The American Dream/Nightmare Essay

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Amie Cates

The American dream fairytale

Living in America, we all are told about the “American Dream,” and encouraged to chase it, but is it as possible as it is perceived to be? How can someone ever move up when they can barely keep afloat? While reading “Serving in Florida,” I was reminded of my time serving for three years. I have had firsthand experience with that life style. The hours are long, the pay is low, the environment is stressful, and there is a total lack of respect towards the employees. With the cost of everything increasing, living off only one very small income is becoming close to impossible. In most cases people are forced to pick up a second job just to make by, leaving them with little to no time at all to develop skills necessary to have in order to move up and out of poverty. Yet these individuals are normally looked at as lazy and unintelligent members of society. In this paper I will briefly describe how the following factors affect the ability to obtain the “American Dream”: how the jobs occupied by the poor have hazardous and unprofessional atmospheres, next how higher education is next to impossible to incur by the poor, and finally how the media negatively portrays individuals affected by poverty. Most job environments for minimum wage paying positions are extremely corrupt. It is very uncommon for professionalism in the low end jobs. There are always constant harassing comments from both management and customers that you are forced to ignore in order to keep your job. Job security is next to nothing in these fields of work making it unlikely for any room for promotions. The stress level is continuously high in these atmospheres. Body pain also comes with these jobs. After working a fourteen hours in one shift your feet and back began to wear out. The jobs people in poverty have are by no means “an ideal” working surroundings. Education is known to be the door opener to a new social class. I believe this to be true, but how can you get an education when you are working sixty plus hours just to pay for basic living? The truth is that these people living in poverty would not be able to afford school in the first place even if they did have time to go. Of course there are the rare occurrences of people being born into dearth and finding a way to overcome it. The cost for everything has increased therefore making it even
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