American Dream United States of America is known as the land of opportunity for many immigrants who dream of a better life. Since the beginning of American history, the US has focused more about equal opportunity than any other country. There are many people who strongly believe that once they come to the United States it is almost guaranteed to find success. Also, they believe that we live in a very different world than them, living the American dream. However, it’s beginning to seem like this country is no longer the land of opportunity for those who are immigrants and the low class people.This is because of the difficulty to get a job, false assumptions, and heavily enforced social classes.
Should the minimum age be raised? One very important controversy most people all over the world are dealing with involves money. There never seems to be enough of it. Minimum wage in the United States is approaching an all-time low. Some believe that raising the minimum wage would hurt people by making it harder to find jobs, when it actually will create more job opportunities for Americans.
Even though it might seems as a small problem, comparing to all other troubles that the nation has experienced, nonetheless it must be addressed in a timely matter because any delay in making the decision will make the issue even more severe. It might cause people’s choice of government to become much skewed. If some area has a majority of supporters for a certain party and the conditions for them to vote are beneficial, the community will be able to include all their votes, and comparing to a place that has supporters of the opposite party but has no opportunity to vote. The candidate for the election will lose that majority of votes and people will be faced with the government that only minority wanted to see in
These factors that many think that could be adversarial are race, gender, sexual orientation, and pedigree. Those people believe that all those components will be a problem to some who think that just working hard is enough to become successful. Although many people such as Horatio Alger, the author of “Ragged Dick”, have different opinions on how an individual can accomplish something in life, everyone achieves success differently. For most citizens of America, they believe that they must work hard to achieve what they want in life. Some do not think that any other factors such as race or social economic status can affect the outcome of an individual’s life.
Discrimination Against Immigrants It is extremely difficult for immigrants to thrive in any foreign country, especially if their immigration status is an illegal one. The widespread perception that people commonly have about immigrants is that they are intruders who only arrived to any given country to take away that country’s native individual’s employment opportunities, to live on government benefits or to commit crimes. This is based on the fact that when people decide to leave their native countries, it is usually because they are looking for a better life than the one they had back in their place of origin and because of this they may accept jobs and work under conditions that others would not accept, and for example, they may work for lesser wages and without any kind of employee benefits. However, it is usually extremely difficult for immigrants to find jobs either due to the language barrier or because of their illegal alien status; therefore, they end up receiving countless government benefits, which end up being paid for by the common citizen in the form of taxes. Furthermore, some people see immigrants as gang members or even as guerrilla and cartel members who are used to lead a life of crime back at their countries of origin.
Violence, obesity, children’s education, life expectancy, mental illness, teen births, trust- all are major problems for societies across the globe, and according to Wilkinson and Pickett, can be attributed to inequality. In their examination of developed countries, they found that inequality, rather than average income, is a far better indicator of wellbeing. Furthermore, the authors posited that nearly all problems that are more prevalent at the bottom of social hierarchies (many are aforementioned) are more common in unequal societies. They suggest that despite a nation’s apparent affluence, wealthy yet unequal nations are nonetheless “social failures” (18). Wilkinson and Pickett explore two of the most common assumptions about the social gradient that shows people at the bottom of social hierarchies suffer more problems- circumstances and individual tendencies.
As it stands today, there are not many organizations fulfilling this need in society. EWD should help to spawn many offshoot organizations that can help to continue its work and multiply the benefits. Most importantly, I think the civil society benefits to families will be the greatest. A large and overbearing level of debt has a very negative effect on the interactions within families, because it imposes much additional financial stress, in some cases when there is already much to deal with. These ridiculous levels of debt can ruin families and cause much undue harm right at the time that young people need guidance and help from their
Most of the things these immigrants do in the U.S. is illegal; avoid taxes, work illegally, live illegally, etc. The biggest problem with them is that a majority of them do not pay taxes. Households with an illegal immigrant as the head of the house only pay 1/3 of the federal taxes, or ¼ as much as a legal household. The debt that illegal immigrants cause to the economy is far greater than the good they do. As Steven A. Camarota tells in The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget, “Households headed by illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government in 2002 and paid only $16 billion in taxes.
Poverty The capitalist lifestyle that permeates the existence of every American is responsible for great competition and prosperity as well as absolute failure, otherwise known as poverty. Poverty is not a new or at all foreign concept in any part of the world. It has existed since the dawn of civilization, one group flourishes while another struggles. But why, considering our present day U.S. technological advancements and overall well being can we not solve such a social dilemma? Poverty cannot be due to just the fluctuating economy and job market, changes in family composition, or simply laziness (1).
From 1979 to 2006, the financial industry’s share in the nation’s corporate profits grew from a fifth to almost a third. By 2006, bankers and insurers were making 70 percent more, on average, than workers in the rest of the private sector. Then they set off again one of the worst financial crises since the Great Depression, and taxpayers bailed them out. The corruption is just not limited to Wall Street but also politicians who made money off of looking the other way. My input on this is that we did not learn anything from the crash of the stock market in 1929.