The American Dream And Poverty

In 1931, James Truslow Adam, an American writer and historian, created the term ‘American Dream’. The American Dream promises equal chance to gain success in any desired way, regardless of gender, race, nationality, or any other form of discrimination to each individual. However, there is a debate that the American Dream is not available to everyone, as they are incapable of jumping the incredible hurdle of poverty. Over 43 million people in the United States of America live on less than a dollar and twenty-five cents a day. In 1966, US president Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty, similar to President Nixon’s war on drugs. At the beginning of the War on Poverty, the poverty rate was 14.7%. America’s official poverty rate today is

13.5 percent. Unfortunately, the United States had spent over twenty trillion dollars on the cause since the 1960’s, but only for that slight improvement of 1.2 percent. In fact, Americans in extreme poverty rarely can escape. Both Conservatives and Progressives agree the government should be morally obligated to help people in poverty because they can’t help themselves. They simply disagree on the methods that should be used to solve poverty. The United States must find a new and effective way to drive people on the road out of poverty.
Poverty has a tight connection to education.

Students in poverty tend to obtain low grades, have little academic achievement, and often misbehave. Many often drop out before graduating high school. Students ages sixteen through twenty-four are up to seven times more likely to drop out. A study published in Nature Neuroscience discovered “a link between physical brain development and poverty level. In a study of eleven hundred children, adolescence and adults from around the US, researchers found significant differences in the brains of children from the lowest income bracket in comparison to those in the highest. Families who lived on less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year had as much as 6% less surface area in their brain in areas like language and decision making than families who made more than one hundred and fifty dollars a year.” This may support why many students in poverty tend to do worse in school over middle class students. Employers usually lean toward more educated workers, leaving the poor at a serious disadvantage when it comes to work Children growing in poverty regularly have families of their own poverty. Some workplaces, manufacturing jobs have replaced their human labor with machinery and technology, which leaves many potential jobs out of the hands of people hungry for work. Having a weak education leaves them unskilled, resulting poor and low paying occupations. This creates a long lasting loop of poverty, a loop which is hard to escape. They

often are stuck with low paying jobs: The virus of poverty could be described as heritable.
Family has a large role in poverty. The family structure is often broken. In many cases the father is in prison, or has abandoned the family. One hidden rule of poverty is extra money is shared or spent. People in poverty value each other rather than possessions. A 2013 study published in Science showed that poverty affected the brain in cognitive function. “They [the scientists] looked at pre and post-harvest of a cash crop of sugarcane. After the harvest of the cane, nutrition wasn’t immediately improved, but that influx of cash gave the farmers financial security” (Domenguez). It was also theorized that poverty prevents the brain from processing gathered information correctly. This means people in poverty have a harder time in choice, which might explain why many poor people might use money on alcohol or smoking addictions. Divorce is also a common reason people can fall into the trap of poverty. As an example used by Professor Ruby Payne, she says, “…the number of children in poverty [is] because of divorce. Adele is making the slide from middle class to poverty…Because of her alcoholism, she is emotionally weak. Of all the resources, emotional resources seem to be paramount in maintaining a lifestyle with some semblance of order. When emotional resources are absent, the slide to poverty is almost guaranteed” (38). Oftentimes, women will use sex in exchange for money or services to ease the burden of poverty. “…Adele will probably go out with the mechanic, for two reasons: She can get her car fixed and she can have an evening out on the town. (Payne 38)”. Any family with both parents are often very close. Siblings look out for siblings, and friends and gangs stay together to support each other. They also protect each other from violence, as it isn’t unlikely for the gangs to get into fights with other gangs. Gangs exist because society does not provide the comfort and protection that impoverished people desperately need. To improve the quality of life for the poor, we must make them feel welcome into our society, not exclude them from it.
Fortunately, there are many steps being taken by the government to try to destroy poverty. Many groups claim that poverty is in check and we don’t have anything to worry about. Currently, the federal government supports 126 antipoverty programs, and 72 of those programs directly or indirectly provide benefits to the individuals. It cost the government six-hundred and eighty million dollars in 2013. In addition to the federal funding, state and local government poverty programs also spend two-hundred and eighty dollars in 2013. After the 2008 recession, many of those stuck in the pit of poverty started using food stamps. Food Stamps are federal aid program created to help people pay for their groceries. This program is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The progressives claimed that a 60% increase in food stamps was a great step in the process of abolishing poverty. But others, such as the Conservatives say that the steps that have been taken are worthless (Brooks). Many caring and passionate people also donate or share clothes and food to help the impoverished. Soup kitchens and food banks supply them with food that they otherwise would be unable to obtain. Many teachers, police officers, and other workers often make sure that everything is okay. One New Mexico teacher announces she says “…that the first hour of the morning to check her inventory, check the kids. Have they eaten? Are they clean?” (Lee).
Though many solutions are proposed and theories are asked, we can clearly say that with the 1.2 percent improvement in the last fifty years is not much, especially taking in consideration that it cost almost one trillion dollars to achieve that small improvement.

“Many progressives offer us straight forward solutions: more funding for poverty programs. They believe we need to transfer more wealth from people who have money to people who don’t. Conservatives have a different answer: more opportunity. Conservatives define success by how few people need help from the government, not how many we can enroll in government programs…Conservatives believe that simply giving people money doesn’t help them escape poverty. On the contrary, it can keep them locked into it. Getting things without working for them is a very hard habit to break” We can see that money is not the answer to solving poverty. According to Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, the only solution to poverty is work. “Of course, the poverty rate doesn’t measure consumption. Certainly poor people today have many more things than poor people did in 1970…our goal should never be to merely make poverty less miserable for people. Our goal must be to make poverty more escapable. (Brooks)” He proposes that we require people to work in exchange for social assistance. This way, we help them through welfare, and through work, we help them find their success. Michael Tanner, Senior Fellow of Cato

Institute, claims that the welfare system is not working. “Our welfare system is frequently so generous; they discourage people from working. (Tanner)” This is because people who receive benefits don’t see a point in getting a job when the welfare system offers more financial benefits. Hawaii has the highest amount of benefits available, over forty-nine thousand dollars in benefits per year. According to Tanner’s research, “A mother on welfare would receive more in benefits than by earning fifteen dollars per hour at a job in thirteen states. And in the most generous states, more than working twenty-five dollars per hour. (Tanner)” Unfortunately, when poor families choose to live on the welfare system, it traps the family in poverty. Tanner indirectly states a possibility of why the high amounts of spending have done little to save people from poverty. “If we are serious about reducing welfare dependency and helping Americans climb out of poverty, we need to establish a clear policy preference for work over welfare. (Tanner.)”