Dream the American Dream

The American Dream has been the defining aspect of the United States for the entire history of the country. The idea that anyone can, through hard work, pull themselves up from their current position, and live a good life. This being said, the finer details of this idea are harder to pin down. Usually, aside from the main point of making it, many people can interpret the idea to fit their own situation, and add their own desires to it. For me, the American Dream is the desire for a person to make a better life for themselves than their parents did, and to give their children the opportunity to make a better life than they had. I have seen this dream in action, in my own family. My father embodies the American Dream in my eyes. He was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, and his family didn't have much money when he was growing up. He joined the Army, learned the skills he needed to, got married to my mom, and worked incredibly hard. When he left the military, he got an entry level job working at a communications company, and worked his way up to top through smart job switching and hard work. He's now employed as a Vice-President at a communications company, after working his way to make a good life for him and his family. The American Dream is still alive, but is slowly being killed by the difficulty of starting a business and a lack of mobility in the workplace. The government has made it so that the most qualified people are not always the ones hired to fill a position. Diversity quotas must be filled, and if a person was unlucky enough to be born a white male, they may fall behind in their career because of their employer's desire to fulfill the standards for diversity established by the federal government. Businesses are becoming more difficult to maintain, and as the Affordable Care Act places more financial stress on small businesses, more will likely fall. The American Dream is still alive, but it is barely clinging to life. The Dream can be resurrected from its current state, but it will take time, and it may be difficult. Some of the most important parts of the plan may be difficult for some to grasp, and it will take work from everyone to make the Dream alive again. The first step is to open our doors for immigration, as people immigrating into the United States have been proven to work the jobs necessary to our economy, and this will inject a new lifeblood into the stagnating economy. The economy needs to be deregulated, and its time for the influence of corporations on the government to end. Allowing for competition to exist in fields that have been subsidized and regulated by the government will foster innovation, as companies strive to gain a competitive edge on the free market. The Federal Reserve needs to be audited, and a potential return to a metallic backing for the dollar should be evaluated as a possibility. This will strengthen the dollar, and lower prices of consumer goods across the country. The American Dream can be revived, and this is how it will be done.