America is known as the land of opportunity. People from all over
the world move to the United States in hope that one day, they too will
have a chance at living the "American Dream." What is the American
dream? Well according to the definition on Google, it is "the ideal
that every United States citizen should have an equal opportunity to
achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and
initiative." This dream is what made America the envy of the world.
The U.S. gave people opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise have in
their home countries. Today the United States faces one of its largest
problems in the widening gap between the rich and the poor and because
of this, the American dream as we know it, is dead. Income inequality
is the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among a
population. A Harvard University business professor and economist did a
study on the current issues we face with wealth inequality. The
professor asked 5,000 people what they thought was an ideal distribution
of wealth versus what they think it actually is. Then the professor
took both of those estimates and compared them to what the distribution
of wealth actually is in America. As it turns out, the top one percent
have more wealth than the people surveyed thought the entire top twenty
percent should have had.
The study then took the total wealth of
the U.S. back in 2009 (which was around 54 trillion) and broke it down
to represent how much money the average person would have based off of
the current system in which wealth is distributed and the two estimates
gathered from the 5,000 people surveyed. In this example, the ideal
distribution was where America was best off. The poor were well above
the poverty line and the top twenty percent still had about ten to
twenty times more wealth than the poor did. Then they looked at the
estimated actual distribution and noticed that it still wasn't all that
bad. Less than ten percent of the people fell below the poverty line
and the middle and lower classes were beginning to suffer, but the
distribution still wasn't all that skewed in favor of the rich. With
both of those examples the possibility to make it into a higher social
class with some hard work and determination is very realistic. Then the
study showed what the actual distribution of wealth was. In our
current system 15.1% of Americans are below the poverty line and it is
almost impossible to distinguish the middle class from the poor. In
this system the top 1% own 40% of the nations wealth while the bottom
80% have a mere 7% of the nations wealth.
There is a very real and clear problem with the way our wealth is currently distributed and the people who are at the bottom of the current system are not given the same opportunities to succeed as the people who are at the top. So no matter how determined they are and no matter how hard they work to achieve that beloved American dream, the odds are completely against them. The American dream may be dead, but it is not extinct. If we as a nation work hard enough to achieve even that ideal estimate of wealth distribution, then all Americans can truly aspire to one day achieve the real American dream.
If you care to watch the video from which some of the information provided was obtained you may do so below.
