(13) The (g)unlucky one

To me, the "American Dream" is this crazy idea we have of how our lives were meant to be as Americans. When I think of the American Dream, my first thought is honestly the 1930's because we don't really see it advertised in modern context. Then, it was the concept of having a house in the suburbs with a family and a car and strict gender roles. Now, it's more implicit, but it's also not about a house and a car and a family anymore- at least not for my generation. That's both somewhat out of the question and not what everyone wants anymore. For me, the American Dream at this point is being able to afford everything without going into crippling debt. (I tried to be positive but I'm literally going to be in debt for the rest of my life so.)

My definition of wealth is flexible. For me personally, wealth is having enough money to be able to get what you want without having to stress over spending the money. However, wealth can also be a ridiculous excess of money (which often comes on top of the first definition). For example, we think of Trump (the human dumpster fire) as being wealthy because he has a ridiculous amount of money, meaning he can pretty much buy whatever he wants and not think about it (including the silence of an adult actress that he cheated on his wife with). I don't consider myself to be wealthy because I have to be careful with my spending, but I don't consider myself to be poor or impoverished either because I'm not struggling to make ends meet.

Americans have some backwards attitudes toward wealth and poverty. They believe that poverty is something to be frowned upon, but don't offer any solutions or assistance to people in impoverished communities. A good portion of this country is living in poverty, or is homeless, or somewhere in the middle- yet the "solutions" we're seeing are to put more regulations on food stamps and make tax cuts to benefit the wealthy. There is no way that this is an effective solution, or one that will benefit the people who actually need help at all, and yet here we are.

My attitude towards wealth and poverty is quite the opposite of the rest of America's. I think that it is ridiculous that we allow this much of our population to live in this state. We have the money and the space to house and pay for all of these people, but it's all in the hands of billionaires who don't need it and corporations that charge crazy amounts. There are enough empty houses in this country to house most if not all of the homeless people in this country, but we don't take advantage of it. There is also the fact that minimum wage is no longer a living wage, which literally defeats the whole purpose of a minimum wage. The idea of minimum wage was to have a baseline wage that people could actually make a living off of- and now people are saying that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised to be a livable wage. People are actually trying to argue that other people don't deserve to earn enough money to live. I think this is ridiculous. I know that I will likely be working a minimum wage job for at least part of my life and I would like to actually be able to support myself with the money that I work for.