America, A Land of False Hope

683 Words2 Pages

Work hard and stay committed and eventually all of your dreams will come true. This promise is known as part of the American Dream. It is said that with a little bit of hard work and dedication one can end up on the top of the social classes. After all, this is the land of endless opportunity. However, reality is striking most Americans on their way to the top. People are now starting to realize that this land of endless opportunity does have a lot of limitations and setbacks. The majority of these setbacks come from the uneven wealth distribution in America. Americans spend their entire life searching for this “American Dream” promised to them; however, the harsh reality is, all this dream really does is give hope to the hopeless.
Wealth distribution in America is so uneven that most Americans clueless to how much money each class acquires. Nearly half of America is splitting an extremely small amount of money. Sadly, in today’s society, the bottom 40% of people, approximately 120 million Americans, have .03% of the wealth (Domhoff). Yet, for some reason we still cling to the idea of this American Dream that anyone can make it. The people, stuck in the bottom 40%, who want to make it all the way to the top, will pay so much attention to the fairy tale dream stories of rags to riches. Reasoning for believing in these stories is the idea that since someone else made it there has to be a way of them making it as well. In actuality all these stories really do is give hope to the hopeless when they no longer have anything to strive for in life.
The hopeless can gain hope through those uncommon cases where hard work and dedication did pay off. This hard work pays off for the top 20% of people, and if one somehow manages to work his o...

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... continue to get richer.
Consequently, the reality of working hard and staying committed does not always indicate making it all the way to the top. This “dream” of making it all the way to the top is anything but reasonable for most Americans. The main reason for this unattainable outcome arises from the uneven wealth distribution in America. Americans spend their entire life searching for this “American Dream” promised to them; however, the harsh reality is, all this dream really does is give hope to the hopeless when they are trying to work their way up the social classes.

Works Cited

Lorenzi, Peter. "The American Dream And The Middle-Aged." Society 51.1 (2014): 2-7. Academic Search Premier. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.
Domhoff, William G. "Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power." Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power. N.p., Sept. 2005. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.

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