Pressure of Quick Monetary Gain

Dreamland

Today, as I sit here , I reflect on the last 9 years I spent as an over-the-road truck driver.

Bumping loading docks in all of the lower 48 states of this country has given me a unique perspective on the American working class. In almost a decade of traveling the country, I’ve met thousands of Americans who work thankless jobs tirelessly. I’ve also met countless generally good-hearted Americans who have thrown their lives away in the pressure of quick monetary gain. I ponder the thought: What is the commonality of these opposing sides of this
spectrum—the workers and the takers, the haves and the have-nots? Could it be that both sides are motivated by the same ideology that has been sold to us all?

America, the land of the free and the proud, ingrained in the very fabric of American society, is the idea of the American dream—an “ideal that the United States is a land of opportunity that allows the possibility of upward mobility and equality for people of all classes who work hard and have the will to succeed” (Jennifer Murtoff). However, as American society faces increasing wealth inequalities and systemic barriers, the question has to be asked: “Is the American dream truly attainable for every American?” According to polls taken from YouGov

public data for business, “43% of Americans believe in the American dream, while 35% do not, and 22% believe in it but think it’s unattainable.” So, for a frame of reference, that’s seven billion, four hundred sixty-six thousand, two hundred and seventy-four Americans feeling they are at an extreme disadvantage of obtaining the American dream that was sold to us due to
economic disparities, institutional barriers, and decreasing opportunities. This situation hampers the growth and upward mobility of select groups of Americans in modern-day society, proving that for a great deal of Americans, the dream that is being sold is totally unobtainable. However, that doesn’t mean that this country isn’t the place where any American can turn their dreams into reality.

Upward mobility has been America’s ‘forcejear’ sense Christopher Columbus stopped by like an uninvited dinner party guest with bad table manners. In the 1940s an average kid in
America had an 8 percent shot at going to a four-year college. However 90 percent of kids could expect to make more money than their parents . Nowadays, things have drastically changed .If you’re born today, you’ve got a 40 percent chance of going to college despite that less than 50 percent of college grads will go on to make more money than their parents. Right now only about one third of Americans actually think that our generation is going to be better off than our parents. Rachel Lipson, the director of Harvard’s project on workforce has been looking into this and it’s pretty alarming. It seems like the idea that each new generation will have a better life than the one before is becoming more and more a fantasy. Despite those numbers if you dare to wake from the dream that has been marketed to us. You can begin to see a new America. Where the tech industry is the great equalizer America where you can make 200,000.00 farting in jars and selling them or unmasking a 6 figure income starting an online store. The tech industry has

created more first generation millionaires in the last decade than any other industry. From content creators to Lyft drivers the spectrum is wide for the opportunities that the tech industries can create in aiding the average American in their upward mobility.