Is the American Dream still achievable?
Is it still possible to pursue a happy life with a stable job, a family, and wealth or success in life?
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” ― James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America. The American dream, to some families, might mean pursuing a happy life with a stable job, a family, and wealth or success in life. The American dream is made possible due to equal opportunity to all. To some people, this dream isn’t possible, it is just a dream. Although it’s not easy to achieve the American dream, with passion, hard work and dedication, it is very possible to achieve.
The American dream is the ideal that every us citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. The term was first used in 1932 by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America, but even before the 1930’s, the mindset of the American dream was active. The Declaration of Independence only extended the American dream to white property owners. After time, laws were added to extend these rights to women, non property owners, and slaves. In this way, the American Dream changed the course of America itself. In the 1920s, the American Dream started morphing from the right to create a better life to the desire to acquire material things. From that point, the American dream adapted throughout time, making the next generation better than the one before.
There are a lot of Americans that do not believe in the American dream, or believe that it became unachievable. These people lacking faith, believe that factors such as discrimination and unequal opportunities provide barriers to one's chance of reaching this "American dream". While others believe anything is possible with determination and overcoming obstacles. Some believe that coming from nothing and becoming insanely successful is only a myth, many have lived it, one of them is Oprah Winfrey, one of the richest women in the world. Winfrey was an orphan raised by her grandma with little money. She has overcome child abuse, rape, weight gain, depression, failed romance, and other hardships to attain her success. Oprah Winfrey symbolizes the individual who by such means rises above the torment to become one of the wealthiest and most recognized public figures in the world.
Far fewer Americans say “becoming wealthy” is essential to the American dream than say the same about personal freedom and a good family life. Overall, 36% of U.S. adults say their family has achieved the American dream, while another 46% say they are “on their way” to achieving it, according to an August survey by Pew Research Center. People who say they have already achieved the American dream are generally older, and better-educated than those who say they are on their way to achieving the American dream and those who say it’s out of reach.
Whites (41%) are more likely than blacks (17%) or Hispanics (32%) to say they have achieved the American dream. But more blacks (62%) and Hispanics (51%) than whites (42%) say they are on their way to achieving it. Notably, there are no significant racial or ethnic differences in the shares who say the American dream is out of reach for their families. Millennials are wrong about the American dream, it’s not dead. Though fate, chance, and luck have a lot to do with one's success, so does willpower, the control of one’s behavior. It is in one's hands to shape life, seize opportunities, get an education, resist failure, set goals and ultimately become somebody.
The American dream is a dream made possible due to equal opportunity to all. If kids once living in poverty and in slums can becomes lawyers or doctors, if an immigrant can become California's governor, if handicapped kids can play basketball, if ordinary people can become extraordinary people, then the American Dream is possible.
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- Winter 2021
The State of the American Dream
The Evolution of the Idea
The American dream is a widely known concept, but is it still achievable in the 21st century? The once radical idea is ever-changing, but is now rooted more in dignity than in dollars.
Is the American dream alive and well today? To reach a convincing answer on the health of the American dream, Americans need to rebuild a shared understanding of how to define the term. What does it mean to pursue or realize the American dream?
The American dream has always meant more than the achievement of great wealth by a few fortunate citizens, or even rising levels of material consumption for the American people as a whole. The historian James Truslow Adams, who coined the term in a 1930s book, wrote of this dream: “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of their fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
This famous quote, however, begs the question of what kind of society will best promote human flourishing as Adams describes it. And what, exactly, is American about this dream?
A revolutionary idea
One place to look for further answers is the formative experience that shaped American civilization into its distinctive mold: the American Revolution and the emergence of a new society in its momentous aftermath. The historian Gordon S. Wood analyzes these questions in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution.
Wood’s book, refuting the popular myth that America’s independence struggle was a conservative movement by elites to protect their own interests, argues that the Revolution had transformational consequences, beyond even the intentions of its most radical leaders. “If we measure the radicalism by the amount of social change that actually took place,” Wood writes, the Revolution was “as radical and as revolutionary as any in history.”
Before the Revolution, most American colonists – like most people around the world – were born into and lived within strict, static, unequal relationships with elites commonly understood to be their social superiors. In the economic sphere, a surprisingly large share of working people were legally bound to servitude or tenant farming relationships, with numerous laws in place to control laborers and recapture runaways. The colonies largely accepted slavery because it was merely the most extreme version of a spectrum of arrangements subordinating working people to the interests of the wealthy few. Labor relationships often involved financial indebtedness to one’s feudal superior, further constraining the freedom of laborers. In politics, elites generally agreed that common people were unfit to play an active role in shaping public affairs.
Within a generation, the Revolution gave rise to an unrecognizably altered world. A central idea was that not only the nation but each individual should be, and in fact was, independent. Americans embraced the radical premise that all forms of work are equally honorable, celebrated small-scale commerce, and launched startup businesses in huge numbers. They even embraced the novel concept that hard work could lead to increased productivity and improving living standards for ordinary working families.
Within a generation, the Revolution gave rise to an unrecognizably altered world…. Americans embraced the novel concept that hard work could lead to increased productivity and improving living standards for ordinary working families.
In the political and social realms, Americans adopted the unprecedented view that everyone’s voice — at least every white male voice — counted as much as anyone else’s, and that people should be free to move about and associate with whomever they chose. The early post-independence decades saw an explosive increase in clubs and volunteer organizations, as Americans eagerly seized new opportunities to decide for themselves how to spend their time and money.
The Revolution enshrined a radical idea at the heart of America’s core values: the dignity of every individual American. This idea implied that each person’s opinions, choices, and aspirations deserve equal respect. And it led inexorably to the conclusion that America should strive for equality of opportunity.
This vision was, of course, far from the social realities of early America. Much of American history has been the story of how the nation gradually, and often grudgingly, acknowledged the equal dignity of more and more Americans, still a work in progress.
But this distinctive American story points to a radical possibility. Perhaps we should evaluate the health of the American dream not by economic outcomes but by the extent to which America respects the equal dignity of each American.
Dignity and the dream in history
This proposition — that the American dream is perhaps best measured in dignity, not dollars — helps to resolve certain tensions that have long been associated with the idea of the American dream.
Should we, for instance, judge the state of the American dream according to how many Americans enjoy greater economic well-being than their parents did, measured by material goods consumption? If the American dream is about equal dignity, rising consumption levels don’t prove the American dream is alive and well, since history leaves little doubt that societies sometimes grow richer while trampling on human dignity. Nor is growing consumption essential to the American dream, because free choices don’t necessarily lead to rising material affluence. Rather, rising incomes are an imperfect proxy for more important social realities that are difficult to measure.
America at its best respects the freedom of every individual to make their own choices…it also acknowledges the historical truth that compassionate collective action has always been necessary.
The dignity thesis also suggests a resolution of America’s historic debate over whether the American dream calls for an ethos of rugged individualism or one of collective community action to lift people up. The answer is both. America at its best respects the freedom of every individual to make their own choices, unfettered by social convention or excessive state regulation. But it also acknowledges the historical truth that compassionate collective action has always been necessary to remove barriers that insult the dignity of fellow citizens.
The state of the American dream today
Measured against these standards, today’s America offers both bad news and good news. On the one hand, 21 st century America denies equal opportunity in countless ways by protecting privileged interests at the expense of newcomers. Indefensible business and occupational licensing rules block the creation of new companies. Over-restrictive land-use rules protect existing property owners by holding back new housing supply and pushing home prices out of reach for young Americans.
In addition, the United States continues to underinvest in quality education, despite abundant evidence that Americans with relatively low educational attainment levels are increasingly falling behind. Educationally deprived Americans are experiencing not only stagnant earnings but also calamitous increases in substance abuse and declines in family stability and civic engagement. Racial prejudice continues to influence social and economic outcomes, in some cases to a shocking extent.
Educationally deprived Americans are experiencing not only stagnant earnings but also calamitous increases in substance abuse and declines in family stability and civic engagement.
Americans are far too inclined to view people across the nation’s deep political divides as enemies rather than as fellow citizens with valid opinions worthy of respect. It would be hard to think of a more complete rejection of the dignity of fellow Americans.
On the other hand, plenty of signs suggest that the core value of equal dignity remains strong in the minds of most Americans. It was visible in the tremendous outpouring of Americans of all backgrounds in 2020 to defend the proposition that Black lives matter. It’s visible in the stunningly fast shift in public attitudes toward greater respect for the dignity of LGBTQ people. It’s visible, also, in the high esteem Americans across the political spectrum have for small business owners, military veterans, and front-line healthcare workers.
The striking successes of so many immigrants and their many contributions to the nation’s life suggest that the American dream is alive and well for millions of new Americans. Native-born Americans, moreover, mostly treat immigrants with greater dignity than past generations of newcomers experienced, even if this story too is a work in progress. And more and more cities are launching initiatives to expand opportunities for their disadvantaged communities, as the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative explores in-depth in its new Blueprint for Opportunity program.
Even in the 21 st century, America stands out in the world for its commitment to the principle of equal dignity. More than virtually any society, America has broken the constraints imposed by law and social convention on human autonomy, choice, and enterprise. Measured by this standard, the American dream remains a radical idea – and this radical dream is alive and well today.
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Do You Think the American Dream Is Real?
By Jeremy Engle
- Feb. 12, 2019
What does the American dream mean to you? A house with a white picket fence? Lavish wealth? A life better than your parents’?
Do you think you will be able to achieve the American dream?
In “ The American Dream Is Alive and Well ,” Samuel J. Abrams writes:
I am pleased to report that the American dream is alive and well for an overwhelming majority of Americans. This claim might sound far-fetched given the cultural climate in the United States today. Especially since President Trump took office, hardly a day goes by without a fresh tale of economic anxiety, political disunity or social struggle. Opportunities to achieve material success and social mobility through hard, honest work — which many people, including me, have assumed to be the core idea of the American dream — appear to be diminishing. But Americans, it turns out, have something else in mind when they talk about the American dream. And they believe that they are living it. Last year the American Enterprise Institute and I joined forces with the research center NORC at the University of Chicago and surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,411 Americans about their attitudes toward community and society. The center is renowned for offering “deep” samples of Americans, not just random ones, so that researchers can be confident that they are reaching Americans in all walks of life: rural, urban, exurban and so on. Our findings were released on Tuesday as an American Enterprise Institute report.
What our survey found about the American dream came as a surprise to me. When Americans were asked what makes the American dream a reality, they did not select as essential factors becoming wealthy, owning a home or having a successful career. Instead, 85 percent indicated that “to have freedom of choice in how to live” was essential to achieving the American dream. In addition, 83 percent indicated that “a good family life” was essential. The “traditional” factors (at least as I had understood them) were seen as less important. Only 16 percent said that to achieve the American dream, they believed it was essential to “become wealthy,” only 45 percent said it was essential “to have a better quality of life than your parents,” and just 49 percent said that “having a successful career” was key.
The Opinion piece continues:
The data also show that most Americans believe themselves to be achieving this version of the American dream, with 41 percent reporting that their families are already living the American dream and another 41 percent reporting that they are well on the way to doing so. Only 18 percent took the position that the American dream was out of reach for them
Collectively, 82 percent of Americans said they were optimistic about their future, and there was a fairly uniform positive outlook across the nation. Factors such as region, urbanity, partisanship and housing type (such as a single‐family detached home versus an apartment) barely affected these patterns, with all groups hovering around 80 percent. Even race and ethnicity, which are regularly cited as key factors in thwarting upward mobility, corresponded to no real differences in outlook: Eighty-one percent of non‐Hispanic whites; 80 percent of blacks, Hispanics and those of mixed race; and 85 percent of those with Asian heritage said that they had achieved or were on their way to achieving the American dream.
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Home / Essay Samples / Sociology / American Dream / The American Dream: Is It Still Achievable for Everyone
The American Dream: Is It Still Achievable for Everyone
- Category: Sociology
- Topic: American Dream
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The Historical Ideal of the American Dream
Economic inequality and mobility, education and opportunity, housing affordability and homeownership, systemic barriers and discrimination, the role of government and policy, conclusion: reimagining the american dream.
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