Essay On The American Dream And Poverty

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The American dream has been constantly changing throughout history and all through the generations there has been many things that hinder the ability of reaching it. The American dream is the promise that with hard work and determination, everybody has an equal chance of having prosperity and success. Poverty is a major road block on the way to achieving the American dream. Poverty affects around 49 million people in America. There is supposed to be an equal chance for everybody to reach the American dream, but when raised in poverty it severely hurts your chance of being successful. When raised in poverty your living standard and achievements of your life are measured differently and with less severity. When living in poverty sometimes you …show more content…
The minimum wage can hardly support one person let alone a family and the jobs that are most available are minimum wage jobs. Heather McGhee declares that “many jobs do not pay enough to cover basic living expenses, much less allow workers to save money and build assets for the future”. Without saving any money and just having enough to scrape by, the American people are not really living. To get out of poverty, we need jobs that can actually let them get somewhere in life, jobs that can pay enough so they can go back to school or at least save some money in case of emergencies. The penniless people need jobs that can bring them up, not just keep them going on the same path they were on. Some people believe that raising the minimum wage will “damage the economic prospects of millions of vulnerable people” (Salam). Increasing minimum wage could increase the cost of some goods in today’s markets and/ or reduce employment levels, but there are studies that show that raising the minimum wage only a small amount won’t hurt the economy. If we start getting people jobs that will help support them and their families, then we can start changing the poverty in this country and start leading people towards reaching their
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