What is your view of "The American Dream?"

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The American Dream is a ludicrous concept in today's society.

*shrug* mexicans, salvadorians, indians, and chinese don't seem to think so.

If you come from a third world hellhole and you have a couple of braincells to rub together there's no way to go but up.

*shrug* my indian and chinese coworkers don't come from 3rd world hell-holes.

They grew up privileged enough to go to school and learn english.

My indian coworkers tell me that the perception that most indians speak english is extremely false. Most people in india speak one and only one of india's 15 major languages, with schools taught in 58 languages and newspapers printed in 87 languages.

The educated often speak hindi in addition to their regional language (if any), and sometimes english as well. When they come to the USA to work, what we are receiving is their upper-middle class.

But they have a tough problem with human trafficking because you can literally take a girl 20 miles down the road to a place where she does not speak the language and does not understand the local customs.

I have two coworkers from Hyderabad, and they tell me that although Hyderabad is generally known for it's signature rice dish - biriyani (hyderabadi biriyani specifically), they come from different sides of Hyderabad, have different recipes for biriyani, and they make it with different strains of basmati rice. And everyone they know back home uses the same recipe as they do, and the same rice.

Does India have horrifying slums? Absolutely. But they are not a third world country. They have a culture that is much older than the western world and they appear to be on the up-swing of their dynastic cycle. We are maybe 70 years ahead of them, and they are gaining fast.

There was an American Dream once. I know there was, because my parents had lived it. My Dad had a good paying job with benefits and union protection, and was able to provide my Mom and me with a house we owned. My Mom didn't have to work, and we had enough spare cash to keep me occupied with plenty of toys growing up, and my Dad was able to spend plenty of money on his gardening hobby. My parents didn't want to make a million; they were content being comfortably middle class, and I think that's what most Americans ever really wanted.
I don't pretend that I'll ever have what my parents had. The jobs like my Dad had are gone, and the pay scale has either stayed stagnant or has dropped, along with benefits and union protection. The American dream has come to mean those at the top of the corporate ladder enjoy the fruits of capitalism, while the rest of us have been left in the mud. Somewhere along the way, the democratic roots of the American dream had branched out into plutocracy.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Not only
In Europe, it make us dream too when we read papers that say one can earn billions of dollars just by burning oneself with a coffee taken away from a MacDonald.
We don't have that here. The assurances don't work that way.

few people really underrstand the actual coffee case,

as for the american dream, its an illusion,
it might exist in teh heads of people, but to me, in the modern world, its nothing but PR.

I know, but the people who oppose ordinary people being able to seek legal and civil recourse against corporate America don't want people to know the truth.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

That "dream" is very much along the lines that Bismark promoted for Germany. Germans would labor diligently for a relatively decent wage and never make trouble for the government. All the good little German children would go to schools provided by the State to learn to grow up to become good German workers and cogs in the German machine. A place for everyone and everyone in his place.

ruveyn

The American Dream is obviously BS. Since it is other people who hire and promote you, your position is inherently determined by social dynamics. If hard work was the only thing people valued then it would be true. But other people also value networking skills and knowing how to operate smoothly through workplace politics so it kinda blows the whole fantasy out of the water.

In my estimation, the man who most epitomizes The American Dream is Hugh Hefner



He lives in such opulence, which he derives from selling smut.

Other rich guys, like Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich, go for the series of trophy wives. Hefner outdid them--with his trophy harems. Once a consort turns 22 and starts getting a touch of cellulite, he marries her off to someone else or otherwise dumps her and brings in someone fresh and younger.

He is almost 90 and still getting more vagina than what most guys get.

You couldn't do better than that.

The American Dream is the opportunity to work through a hardship and to come out better and happier than you were before, and those opportunities came through the liberties that the US is famous for.

Hugh Hefner could be viewed as someone that reached the American Dream, but if it was only reserved for people like him, it wouldn't have been something within the grasp of millions of Americans.

When did that really ever happen in America? I certainly had no sense of being a cog in a machine growing up when my family were living the American dream.
And beside, the system Bismark had established was working wonderfully, till Germany's defeat after WWI, and the Versailles travesty, which left Germans hopeless and destitute, and extremely malleable to evil demagogues like Hitler and his Nazis.
The powers that be should consider that when they decide they whittle away a little bit more of American prosperity.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Still a rather proletarian dream.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2lGkEU4Xs[/youtube]

She has it right: the proletarian American dream involves putting yourself in a box.

what american dream?.......work to buy crap you don't need until you die?

That is indeed what it comes down to.