The American Dream Pros And Cons

The American Dream
The American Dream is the ideal that every U.S citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative (The Current). There was a time where the American dream was in reach of being attained by everybody in the country. Even foreigners had a chance in this great melting pot to go from rag to riches. The economy was wonderful and everything about America was absolutely amazing. The in today’s world is that with gather to little and we want to take too much. Around the world there are all different cultures with the same economic systems just simplified and sometimes different. In America today we had one economic system. Everyone was on the same level, but

then when people started to get hungry and poverty stuck America, they turned to a new economy, The Underground Economy (Jstore). In this paper I will talking about how important knowledge is, and talking about the economics side of anthropology and I will be comparing a traditional economy such as America with the Underground Economy.
In early societies there were hunters and gathers, an example would be the Indians. The men would go out and bring back home the food, while the woman would stay and tend to the fields and children. Now in this society everyone does their part and work to make sure no one goes hungry. They all work and they know that they are essential to the survival of everyone. Years go by and suddenly pilgrims arrive, and then they trade. One of the first things that was traded was knowledge. Pilgrims didn’t know how to tend to fields and grow on the land. So they traded with the Indians for food and knowledge and knowledge about the pilgrims was returned to the Indians. Now who got the most benefit out of the whole entire deal? No one really they both got equal trades because knowledge is the most important tool an individual can have, without knowledge the pilgrims would have starved to death. Knowledge today is still important as it was back then. Investing in going to school and getting a degree is a good way to trade. For the university a student attends they are trading, first off their time, second money, and sacrificing other opportunities that could be bringing them money.
In today’s markets across the globe trading happens every second, people trade currency for products.

A piece of paper, for something that is key for survival seems like the best use of someone’s money right? As I stated earlier people keep taking out more than what they can put back in. Another thing is that in America we buy things we don’t need to chase the American dream, but I will save that for later in the paper. In different economies trade is simplified, people still work hard and understand their part in society that are not just an individual, they are part of a whole group. People trade labor for food, they take time that they could be doing something else and are using it in order to turn their labor into something else. This is basically the same system people have held to forever. It’s balanced and

fair.
In the Underground Economy it is the same principle as traditional markets but there’s a dangerous twist, dealers and buyers could lose their life in an instant, or they could make more money than they ever dreamed of. The American Dream use to be in reach of everybody but things happen and the market changes and knowledge is deemed less an important. People don’t want to invest their time because they see it as a waste of money when they could cut the corner and become a drug dealer and make more money. It’s the same with kids that graduate high school and go straight into the oilfield, it’s because they have dollar signs in their eyes. They chase the money that they thought they would never get the chance to see. Another thing is that certain minorities say it’s a way they can beat racism by not following society’s rule of working a minimum wage job and going to school and losing more money than they are gaining. Half of it is true and the other half isn’t. Time is very important and people never want it wasted because there is always something else that could be more beneficial for them.
In trying to compare both of these, you can see that everyone is trying to work for that American Dream and they rely on the same principle of trade, income and outcome, a little piece of paper that represents all the labor a person has done and here comes the trade opportunity for something in return that could either hurt the individual or help them survive.

In the article it talks about how the underground is a very fast way to earn money in a world where it’s hard to grow up out of poverty. In the book it shows the market systems and how balanced regular trade. In the book it talks more about how there are parts in society that everyone has to fill, everyone has to work and everyone has to cooperate in order to survive. In the Underground Economy it seemed like the same way except a lot more dangerous but still pretty much on the same values and traditions. Another difference is that even though they are based on the same thing in the Underground economy there is always chance that this could be someone’s last purchase.
In conclusion, knowledge is extremely important no matter where you go. The similarities between and Underground Economy and the traditional economy is that they are still based on the same trade standpoint. The only difference is that there is a chance for a person to lose their life in an Underground Economy. This all does fall under achieving the American dream. A dream that means a person must work hard and put everything they’ve got into advancing forward

an attaining their own personal American Dream.
Works Cited