The American Dream Illusion Or Reality

The American Opportunity: Illusion or Reality? The world has a perception of America that it is a land full of equal opportunity and success. However, that idea has become more of an illusion of America since that idea came into effect.
Carlin, John. "Illusions of Opportunity: The American Dream in Question." New
Statesman (1996) 1998: 45. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.
John Carlin begins with an insult to leftists in American. He states, “If you limited your reading to books by leftist American academics, you could be forgiven for concluding that America was ripe for a workers’ revolution” (Carlin). The thought of a wife staying at home to raise kids is laughable nowadays unlike it was thirty years ago. According to Carlin,
He then provides an example from Steven Fazzari saying, “’If there aren’t enough jobs in general, then we have a systematic problem that threatens the American Dream” (Kling). The American Dream is an idea that education and hard work will let you prevail in life. However, Kling begins to shift his focus over to the thought that the American Dream is becoming more and more of an impossibility by saying, “wages have been unable to outpace inflation in recent decades” (Kling). Kling gives an interesting study from a Gallup poll in 2012 that said, “only about half of Americans are satisfied with the opportunities the poor have to move up the income ladder through hard work.” Black Americans have a much harder time with achieving great success according to Kling. This article effectively provides examples and studies as to why the American Dream is starting to be pushed out of reach for almost all of the middle and lower class. Inflation and the Great Recession are killing the chances of the reality of the American
She grew up in a communist society where her freedoms were extremely limited. At the beginning of her article, she uses phrases like “I did not have a passport and a snowball chance in hell getting one” and, “the wind whistled through our pockets most of the time” (Paugh). She goes on to discuss how she felt pressed to keep her thoughts hidden due to fear of getting her family in trouble. She dreamt of coming to the United States and thought about swimming across the Danube like others tried. She wanted the American Dream just as badly as those who hated America; many foreigners want “to have the opportunity to succeed and attain the American Dream” (Paugh). Towards the end, Paugh starts to discuss all the different dreams of American teenagers and herself; the teenagers “still dream to go to college, to have a career, to have a family, a solid job, and to grow old in freedom and prosperity” while she completed her “dream of becoming an American citizen by choice”(Paugh). She also feels that Americans should be more grateful for originally being placed in