In the United States, there has long been a belief in the principles of individualism and meritocracy. Americans tend to believe that those in power earned their status, and that if you work hard you can also get there too. We have been told through media and other social influences that with hard work anything is possible, that America is the land of equal opportunity. While this still seems to be the overwhelming belief among Americans, there seems to be a shift towards a more realistic perspective.
This shift is most apparent in the support for the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. Many Americans, who are fed up with the economic difficulties they have had to deal with because of the richest Americans, support Sanders because he speaks directly about the problems with Americans’ economic situation and how difficult it is for American workers.
The reality of the situation is that the economic success of a given American citizen is in large part out of their control. The American dream of being able to accomplish anything you put your mind to sounds like a nice thing to tell children, but in reality there are a multitude of social and economic factors that affect what an individual is able to accomplish financially in their lifetime. Those of us here at NC State may have a hard time understanding this because a lot of us live incredibly privileged lives.
The truth is that people in the United States are most likely to stay in the class into which they are born. The economic system in the United States is systematically widening the gap between the rich and the poor, making it easy for rich families to stay rich and difficult for poor families to gain income. A child born in an upper class family will likely stay in the upper class for their whole life, just like someone who is born into a lower class family is likely to stay in the lower class for the rest of their life. The line between the American class system and a caste system is becoming more and more blurred.
Some of you may think that we are still a country that offers its citizens equal opportunity and that you can indeed achieve anything you put your mind to. I recently encountered an online game in class that illustrates the difficulties that American families below the poverty line face every day.
This game is called SPENT, and can be found at playspent.org. In this game you play an American in a low-income family, you pick a job, and you have to make decisions and try to keep from running out of money. The point of the game is to illustrate the difficulties that many Americans face and the compromises they have to make just to live. The game is a little simplistic, but it definitely shows how the American dream can be harder for some to attain than others.
