Persuasive Essay On The American Dream

The American Dream is most certainly a beautiful one. It has to do with owning your own home in a neighborhood with a good school for the kids and an expensive car in the driveway. Working at a job, that you chose, that provides enough money to realize all of your dreams . Does this sound right? This may have been true when the phrase was coined back in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, in his book The Epic of America, but is certainly not true today. The vast majority of Americans are living in this middle income bracket or even more people receiving government subsidies . When are we, as a nation, going to realize that working a 9 to 5 just to be happy to be able to pay our bills and make ends meet is not going to make the American Dream a reality in our lives? Yes America, it is time to wake up and smell the coffee. There are many people who have watered down their version of the American Dream. Most likely owning a smaller home and car and working harder to keep it, even if they could afford a home of their own. A recent article at the Population Reference Bureau's website shows that there has been a marked increase in renting rather than home ownership.1 People who have lost their homes in the past and those of "us" with "watered down dreams" have no desire to go through the kind of hardship that we have already seen once; let alone do it again, even if they could find a lender who would finance another mortgage.

A lot of lessons have been learned this past decade. The biggest lessons Americans have learned about is how to save money, to be more money savvy and not to keep our heads buried in the sand. In truth, we are saving more than ever before, or at least trying to. We, however, have many hurdles and ills i...

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...hat we have “true grit.” We have overcome disasters, hardships and tragedies. We have rebuilt and come together as a nation and as a people filled with positive hope and faith in the future of America and for ourselves.

We are more aware, than ever before, of what goes on in the country and in the world. We are not deluded into a false sense of security, by the phrase “The American Dream.” We are, as a nation, fully awake and smelling the coffee. We still choose to believe that it can work for us. We are not being lulled into a false sense of security. We can and do believe that “we can make it if we try.”

The American Dream is built upon the desire that we have to keep hope alive. “You have to have a dream; if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true?

Lyric from the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1958 Broadway Show “South Pacific.”