Michael Coppola Essays (985 words) - Economy, Structure,

Michael Coppola The American Dream The American Dream The American Dream is to Live comfortably and avoid debilitating poverty. Despite the United States containing some of the richest people in the world, The American Dream has been an unachievable goal for most citizens due to our society and the wage gap. The wage gap prevents people from achieving a comfortable life that can be maintained, and achieving the American Dream. In today's day and age, we all don't get the same choices and opportunities, much like in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Nick's father had said 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had' (page 5). Nick was reminded not to judge others because he was given wealth and opportunities that many others did not receive, much like today's society, where everybody does not start off at the same place. It's unfair that many people receive so much more wealth from pure luck compared to others. Many of these people who are much richer can oppress these people and control the world around them, evident in both how They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made (page 188) and how Meyer Wolfenstein fixed the world series, which was found out when Nick said "The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World's Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people - with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe". These people had so much money to rely on, keeping them safe from any form of risk or jurisdiction for anything they had done wrong, avoiding from ruining their pristine and clean record. Although The American Dream of making money and living a comfortable life seemed difficult then, We can still see many of the same issues today. Nick Wing reminds us "According to 2012 Census data, more than 7 percent of American workers fell below the federal poverty line, making less than $11,170 for a single person and $15,130 for a couple. By some estimates, one in four private-sector jobs in the U.S. pays under $10 an hour". Many people today still face extremely heavy poverty and fail to climb the American dream and to raise the wages to live comfortably due to the inability to afford education and begin a higher paying career. Not only does this hole of poverty keep people inside of it, but drags people in as well. The people becoming part of this hole are "a diverse range of people: single parents, couples with and without children, young women with graduate degrees, business owners, seniors and everyone in between. Their financial situations, however, show many similarities. Jobs generally provide them with the means to barely scrape by, treading paycheck-to-paycheck, earning just enough to keep from going under, swa llowing their pride sometimes to take food stamps or visit food banks. Others are entirely out of work, tirelessly seeking employment and relying on other means to survive." according to Nick Wing. So many different people living so many different lives can all be destroyed and torn away from the American dream. The wage gap is only growing where the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Erik Sherman says, "For the first time in this report series, Allianz calculated each country's wealth Gini coefficient -- a measure of inequality in which 0 is perfect equality and 100 would mean perfect inequality, or one person owning all the wealth. It found that the U.S. had the most wealth inequality, with a score of 80.56, showing the most concentration of overall wealth in the hands of the proportionately fewest people". A great amount of these people are constantly being dragged into poverty as the