American Dream Research Paper

“No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.” (Jealous P.1). What is the American dream. Is it the ability for free schooling? Is it the ability to get a sustainable job to support your family? Does it even exist? Many people have their own interpretations of the American Dream, and some question it’s existence in modern society. Some Believe the american dream has become the need for wealth distribution, so that people can live without stress, they can enjoy luxuries that only the rich can enjoy. The american dream is something that the younger generations of American citizens, or even the elders of a family in a war torn nation can both agree that it inspires hope for a good or better life.
When you think of the American

dream what do you think? Do you think of a white picket fence, or maybe you think of a Golden Retriever playing with your son before he goes to a baseball game. We all have our obtainable dreams and our extravagant ones. One obtainable dream in the 1920’s was the American dream. Although it is still around today, many people question its obtainability. Can a person on minimum wage and a high school diploma live the White Picket Life? Currently, the Federal minimum wage is 7.25 according to dole.gov. This puts people in a position where a person making minimum wage that works every day of the year, no sick, vacation days, holidays, or emergency occasions, just purely 40 hours, 52 weeks a year, makes 23,374 without taxes. This means that according to Poverty USA.org, they can only sustain a household of three where the poverty line is 19,000 and for four people it’s 24,000. This would put a small family to a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle considering that the average rent is 934$ a month. With that, people also need food, electricity, water, garbage, and everyday expenses in life. To conclude, it is mathematically impossible to live a Picket Fence lifestyle on 7.25 per hour, people can't live that way!
The One Percent. You’ve all heard of them and the power they possess. The wealth distribution in this nation is in a place lower than people think. This caused for socialism to become more popular. We don't need socialism for a more balanced distribution, but it does need to be more spread out. Some might argue that “The top one percent deserve their wealth they earned it!” While this may be true, do you believe that a CEO of a company works 340 times harder than its average employee. Many people believe that the middle class gets about as much wealth as the lower rich. This is far from the truth. The reality is that in people's ideas of the wealth distribution the lower middle class gets as much as the upper middle class actually gets. This means that people don't have a grasp on how poor the poor really are. This is important because when a person migrates over to america due to a financial crises, or a famine, they may not have the skills to be apart of the middle class and therefore cannot live a life above the poverty line. This wealth distribution can also affect citizens of the US. It does this in that wealthy people who come over here and take jobs in the upper classes, than american citizens might lose their jobs so ceo’s can pay smaller wages. This can cause americans to not only lose their jobs, but also create an even larger gap in the wealth distribution. This is the reason I believe the poor wealth distribution prevents the american dream from existing for low skilled people.
Modern society allows for a lot of change very quickly.

This is due to fast transportation, global connection and communication, and the ability for more options towards being apart of a mass migration. Today, their is aa believed 20 million illegal immigrants in the US. These people can come from all over the world for many reasons. Mexico for a better life, middle east for escape from war, or even Asia so those people can seek better work for their adept skills in a field. This means that a large amount of people in many different categories of work skills, have come into the US. This can cause jobs to be taken, resulting in people to become unemployed, taking away their income and their ability to pursue the American dream. “When you're young you have time and energy but no money. When you get older you have money and energy but no time. And later when you finally have time and money, you no longer have energy.” (Gulick) Today in american society people are always pursuing a deadline. It doesn't matter if you are a businessman working in an office, or a poor man in a janitor's cupboard, people suffer from extreme amounts of stress. This combined with the quote by gulick shows how you can never have a perfect balance in life, a balance to pursue the american

dream.
The American is a beautiful thing to many people. It is something that inspires hope and a better life. But unfortunately, this idea of America being a world of prosperity is slipping through the cracks in the fist that holds it tightly. So, hopefully you have seen the extent of wealth distribution and how poor it currently is. Or maybe understand that everyone has their own dream where pursuing it is becoming difficult on the bottom dollar. Finally, the day in the 20 first century, Immigration affects economy than it used to. This combined with stress the everyday workers experience, makes you wonder, is it worth it?