Jiazhen (Diana) Li - A Dream or A Dread

I think the American Dream is not universally attainable because it is now focusing solely on wealth, which is basically a tool used by the corporations, ultra-riches and politicians to control everyone else. Those interest groups own every single element that sustains our daily life, including even land, food and water. Every step forward taken materializes the Dream, since we consider money as the almighty power which serves as the universal indicator of personal achievement, wellbeing and social status, meanwhile this fact perches the unreachable fantasy on a yet higher ideal position.

The American Dream used to be the foreseeable future and a personal definition of perfection in life. It could be from leisure to pursue our interests to freedom of establishing religious faith – literally anything that would result in our physical or psychological upward movements; now it had been driven to a quantifiable only extreme by the great emphasis placed on money. America has become this place where we price each living factor and perceive everything as a commodity to be sold or bought. In many disciplines, social wealth is said to be a cake baked in commodity market. In this light, for every big winner to get a larger slice, there are destined to have lots of losers to give up their shares, and how much the big winner gets is exactly how much the other lose collectively. Just like what was presented in Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, since 1970s, wealth possessed by the bottom 90% has been completely devoured by the top 1% of people, and the gap in between is becoming greater and greater.

The American Dream which guaranteed everyone a better, fuller and richer life proved itself to be a total nightmare. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer; this is a very vivid depiction of our current society. What is happening now is that instead of trying to resolve this polarizing situation, the more privileged choose to invest their money since it would be more profitable. This creates an even larger gap and prevents the under privileged from the access to their American Dream. With these being said, the American Dream may be attainable, but it could never be universally attainable.