An American Dream

The original American dream was similar to the "perfect family" of Victorian times. This is a family in which the head of the house is an alpha-male, his wife is a housewife, and he has 2 children: a daughter and a son. They all live in their own house with perfect etiquette and knightly manners. However, over the years the meaning of the American dream has changed. Later, it meant a well paying job and a house. As of late, it has a closer relation to the ownership of modern technology and less about owning a house. And while this is a change, both have one thing in common: wealth. Many people commonly mistake being upper-class with being wealthy. Personally, I have seen plenty of upper-class poor people and conversely, lower-class rich people. Class is all about etiquette and manner, and is only related to wealth because of socioeconomics. Wealth itself, is just the ownership of large quantities of material matter, and states nothing of politeness.

Talk of such wealth brings up a new point of how Americans view differences in wealth. The very poor, living in poverty are often viewed as freeloaders (unless they have a mental or physical disability). The extremely wealthy are viewed as insidious, sucking the life out of every day people, no matter how hard they worked or what their original situation was. The only wealth respected by the majority of people is in between. This group is often called middle-class in mistake (don't make me start on my previous lecture again), but should more accurately be called median-income families.

Personally, I have no wish to demonize the extremely wealthy. As far as I'm concerned, if the money was earned because of their hard work, who am I to say they can't be rewarded. As for the extremely poor, some certainly need help to get back on their feet, but many are also freeloaders (30% of people on welfare use some type of drug). Coming from a upper median-income family, I'm sure my personal bias affects my writings; however, I plan to create my own American dream.