The American dream is an intangible goal that many people aspire towards.
It is a goal to have, at the end of you life, more than you came in with. For some that may mean that they live in a safer environment than they were raised in. For others it may mean accumulating wealth and being able to provide for their families. Wealth may be money or it may just be having a solid job and a place to live. For myself the American Dream represents freedom of ideas and of individuals to not be suppressed by their government. America should be a place where people can be as free as possible to go for whatever dreams and goals they might have. There is a lot of people who are not able to have this privilege and those who live in the United States should be able to freely chose what career opportunity they wish.
Most Americans aspire to be wealthy. It is nearly everyone's aspiration, consciously or subconsciously, to not have to worry about money. However, very few people actually achieve this goal. Poverty in America is not nearly as bad as in other countries. We have many programs run by the government and private organizations and therefor poverty is much more possible to escape in the United States than in other countries. Also we do not have a social class system and therefor no one is excessively held down by society by where they are born.
I think that in the future the wealth and poverty gap in the United States will continue to grow. As automated machines continue to take the bulk of jobs people will continue to loose their own jobs. This will increase unemployment while the people who own the machines will profit. However on the other hand this may not be such a bad situation. If humans make machines that help our everyday lives and that can help people live well, there may be no purpose in every person to have a job. This concept may be very foreign to most people but eventually the social norm may change to the majority of humans not needing to have a job and unemployment numbers being irreverent. I am not sure if I would want to live in a world where human didn't have the expectation to work but I think it would be interesting to see what it would be like.
I am very interested in your prediction of the future and the future job market. It seems that a future like the one you described could possibly create a sort of dystopian society, unless we would be able to make some major adaptions. Also, I like your description of the American dream as being an "intangible goal."
ReplyDelete