Outliers: The American Dream

A country in which people are free means they're free to succeed and fail. To succeed in life, one must set a goal, identify the skills needed to achieve the objective, and execute those. Though this is much easier said than done, with a strong work ethic, Americans all have an equal opportunity to succeed —otherwise known as The American Dream. This ideal life dates back to 1931 and has since brought people of all shapes and sizes prosperity in America. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers undermines The American Dream; he states “...no one – not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses – ever makes it alone.” Gladwell makes it clear that he believes that The American Dream is now dead. Though The American

Dream has changed throughout history - it is surely not dead, merely some Americans have just lost sight of it and are not looking for opportunities like some people did in the past, which shaped The United States for which it is today.
In 2010, the New York Times published an article titled “American Dream is Elusive for New Generation”. The article discusses how difficult it is for millennials to find a job after college, which puts a damper on the American Dream. The article chronicles the experience of a 24-year-old recent college graduate, who turned down a job with a $40K annual salary because, the article notes, "Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder." Considering that the median salary for workers of all ages in the United States is just under $40K, a starting salary right out of college that is over that amount is nothing to complain about. This college graduate did achieve the American Dream, but failed to recognize it and capitalize his opportunity.
On the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans this year, a record 10 percent are immigrants. The majority of the list were self-made billionaires whose start to success was with a single idea - not an inheritance. "There is no other country on the planet where you or your parents can show up and with a lot of hard work create huge wealth within one generation," businessman Raul Fernandez, whose parents immigrated from Cuba and from Ecuador, told The Washington Post. While he's not on the Forbes list, Mr. Fernandez has a self-made fortune based in technology. "It's a unique and truly American ecosystem that sets the stage for hungry, scrappy immigrants and entrepreneurs to create great companies and enormous wealth." Some factors that may contribute to the high success of immigrants is their readiness to take risks in life, their perspectives informed by another culture, and their connections to international resources or networks. The amount of immigrants gracing the list proves that it’s still possible to start with next to nothing and build something extraordinary in a single generation, in other words, they achieved the American Dream.
Some Americans are forgetting the traditional values that lie behind the American Dream, and relating this ideal to just wealth.

A new study shows that a lot of Americans are living the American Dream but do not recognize it. This 7,015 person study found that the majority of the people reported of owning a home, receiving good education, finding a decent job, and giving their children a better life than they had. All of these factors are traditional principles of the American Dream. "Even though people report that they are not living the dream, they actually are when you look at the traditional benchmarks," said Denise Delahorne, SVP, Group Strategy Director, DDB Chicago, who worked closely with the survey. She theorized that many people do not see themselves as having attained the traditional American Dream because of a changing definition of the term. More and more Americans are measuring their success based on how much money they have. "If you're new to this country, then life seems pretty good here," Delahorne said. "But for many people who have lived here a long time, they've started to think of the American Dream less as the traditional elements, and more relative to wealth." The original American Dream is still alive, but some Americans have lost sight of the traditional values and are too focused on measuring their success by

wealth.
In 2014, Jim Motavalli, wrote the article “The American Dream Is Alive—These People Prove It”.

Out of the three examples he wrote about, one’s motto was to ‘eliminate excuses’. In 1980, John Paul DeJoria (who was then living in his car) and Paul Mitchell (a hairdresser) started their company, John Paul Mitchell Systems, of selling shampoos and conditioners. Their starting capital was only $700. It was a rather unpromising time to start a business, with inflation at 12.5 percent and interest rates at 18 percent. Previous to the start of the company, DeJoria grew up poor in the Los Angeles area. He did not have the money to attend college, so he took numerous sales jobs, including a succession of positions at hair-care firms. In fact, he got himself fired from most of them. This had a profound effect on him as he told Charles Payne on his radio show. “When people fire you for not being their kind of manager, it makes you want to be your own manager,” DeJoria said. DeJoria later teamed up with Paul Mitchell. Unfortunately, a European investor pulled out of their business before they were able to launch. This left Dejoria and Mitchell with practically nothing. So before the first bills were due, DeJoria packed his new hair product in his trunk and found his own buyers going door to door. Perseverance pays off, as DeJoria and Mitchell’s privately held company makes 90 hair-care products that are sold in 100,000 salons nationally and in 80 countries today. DeJoria’s advice to

business startups: “The American Dream is definitely still alive—more people just have to realize it’s alive…. You can start a business today with little or no money.”
The American Dream never died, the meaning of it just changed to some Americans throughout history. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth. This ideal life still exists today but some people have forgotten what it truly means to be successful, while focusing too much on their economic status. Furthermore, when life does hand opportunities to some, they do not take advantage of it. Which this is the complete opposite of the American Dream that through hard work and perseverance, one will be successful.