Pros And Cons Of The American Dream

Envisioned through the prospect of arising from the depths of oppression and grasps of hardship, the American Dream lies as a prominent desire for all citizens to embody a seemingly attainable ideal of society. This ideal, affirming all individuals of all races and class to become wealthy and prosperous in America, seeks equal opportunities for all. However, under disseminating poverty and discrimination, this ideal of “The American Dream” is an impossible standard for those striving to achieve it, and is deeply buried within the realities of failure and loss. These adversaries impeding American citizens’ rights towards success begin in education where students of poverty stricken areas have a weaker and less sustainable environment urging
With such ramifications of poverty, these individuals are less inclined to achieve the American Dream, and fill low paying jobs whereas the rich accumulate more wealth. Immigrants face this struggle to fulfill the ideal as well, due to discrimination in the workforce as many are presented with unequal opportunities. The utopian ideal of the American Dream is a false and inaccurate representation of reality due to the unfair disadvantages hindering students from an equal education, the unjust distributions of wages throughout America, and the discrimination against immigrants.
As students of poverty are unjustly inclined to a less successful education, the diverging education for those students whom are wealthy in comparison to those who are not creates a large disparity between the two classes. With the unequal abilities for students of poverty to achieve success within their schools, they are oftentimes deprived of up to date resources found in textbooks and technology throughout the school. Wealthier children have these more applicable resources available to them as well as more qualified teachers, and in doing so, the education itself becomes more rigorous for the school population as a whole. This inequality in education between the rich and poor, often referred to
It has been proven that richest 400 individuals are wealthier than all 150 million of the population combined, and stated by columnist Lisa Wirthman, “The odds that children born in Denver's bottom 20 percent will make it into the top 20 percent of earners by the time they're adults is just 8.7 percent,”(Wirthman). Essentially, the rich are becoming wealthier, and the poor are becoming poorer. With just a slim 400 individuals being so outrageously wealthy, those very few are the only people of the population to have obtained this American Dream. A limited 8.7 percent is the remaining opportunities that children of poverty may have to obtain this dream, however few manage to escape the detrimental hardship. In doing so, the poor are forced to work any possible jobs that they can to survive, with no leniency on how they can spend their money or how they can accumulate more wealth to surpass poverty. Just last year, Colorado’s wealthiest 1% of individuals saw their income rise 200.8% (Wirthman). In 2012, these wealthy top one percent individuals saw their wages at $1, 347,381 (Sommeiller). In comparison, those whom are in poverty only make about $50,400 a year to a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour (Sommeiller). In increasingly escalating wages for the wealthy, those who are in poverty have a slim to no chance of attaining the American Dream, that being