There has always been the theory of the American dream. That’s what it is, just a theory. Anyone can come to America with the dream of becoming wealthy and successful, but one must be willing to put in the work. Not only that, there are odds stacked against the low-income society. Education levels, taxes, even a location or residence will cause challenges. Obstacles are always a factor, but persistence and perseverance can put the odd in ones favor. With that said, my theory is; America is not based on egalitarianism nor exceptionalism, it is both. I grew up in a low income household. My mother, a school bus driver, did her 40 hour work week with a decent paying wage. For a family of five that just isn’t enough and, as a school bus driver there really isn’t any moving up the ladder. Then there is my father, a closet drunk and addict who would only work just enough to be able to collect unemployment if fired, so of course, he always just so happened to get fired. My point is, “Some of us are just plain lazy and some of us work just hard enough to provide a roof overhead”.(Cox, W & Alm, R N.A.) If my mother hadn’t have to support three children and an indolent husband, she …show more content…
most likely could have strived to become something greater. My father will just ride the system until he dies because in his life he believed he would never become anything greater, so he never tried. Learning from my parents mistakes, I have a passion to become what they were not.
This is where I believe America is part egalitarian. At the age of 20 I had already become in management in the company I worked for at the time. Next, I became a professional auto glass installer. I was only one out of thirty-one female technicians across the entire united states. After that I was able to be a stay at home mom because my husband with no higher learning was a laborer for Unistress making a remarkable paycheck every week. So one could say ive done pretty well for myself considering my parent economic bracket right? “ We will end up suffering not only from injustice, but from vast waste of human potential”. (Krugman, P 2004) Between job I have suffered many injustices and waste of my
potential. My job in management after three years was terminated because I had discovered embezzlement from higher management. I was forced to quit Safelite auto glass due to sexism in the work place that no one cared to address. Even my husband had to quit his well paying job because he literally broke his spine at that company and, instead of them taking care of its employee, we had to sue for lost wages. So, I can work as hard as id like but I will still get kicked down from someone who is higher up than me, trying to dictate where I will go in life. That is where egalitarianism disappears, sort of. I may have dealt with many financial tragedies, however, I have always picked my self back up. I have been on my own since I was 16, yet ive always persevered. With every new experience, good or bad, I have learned from it and it have made me more eager to become greater. There will always be someone to bring you down, that’s how America works. How you handle it, and what you do with it, will determine if you’re a success or a failure. The American dream is just a theory, yes, but its up to oneself to make it a reality. One day, that reality will be mine.
In Confronting Inequality, Paul Krugman discusses the cost of inequality and possible solutions. Krugman argues to say that it is a fantasy to believe the rich live just like the middle class. Then, he goes into detail about how middle class families struggle to try to give their children a better life and how education plays a factor in children’s future lives. For example, children’s ability to move into higher education could be affected by their parents economic status. Also, He discusses how politicians play a role in the inequality, because most of politicians are in the upper economic class. Finally, Krugman says how we could possibly have solutions to these various inequalities, but how America won’t get
Growing up in The United States, people are given this idea of an American Dream. Almost every child is raised to believe they can become and do anything they want to do, if one works hard enough. However, a majority of people believe that there is a separation of class in American society. Gregory Mantsios author of “Class in America-2009” believes that Americans do not exchange thoughts about class division, although most of people are placed in their own set cluster of wealth. Also political officials are trying to get followers by trying to try to appeal to the bulk of the population, or the middle class, in order to get more supporters. An interesting myth that Mantsios makes in his essay is how Americans don’t have equal opportunities.
Why should we be the ones to pay for someone to sit around at home? The answer is one simple word, welfare. There are many reasons why people mooch on welfare, rather than going out and working. The only jobs these people are qualified for are minimum wage jobs. As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, worked at minimum wage paying jobs and reported the hardships that people had to go through on a day-to-day basis. A critic responded by saying, “This is simply the case of an academic who is forced to get a real job…” Ehrenriech’s reasoning for joining the working-class is to report why people who mite be on welfare, continue to stay on welfare. Her reports show there are many hardships that go along with minimum waged jobs, in the areas of drug abuse, fatigue, the idea of invisibility, education and the American Dream.
The gap in wealth between the rich and the poor continues to grow larger, as productivity increases but wages remain the same. There were changes in the tax structure that gave the wealthy tax breaks, such as only taxing for social security within the first $113,700 of income in a year. For CEOs this tax was paid off almost immediately. Free trade treaties broke barriers to trade and resulted in outsourcing and lower wages for workers. In “Job on the Line” by William Adler, a worker named Mollie James lost her job when the factory moved to Mexico. “The job in which Mollie James once took great pride, the job that both fostered and repaid her loyalty by enabling her to rise above humble beginnings and provide for her family – that job does not now pay Balbina Duque a wage sufficient to live on” (489). When Balbina started working she was only making 65 cents an hour. Another huge issue lies in the minimum wage. In 2007, the minimum wage was only 51% of the living wage in America. How can a person live 51% of a life? Especially when cuts were being made in anti-poverty and welfare programs that were intended to get people on their feet. Now, it seems that the system keeps people down, as they try to earn more but their benefits are taken away faster than they can earn. Even when workers tried to get together to help themselves they were thrown
Although most Americans continue to believe working hard is the most important element for getting ahead, they no longer believe that it guarantees success (Hanson 2010: 570). "Lack of thrift, effort, ability, motivation, and self-control are the most popular explanations for poverty among Americans. Thus, inequality is justified and the Dream can stay alive in the context of one of the wealthiest nations with one of the greatest wealth divides" (Hanson 2010: 571). Instead of one undifferentiated American dream to collectively strive towards, there are several interpretations which pertain to differing social locations. This is because of the inequalities of advantages and disadvantages across generations produced by cumulative institutional processes and an unfair opportunity structure (Pallas 2008:
Ehrenreich states “…the United States, for all its wealth, leaves its citizens to fend for themselves — facing market-based rents, for example, on their wages alone. For millions of Americans, that $10 — or even $8 or $6 — hourly wage is all there is.” (Ehrenreich 214) A large portion of us human beings in society today, only care about making money to benefit ourselves rather than those less fortunate. People who have worked their entire lives on low wages may never experience luxuriousness due to the greed of our employers and government. Those graced with a generous amount of money tend to leave others in need of assistance, thusly causing inhuman nature to develop within our communities. Ehrenreich experiences this when she found out that her own self-esteem lowered at the hands of her employers who treated their workers as disposable. These employers as well as their companies, devalue a worker to essentially keep them powerless against them. Many of the job interviews she had gone through avoided any discussion of wages because, the employers wanted to keep the paychecks at a bare minimum. In most situations within our community workplace, a worker is not compensated correctly for his or her labor. Most of the human beings today would do just anything to stay wealthy, even if it means devaluing another. Most of our society spends their lifetimes
The lower class is struggling to provide for their families. Even just for single people, living alone is a challenge. The mix of low wages and high rent prices is killing the lower classes chances of living comfortably. After reading this it is evident that even when you have a job, you still can be struggling. Ehrenreich ends by saying “ours is an economic culture that reflexively rewards and flatters the prosperous while punishing and insulting the poor, no matter how hard they work. Turning this around is the task of a lifetime, at
Throughout the years, the ability to survive in the American economy without a college education has been diminishing. The employment opportunities now available to many Americans without college degrees are called “unskilled” jobs. These forms of employment are often unstable and offer low pay without much of a change for advancement within the company . Low income families are often constrained by many hurdles that do not allow them to raise themselves from below the poverty line . Many misconceptions come to light when talking about those American families below the poverty line, of those misconceptions are highlighted by statements such as that they do not work, work enough, or that they take advantage of public assistance that they do not need. In Nickel and Dimed on (Not) Getting by In America, Ehrenreich lives as a low wage worker and reveals the truth about the working poor.
For the past year I have watched my younger sister struggle to support herself and her now 11 month old baby. She makes more than minimum wage. She has struggled to the point where she was evicted and now lives with me. I have also experienced struggling on low pay. When I was 18 I was kicked out of my family’s house, and I was only making $8 an hour. There were days where I had to choose between paying rent and getting my electricity shut off, just because I couldn’t work enough hours to pay all of my bills. It can be very scary to only make minimum wage and have to support yourself. There are changes that need to be made so that every person can live properly with any job.
Every person has an American Dream they want to pursue, achieve and live. Many people write down goals for themselves in order to get to their dream. Those never ending goals can range from academic to personal. As of today, I am living my dream. My American Dream is to become a nurse, travel to many places, have a family, and get more involved with God.
One would expect that social equality would just be the norm in society today. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Three similar stories of how inequality and the hard reality of how America’s society and workforce is ran shows a bigger picture of the problems American’s have trying to make an honest living in today’s world. When someone thinks about the American dream, is this the way they pictured it? Is this what was envisioned for American’s when thinking about what the future held? The three authors in these articles don’t believe so, and they are pretty sure American’s didn’t either. Bob Herbert in his article “Hiding from Reality” probably makes the most honest and correct statement, “We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around” (564).
It was the summer of 1944 a year that would change my life. The dream I was having was abruptly interrupted by the loud voice of my mom yelling “Amante wake up!” Today was the day we were moving from Venice Italy to the great city of New York. There had been many bombing throughout Italy and we decided to pack up and live the American dream. I had been waiting for this day for years I had seen pictures and heard about America’s beauty but I couldn’t wait to see it in real life. The whole Dinardo family was excited to go, including me and my little sister Angelina. Angelina was only 8 years old. We’re seven years apart. She had golden blonde hair the color of honey and freckles dotted across her face. My dad walked excitedly into my room telling me that
America is one of the wealthiest nations on earth with having a high inequality than other industrialized country. Inequality exists in income, wealth, power and education. Persons who are legally and socially poor in the United states tend to stay in a cycle through life, not always by choice but because they are given fewer opportunities, education and tools to achieve success. Poverty class has a much larger income gap than the upper class, the American Dream is lessens through opportunity and is shown through statistics.
America has gone through many social, economic, and political changes throughout the years. One of the theories I will speak about, will thoroughly explain how the American Dream has shifted, from allowing people to have many opportunities to making it more difficult for people to achieve these dreams. Social class divides people apart from one another based on their status and income. This provides lots of inequality among people of different race and cultures. The second theory I am focusing on is based on the way social classes impact who children become in the future. The division of social classes divides the working class and middle class children based on the neighborhood, school, and families they come from. Based on my personal experience, I realized that social class plays an important role
The New World: a land of promise and aspirations. America: land of the free and home of the brave. The United States of America: a place filled with opportunities for everyone. When the country was still young, foreigners looked upon America as a utopia for the world. At one point in time it was that utopia, but over the years so many adverse rules and biased beliefs have built up that America is no longer a welcoming place for everyone. This is especially true for immigrants. No longer are they the huddled masses yearning for freedom that we praise from the past, but now their fight for liberty has been forgotten and our country has failed to welcome them. The American Dream is widely unachievable for immigrants