Posted on 08/31/2006 8:05:55 AM PDT by tang0r
There are many, like the great Hunter Thompson, who tout the “death of the American Dream.” Mr. Thompson and those of his ilk claim that it is not possible for everyone to become prosperous through hard work and dedication alone. Further, they claim that unless one already has access to wealth or power or connections, the Dream is only a vague idea, not something actually tangible to the indigent citizens who wish to rise above their ghetto surroundings. But they are wrong.
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It's well known that money can't buy happiness. Personally I find that it rents it very nicely.
how about the freedom to pursue whatever YOU want - either fame, fortune, or self satisfaction.
key word - Freedom.
The American Dream?
Self-determination!
Money cannot buy happiness, except maybe for the shallow or superficial. What money can do is relieve quite a bit of stress from day to day living. If I know that based on my current net worth I could stop working tomorrow and have enough to live on for years, then that frees up my mind to think about things other than how to put food on my table.
At one point in my life my family was living in a car, I went a week without shoes and we fought hard for a meal a day. Now me, my mom, and my sister are all in college (and working full time) my mom and sister are going to school to become teachers and I am going for International Economics. A great portion of my childhood was spent in poverty, But now I am in college and am living a fairly decent lower middle class life. I do not know If I will ever become rich or even upper class but in just 5 years time me and my family has gone from extreme poverty to middle class. In this country nothing is ever guaranteed, but ALL of us has the opportunity to do great things. One of the greatest things about this country is our freedom to fail. Without failure we can never learn our mistakes and improve ourselves creating even better opportunities for our next generation. To list just a sampling of presidents arguably the highest position of success in this country who came from poverty;
Ronald Reagan
Bill Clinton
Richard Nixon
Dwight Eisenhower
Abraham Lincoln
And there is probably more but that is off the top of my head. And that is 5 presidents out of 43 for a percentage of 11.65% or almost the poverty line as it stands today. So even in our presidency, the poor have held a proportional amount of our presidencies. Yeah the American Dream is an hoax.
I know some people personally that think living in the woods, depending on themselves for their food (growing and canning, hunting and drying meat, etc) makes them happy. They sell fur, hand make and sell trinkets and curios for the little money they actually need to buy the supplies they can't make or find, and they tell me they are happy.
These are not ignorant, uneducated people. One is a college graduate, the rest are high school graduates, and they can discuss issues, although mostly not current issues, intelligently.
I personally wouldn't want to live that way but it seems to work for them.
I've been rich and I've been poor in my life. And, let me tell you, rich is better.
It is just a LIE that one can not be wealthy in this country. One can to the point of having enough to provide all basics with alot of icing on the cake no matter what. If one makes the right choices. This is obvioud for anyone who looks around. I look just at my own family. From the generation of my gradparents to my parents and now to us it is painfully obvious each generation had more material wealth than the last.
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