Is The American Dream Dead Analysis

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Is the American Dream Dead? The American Dream, an ideal that anyone in the United States can be more successful than their parents, with a little hard work and determination, is being called into question by David Wessel, in the article “As Rich-Poor Gap Widens in the U.S., Class Mobility Stalls.” He admits that surpassing one’s parents’ wealth and class was possible in Benjamin Franklin’s day, as Franklin was truly a “self-made” man who rose well above his father’s status. But Wessel points out, that since the 1970’s, even with all of the equal rights legislation, educational opportunities and technological advances, “Americans are no more or less likely to rise above, or fall below (maybe the only good news here,) their parents’ economic class.” Although different sociological perspectives and theories may have been employed throughout Wessel’s article to support his theory, the Social Conflict Perspective, including economic, and race conflicts, seemed to prevail.
The first example of the Social Conflict Perspective used in this article, is classic Karl Marx, in that Wessel states that “Americans keep electing politicians who argue that lifting the minimum wage or requiring employers to offer health insurance would do unacceptably large damage to economic …show more content…
Wessel quoted a statistic from American University economist, Tom Hertz, which compared the number of whites to the number of blacks “born to the bottom 10% of families ranked by income, and remained there as adults.” Only “17% of whites” remained at the bottom, compared to “42% of blacks.” This statistic speaks directly to the difficulties African-Americans have had trying to improve their class/status from one generation to the next in the United States. Since this data only represents the last 32 years, and 6,300 families in Michigan, one wonders what the national statistics would look
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