The American Dream is Gone

Is the American Dream still accessible to the majority of Americans?

            The American Dream is the belief that every US citizen has an equal opportunity to achieve success through determination and hard work. Some believe that being successful means that you have a lot of money, and can afford whatever you may need, but others view success as sustaining a certain amount of income and being able to meet basic human needs with that income. In today’s world I do not believe that the American Dream is achievable. Most people are no longer able to get ahead financially because the middle class is slowly diminishing. In “RIP, the Middle Class: 1946-2013”, Edward McClelland discuses how people that used to live in the middle class have steadily been moving towards living in the lower class because of the decrease in middle class jobs. During the 1970s, he explains how people could graduate high school, and 2 years later be making more money than their childhood teachers. This is because back then there were a lot of manufacturing jobs, and now those jobs have disappeared overseas because of the government. The governments path towards deregulation has allowed companies to be more successful overseas, which results in less middle class jobs for Americans. It is no longer possible to just graduate high school and then live the American Dream, if you want to achieve such a thing you have to go to college and get at least a bachelor’s degree to be able to live comfortably. Even then, there is no guarantee that you will be able to find a well paying job in your degree, and if you cannot find a job, you still have to pay back your thousands of dollars’ worth of student loans. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of “From Nickel and Dimed”, also shows how the American Dream is not achievable even for the most hard working people. Her story illustrates a first person point of view of a maid who works relatively hard at her job, yet still makes little pay. She describes what she had to do her first week as a maid, and also explains how poorly most of her co-workers live. Every person that she works with puts a lot of effort into their job, yet they get exploited by their company because while the company receives $25 per person per hour, they are making less than half of that money – only $6.65 per hour. The American Dream is not accessible to these maids either because although they showcase hard work and determination, their employers do not make it possible for them to even find better jobs for themselves because they are working so much during the week. If they quit, then that would mean that they would be making $0 instead of $6.65 per hour, and most of them can’t afford that because they can’t even afford food to eat on their lunch breaks with the pay they are making. Americans are allowing the government and these big corporations to completely wipe out the once existing middle class, and if we do not do anything about it then the inequality gap between the rich and the poor will continue to increase.