Inequality In The American Dream

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The American Dream is the idea that everyone is able to prosper and achieve success through a system of equality and hard work. The American Dream is very attainable; at least that is what America would like the general public to believe. America has built this image of a promise land filled with unlimited resources and endless opportunities, which portrays an equal society where almost everyone is guaranteed to succeed. In reality this American Dream promoted by America is a lie for many Americans. For average Americans it is possible to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, work hard, and achieve the American Dream but only to a small extent because of the inequality in America which is attributed to America’s systems of socioeconomic …show more content…

Participants in the middle class are not necessarily living the American Dream but a lot of them are living comfortably. In some studies almost 90 percent of Americans have self-identified to be in the middle class stratum. (Conley 2015) Unfortunately, the average American believes that they are better off than they actually are. Many of the people who self-identify as middle class actually fall into the working class. How would one separate the two classes? The white-collar office worker usually describes the middle class while the working class is described as the manual labor worker. However, in the recent years the working class has as a whole sort of gained a new stratification and become an expanded part of the middle class. The middle class and the working class may not be the American Dream but they are the standard of living in America. So what describes the poor class? The poor class, unlike the other classes, has an actual definition. “In 2013, the poverty line for a family of four was $23,550.” (Conley 2015: 261) The average poverty family struggles to survive day-to-day living paycheck-to-paycheck and wondering how they’re going to make it. Furthermore, the way that America is structured makes it so that most Americans can’t easily achieve a higher socioeconomic

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