Putt-Putt Quanpadung

English F Block
Mrs. Hunt
American Dream
What is the American Dream? The American Dream began in 1931 after author, James
Truslow Adams, introduced the idea of a Utopian world with the determination to maximize
opportunities, working hard to earn a living, owning a home, having 2 kids, a dog, a white picket
fence, financial success and retiring happily and comfortably. Throughout the years the American
Dream has undergone many drastic changes. Many factors contributed to the change of the
Dream. The factors include student debts and health care price, employment worries and
retirement worries.
Throughout life children are encouraged to attend college. The problem is that the cost of
education is very expensive. Even though more students are attending college, with the increase
on price it has created more worries for people. On average, tuition inflates at about 8%. A good
rule of thumb is to take the general inflation, and double it to get the inflation rate of a college
education. For instance, in 1970, you could buy a gallon of gas for $.36 and attend Harvard for
$4,070. In 2015, a gallon of gas would cost $2.40(a 666% increase) and a year at Harvard would
cost $45,278 (a 1,110% increase). If those items kept pace with inflation, the gas would cost
$2.20 (about where it was at toward the end of 2015), and the cost of attending Harvard would be
around $24,895 (roughly half of what it actually is). (Bryant, What is the American Dream in
2016). This means that students are spending a lot more money on education, and when they
graduate from school they are far more in debt than you should be. As the price for education
raised, the jobs were not paying off their loans.

After a student graduates from college, most of them want to a land a job they would
enjoy and pays well. Throughout time job employment in the United States have plummeted
immensely. Even though jobs have fewer requirements, standards have grown and fewer amount
of people have been able to meet them. Many young graduates want white collar jobs right out of
college, but they cant land them so they end up working with blue collar jobs that dont pay
well. This makes it hard to pay off student loans. In recent years, technology has evolved
drastically and have taken over jobs that use to require manual labor. This allows companies to
spend less money on employees and more on the future of the company. In the article What is
the American Dream in 2016, author Sean Bryant stated that, while several blue-collar jobs
pay wellmost young graduates are working a job they dont want, earning a wage that isnt
what they need to pay their loans.
Peoples well-being had become their priorities, but health care price has increased in
recent years. Health care has been one of the most important, but people could not invest in it
because they could not afford it. For many decades, if you worked for a company for their whole
life, they get rewarded with a pension. Which meant people did not really need to worry about
their retirement. In the late 20th century that began to change. As people were living longer than
ever, companies saw they were having trouble keeping up with those payments. New hires were
not given a defined contribution plan, rather than a defined benefit plan. (Bryant, What is the
American Dream in 2016) Both health care and retirement worries combined made the American
Dream a lot harder to achieve.
The American has undergone many drastic changes because of student debts and health
care price, employment worries and retirement worries. Education is a huge factor to being
successful and earning money, which would provide you a decent job that would lead you to an

easier life. Education is also very expensive, by making students pay for it will lead them into
debt. With the employment rates being so low, it is harder for people to land a good job that will
pay off the loan.

Work Cited
Bryant, Sean. "What Is the American Dream in 2016?" Investopedia. N.p., 26 Jan. 2016. Web. 27
Oct. 2016.