but that the Dream is more important than ever before. Like others, King believes that taxing the rich is counterproductive: “Taxing the rich only decreases their spending potential and thus their ability to stimulate the economy ” (576) By taxing the rich, this limits the amount they spend and decreases jobs opportunity. Even though some believe the American Dream is alive and taxing the rich will only hurt the economy, there are plenty of reasons on how the American Dream is dying.

The differences between the poor and the rich is continuously increasing. There has been an inequality in the economic finance of the public. As Robert H. Frank stated, “ … during the last three decades the economy has grown much more slowly, and our infrastructure has fallen into grave disrepair” (581). This disrepair caused differences between income groups that are too great that makes starting from nothing and then becoming successful difficult. Frank wrote, “In a recent working paper based on census data for the 100 most populous counties in the United States, Adam Seth Levine, Oege Dijk and I found that the counties where income inequality grew fastest also showed the biggest increases in symptoms of financial distress” (582). This shows when the gap between the rich and the poor becomes bigger at a faster rate, there is more financial trouble. This leads to a worse environment to try to earn jobs or become financially stable. Also, on top of economy unfairness, job salaries are not contributing in supporting the American Dream.

Salary inequality is prevalent in high grossing retailers such as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is everywhere and this store seems to be a good place to start working to support a family or a beginning job to earn enough money to start funding dreams. However, as those employees will soon find out, this is not always the case. Jennifer McLaughlin, a 22 year old mom and an employee at Wal-Mart, stated, “The way they pay you, you cannot make it by yourself without having a second job or someone to help you, unless you've been there for 20 years or you're a manager” (qtd n. 607). Trying to support a child and herself, Jennifer can not earn enough money with just working full time at Wal-Mart. She only makes about $16,800 and she quotes, “And I’m considered high-paid” (qtd n. 607). Wal-Mart is one of the biggest companies out there and seem to have a hold on setting wage and benefit standards; yet, for making billions of dollars, this industry barely pays workers and does not cover 40 percent of its employees with its medical plan (608). With how little employees make, how are people supposed to achieve the American Dream if they can barely support themselves? Unless that individual is lucky enough to find the right job, there seems most people are just out of luck.

With unfair salaries weighing down on workers, it seems going for a higher education should be a easy and fair deal. While the process of obtaining higher education is good in theory, the reality is that it is flawed. Being able to expand someone’s knowledge and being able to increase that individual’s financial standing is part of the American Dream itself, but in reality, earning higher learning has become more of an obstacle to most. C. Anthony Broh agrees when he writes,“...colleges and universities divide families by income, providing access to the best schools for those with accumulated wealth. Low- or moderate-income families are relegated to less prestigious schools…” (par. 2). This means that unless a citizen comes from a wealthy family that person will have much lower chances to get into a more expensive schools. Many of them will only have community colleges as an option to gain a higher education. Another big problem is large amounts of money go into private institutes that makes low level of education that could have been used to help those who can not afford but would benefit from them (Broh par. 14) Broh even stated, “They make a nightmare of the American Dream” (par. 14). These institutes do not make well-rounded programs and limit the amount of college students going to them by making them private.

In conclusion, when it comes to the topic of the American Dream, most of us will readily agree that it is dying. Still, some might say that the American Dream is still alive, but I argue the Dream is not obtainable to many citizens. By America having unfair standards in economics, salary, and education, the country has made an almost impossible situation for many to achieve the American Dream. For myself, I was lucky enough to have enough advantages to pursue this Dream, but with just a few differences in my life, the American Dream would have stayed just a dream.

Works Cited

King, Brandon. "The American Dream : Dead, Alive, or on Hold?" They Say I Say With Readings. By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Ed. Russel Durst. 2E ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 179-189. Print

Frank, Robert H. "Income Inequality : Too Big to Ignore" They Say I Say With Readings. By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Ed. Russel Durst. 2E ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 179-189. Print

Olsson, Karen. "Up Against Wal-Mart" They Say I Say With Readings. By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Ed. Russel Durst. 2E ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 179-189. Print

Broh, C. Anthony. "Perspectives On Higher Education And The American Dream: A Review Essay." Political Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell) 129.4 (2014): 703-710. Academic Search Elite. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.