Thomas Paine

America has always been a nation built up by people of many different backgrounds, of different cultures, of different languages, race, religions, and nationalities. Even so, with all these differences, unification of these different groups seems impractical, and Thomas Paine, an intellectual, even acknowledges that these diversities emphasize the unlikelihood of all American people working together in a harmonized system. However, Paine suggests that despite the diversity of America, the structure of the American government that has been based on the “principles of society” and “the rights of man” or common good simply works to create an equal unification for all citizens. The poor and rich are held as equal, and taxes are not cumbersome. …show more content…
This has been well known especially in politics. For example, Barack Obama had delivered a speech talking about the threat to the American Dream, stating that the top 10 percent now take half of America's wealth as compared to the thirty percent. In addition, those businesses owned by the wealthy are benefiting; As businesses have becoming more influential in the American system, large corporate companies are funding political campaigns and, in turn, political figures have pushed tax breaks for these corporate giants. Though this is normal for the wealthy class to earn certain privileges with their wealth, this does not mean that both the poor and rich are treated equal. As Obama and the recent co-business and political practices imply, the poor and wealthy have been even more divided as of present day due to the increase power to the wealthy. Although Paine mentions that there is diversity of many different backgrounds, this is also true in an economic sense because there are people coming from different economic background and thus different culture; People from a wealthy background may hold different values than one from a poor background due to social class. In this case, the concord that Paine mentions, of “the principle of society and the rights of man” that binds the American people falls apart because society is not functioning together necessarily for these principles. American …show more content…
This mobility essientality boils down to the ability for a person in one class to move upward to a wealthier class. In America, this economic mobility has been labeled as the “American Dream”, which means that if any person puts enough effort into achieving a goal, then they will achieve their goal. Today, this has not been the case. According to Greg Beato, between 1970s through late 1980s, the bottom quintile of income distribution had increased from about an 8 percent chance to reach the top quintile to about 9 percent. However, the amount of Americans that believe that there is an abundance of economic opportunity has been roughly 50 percent within the recent year. Even with an unlikely chance that there is to move up into a wealthy class, Americans still persevere in trying to achieving this dream of improving on their current position, which is reasonable because this can motivate individuals to strive for self improvement and for the best of themselves. However, within the recent decades, the idolization of America’s economic mobility has changed this desire for mobility. For example, according to psychologist Victor Frankl, out of roughly 8000 students from 48 colleges asked about what they considered important, about 78 percent had answered “finding a purpose…” while 16 percent had answered “making a lot of money”. Though only 16 percent had answered “making a lot of

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