American Dream

The "American Dream" is a phrase referring to a purported national ethos of the United States: that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life.

[a] It is said to be a set of ideals including representative democracy, rights, liberty, and equality, in which freedom is interpreted as the opportunity for individual prosperity and success, as well as the chance for upward social mobility for each according to ability and achievement through hard work in a capitalist society with many challenges but few formal barriers.

[19] The meaning of the American Dream has changed over the course of history, and includes both personal components such as home ownership and upward mobility as well as a global vision for cultural hegemony and diplomacy.

Jim Cullen notability claims: Ever since, the Declaration of Independence has functioned as the banner of the American Dream, one repeatedly waved by figures that included women’s rights activists, populists, homosexuals, and anyone who has ever believed that happiness can not only be pursued, but attained.

The U.S. Constitution, which marked the other bookend of the nation’s creation, lacks the mythic resonances of the Declaration, though it takes little reflection to see that it is the backdrop, if not the foundation, for all American Dreams.

[21] Many well-educated Germans who fled the failed 1848 revolution found the United States more politically free than their homeland, which they believed to be a hierarchical and aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for their aspirations.

One of them said: The German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience.

The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar is not a mug above the most humble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to pursue any occupation ... [In America] wealth and possession of real estate confer not the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has.

Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral power of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in idleness credit for.

[26] Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories.

It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.Adams contended that extreme wealth inequality was among the worst enemies of the American Dream, and said that:[28] So long also as we are ourselves content with a mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions, it is absurd to think that the men who can utilize that public attitude for the gaining of infinite wealth and power for themselves will abandon both to become spiritual leaders of a democracy that despises spiritual things.He also said that the American institution that best exemplified the American dream was the Library of Congress; he contrasted it with European libraries of the time, which restricted access to many of their works, and argued that the Library, as an institution funded by and meant to uphold democracy, was an example of democratic government's ability to uplift and equalize the people that it ruled over and was ruled by in order to "save itself" from a takeover by oligarchic forces.

[32] Other writers who used the American Dream theme include Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Albee,[33] John Steinbeck,[34] Langston Hughes,[35] and Giannina Braschi.

[43] Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, satirized or ridiculed materialism in the chase for the American dream.

Similarly, in 1971 Hunter S. Thompson depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream a dark psychedelic reflection of the concept—successfully illustrated only in wasted pop-culture excess.

[45] The novel Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr. is an exploration of the pursuit of American success as it turns delirious and lethal, told through the ensuing tailspin of its main characters.

[46][47] Carlin pointed to "the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions" as having a greater influence than an individual's choice.

For example, Easy Rider (1969), directed by Dennis Hopper, shows the characters making a pilgrimage in search of "the true America" in terms of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyles.

[50] Scholars have explored the American Dream theme in the careers of numerous political leaders, including Henry Kissinger,[51] Hillary Clinton,[52] Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln.

Hanson and Zogby (2010) report on numerous public opinion polls that since the 1980s have explored the meaning of the concept for Americans, and their expectations for its future.

[77][78][79] Several public figures and commentators, from David Frum to Richard G. Wilkinson, have said that the American Dream is better realized in Denmark, which is ranked as having the highest social mobility in the OECD.

The researchers found that "the persistence of poverty is strongly connected to tax rates and what they call transfer insurance effects, which can be considered as akin to a social safety net," and that the "U.S. is the archetype of a liberal and residualist welfare state, featuring stratified access to higher education and employment, strong earnings returns to higher education, and a comparatively weak welfare state to insure against risks in adulthood," as well as that "exposure to childhood poverty is particularly severe in the US.

[91] Social mobility can also vary widely geographically according to a 2014 paper, with the Southeast and lower East North Central states ranking near the bottom.

With the arrival of affordable automobiles such as the Ford Model T in the 1910s, consumers in rural America were no longer forced to only buy from local general stores with their limited merchandise and high prices, and could instead visit cheaper, better-stocked shops in towns and cities.

In the emerging litany of the American dream what historian Daniel J. Boorstin later termed a 'democracy of things' would disprove both Malthus's predictions of scarcity and Marx's of class conflict."

[106] Knights and McCabe argue that "a reflection and reinforcement of the American Dream has been the emphasis on individualism as extolled by Margaret Thatcher and epitomized by the 'enterprise' culture.

[108] The first post-Communist leader Boris Yeltsin embraced the "American way" and teamed up with Harvard University free market economists Jeffrey Sachs and Robert Allison to give Russia economic shock therapy in the 1990s.

[109] In 2008 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev lamented the fact that 77% of Russia's 142 million people live "cooped up" in apartment buildings.

In 2010 his administration announced a plan for widespread home ownership: "Call it the Russian Dream", said Alexander Braverman, the Director of the Federal Fund for the Promotion of Housing Construction Development.

[114] In 2013, China's new paramount leader Xi Jinping began promoting the phrase as a slogan, leading to its widespread use in the Chinese media.

It stresses entrepreneurship and glorifies a generation of self-made men and women in post-reform China, such as rural immigrants who moved to the urban centers and improved their living standards and social life.