In my view, American Dream is a illusory lie that use to encourage the lower class. Lower class is a large part of the population, so the country encourage them to work hard by describing a bright future, to maintain the social order and promote social development. The original meaning of American Dream is that everyone has same opportunity to be successful if they work hard. It is focus on the wealth today. Since equality and freedom are abstract, they have a distance from daily life, lots of people do not even understand the meaning of them. But money can decide the level of people’s life directly, the biggest wish of many people is that get richer. However, most of the wealth is in the hand of the upper class. The social mobility is almost impossible, because different people have different starting point, they do not have same level of resources, such as education, growth environment, and connections. These conditions shape the thoughts, ability and social circle, then the lifetime of a person is determined. If life is a game, the competition is unfair. Like Anne Rueth said in the film, “but even before birth, so many kids start that race behind.” My opinion is similar with he film’s.The movement of classes is like winning lottery that probability is very tiny. If a person from lower class wants to go to upper class, he needs not only ability but great luck. Countless people believe the sweet lie wove by American Dream, they work hard and looking forward that they will be successful one day. But they do not know that their dreams will most likely not come true.
I think the American Dream is an aim for everyone can have enough power to achieve their goal if they have the high-quality education, because high-quality education can let more people to gain more knowledge that they can use in the work or life. More education can nurture more useful talents who can get more opportunities to get job and make their life better, because when people study the knowledge they will practice what they learn. During the practice, they will gain more experience that can let them get into the high level. I think the American Dream today has all become about the wealth, the wealth people can use their money to get everything they want, especially the high-quality education, because the if people have high-quality education, which means they have high abilities for high positions. In the movie, it shows the wealthy people are billionaires or even more who are the top 1% in the society, the high- quality education is the basic thing of them. In my opinion, the American Dream is an ideal, it can not be achieved today, because though they advocate the American Dream to give everyone opportunity to get make money equally, but the wealth people deprive all the opportunities that they want by using their money. The rest of people who are too poor and the school is bad enough that they don't have the opportunity to compete with others. They can not even touch the high level. My idea is about letting everyone to have the high-quality education, because the job needs high educational people, because there are still some jobs that lack of employees and even with 12 million people enable to find work and education programs. The idea in the film advocate providing more opportunities to everyone that can let them have the same chance of making money, the difference between my idea and movie is that my main idea is about the high-education. The movie mentioned the opportunities for education, because the high-quality people are needed in the society as well.
One of The Most Unrealistic Thinking in Last Century
In my opinion, because the government does
not provide the equal conditions to everyone, the American Dream is just an
unrealistic thinking created for convincing people to work harder. However, one
of most vital precondition for the American Dream is everyone has the same
rights which are people living in poverty cannot have opportunity to own. When
children of rich people find jobs in their own firms easily, they may be worrying
about the rent of apartments. Because of this nonexistent equality, the American
Dream is impossible to achieve for poor people.
According to that, I think it is possible
to achieve the American Dream today, but it depends more about wealth. Referring
to “Park Avenue; Money, Power, and the American Dream?”, there are a number of
roles can be broken even tampered by money like house property, taxes and laws.
Wealth people are able to earn ten times income as much as they spent, but
people in south of Park Avenue only had less 40 dollars a day. Under this
stress, poor people cannot even keep their life moving and it is impossible to
be successful. In contrast, if government can provide some allowance for them,
the gap between rich people and them. Generally speaking, the American Dream is
created to inspire poverty, but it is only possible for wealth people because
they have only won in the beginning.
The American Dream is about the dream of equality for everyone in the USA.In my opinion, I would obtain a job position with equal opportunity after graduation in the American Dream.The American Dream illustrates that people should have the equal rights to do whatever they want in the legal range.Each citizen is able to achieve the dream and make money through their efforts within the equal society.But in fact, it is obvious that is a difficult dream to achieve such as idealism.I think that today’s American Dream pay more attention to the money so that the gap between the rich and the poor has become lager and larger.I consider that not all people have the equality to decide their life in the America, especially the rich individuals have more power and status to control the society. In thefilm, some poor people who live in the north of Park Avenue lose their jobs without money and social status, even depend on food distribution living.However, other renowned and rich people who live in the south of Park Avenue spend a luxury life with supreme power and magnificent environment.Besides, some businessmen collude with politicians to manipulate the political power using money.Thus, from my own view, the American Dream about equality could be spiritually ideal for everyone, the poor individuals still could not equally get the job opportunities, the reality is hard in the country.
In my opinion, today American Dream focus more on the equality of citizens’ opportunities. And here “opportunities” refers to chances to reach a standard of material, physical, and mental satisfaction. A relatively ideal life is being defined in these three aspects. And the core concept of the American Dream is to make the life better. Material satisfaction represents the merchandises which include houses, cars, clothing and so on. Physical satisfaction means owning an overall healthy body and no huge medical issues. Mental satisfaction for example, is like keeping a good mood, having a happy marriage and a few children. American Dream nowadays is unlikely an attainable goal for everyone. In the documentary, it stated that people in extreme poverty can hardly pull themselves out. And it is now because that rich people are getting richer and poor become poorer. This is true because the rich show no sympathy for the poor and they would use their privileged wealth to involve in politic and rig it as an lobbyist according to their favours. For example, they would advocate the policy of reduction on the rich’s taxes. And this would bring about issues like the decrease of GDP and more common phenomenon of unemployment which means the poor people are being squeezed. Even if one is hard-working enough, he or she is not able to get a job on account of poverty. So how could poor people achieve the American Dream by hard work in the condition that they do not even stand a chance to be on a position to practice their diligence. Also, based on the fact that the poor only have limited resources, they are nearly inaccessible to the opportunities which would help them become richer. The American Dream is not all about money. But money is the most important factor to help attain the standard. As above, American Dream might just be an imagination to the poor ones.
Here are some quotations from PARK AVENUE that you may find useful for Part 1. You can use them, when analyzing how your PERSONAL OPINION relates to the FILM.
Here is also the wiki link which explains how to form an opinion, if you are still struggling with that.
Park Avenue:
Money, Power and the American Dream QUOTATIONS
“Let’s imagine you are invited to a game of monopoly.
You start the game and find out that all of the others have been divided up.
All of the money already been handed out. But you receive hey go cheat and sit
down, play the game like we are going to give you a chance to play inset like
everyone else. There are some that has a lot of assets, a lot of social
mobility, a lot of money to do what they want. As opposed to other people who
are more disadvantaged, more underprivileged don’t has the same lads of
resources.”
“This is the economy pie in the decade after World War
II. Income gains were shared by everyone with a big proportion going to the
average American. But since the late 1970s the bottom 90% was completely
developed by the top 1%.”
“Only four hundred of the richest Americans control
the majority of the wealth of the bottle American. That’s 150 million people.
The question is what are the people on the top gonna do with all that money?”
“The same thing is true for personal context,
especially for the rich. Tax is raised from millions drop more than 25% in the
last two decades and for the extremely wealthy individuals on the top, taxes
have fallen by almost 15%”
“The more money you have, the more entitled and
deserving. It’s one of those things you feel that might account in the part for
the victory all that you see when people feel like their privileged positions
being undermined by others.”
“It don’t matter where you begin, what matters is
where you end. You live in United States of America and that’s something that I
think is an inherently moral thing about America: It gives you a chance to make
it.”
“This is ridiculous they say, more income people don`t
pay taxes. They don`t pay taxes.”
“We are reaching a tipping point, we are coming close
to the tipping point in America, we will have nearly majority of takers verses
makers in society.”
“They mash take the resent of middle class, which is
actually been quite economically and squeezed over the last proper decades. And
turn the resent against the people who need them.”
“It was a budget proposal that would dramatically cut
government programs for the poor or handing out an even bigger tax cut for the
rich.
“Taxes are the price you pay for civilization and if
you do not pay taxes you do not get civilization. By that measure our
civilization is in trouble.”
“Just because you are rich, does not make you smart;
just because you are rich, does not make you cultured; just because you are
rich, does not make you refined; being rich means you are rich. Some rich
people are just dicks.”
“America has become a place where money can buy
everything.”
“Almost all families start out with wanting the same
thing for their children. They want them to be safe, they want them to be happy
and they want them to be successful and healthy. But even before birth, so many
kids start [behind]. They come into a neighborhood that’s unsafe. Maybe they
are in overcrowded apartments. They don’t have healthy nutrition. They might
have medical issues that are not being addressed. I would say that their number
one challenge is just a lack of opportunity in general.”
“We are in a society with very complex feelings about
economic inequity. There is gonna be a reinforcing cycle: those at the top
who’ve done well, they do even better. And they trade that lot of money back
into politics.”
“Everyone have a equal opportunity, start with the same
amount of money and the same chance to success. winning is a mix of luck and
skill.”
“The extraordinary accumulation
wealth of the top is not just about hard work，it's about the wealthy interest using the political system to rig the
rules and the favour.”
"There are large group
of people that experience the game as unfair".
"Feeding people is something that this
country can afford to do and should be able to do, that's not a
hammock."
