The American Dream is a vision that sets the United States as a land of great opportunities, where an individual can start from nowhere and still manage to make it. According to it, all children have equal opportunities to succeed regardless of the state of affairs; hence each successive generation has a shot at achieving more than their predecessors. This implies that the ideology of the American Dream is mainly based on individual merit, which is a combination of hard work, innate abilities possessing the right attitudes and having a high moral character and not forgetting integrity. Most Americans believe that even through perseverance and ingenuity they all have the capability to alter their …show more content…
Everything that we strive for and the lifestyle we desire is really unnecessary. As “the father of modern economics” Gregory Mankiw’s theory, the biggest contradiction for the modern society is how to use limited resources to satisfy human’s infinite wants, needs, the necessary items to keep life, have limited amount but human’s want are unlimited (Gregory, 2004). Perspective has greatly changed for the worst, now making consumerism the heart of the American Dream. The media has had a significant role to play in this, showcasing that all we need is money to spend on ridiculous things so as to fit in. I do agree that the American Dream should not be about what you buy, but about the mark you leave in the world. The things that really matter should be more about a fulfilling career, a family and giving back to the …show more content…
However, what is the final product of the dream after all, what is the exact goal? If it is to go from rags to riches, then other people do so through inheriting wealth from the family, while others deal in illegal businesses just to get there. Alger told motivational tales to inspire immigrants to apply an optimistic means of thinking and use all the knowledge they would to find their way in the land of opportunity (Krugman, 388). Conversely, his thinking on hard work may not be all true to everyone. Mexicans are reported to be very hard-working people, if not the best in the world, and work for almost 10 hours per day, averagely. But they happen to have the uppermost level of relative poverty among developed countries. He thought that hard work is all we need. In his stories, he sidestepped this opportunity gap by providing his heroes with amazing strokes of luck that needless to say, rarely happen in today’s world. Many would wish that if only there was a falling safe and a wealthy heiress for every poor person in the land of opportunities dreaming of a better life.
In looking into the underlying causes of not adequately achieving the American Dream, factors like healthcare, education, culture, family background and labor markets