08-03-2009, 06:24 PM
Quote:My understanding of the "American Dream" is that you can make something of yourself from humble beginnings, if you have enough smarts, luck, sweat and perseverance. It has to do with a legal system that operates to preserve peoples rights, and a culture of "we can do it" or "we can fix it".
I'd use Obama as an example, but he took a different road than the general hard working dirt farmer. A better example is the gardener my MIL hired regularly (befriended) to build her yard in California. He was from Oaxaca, and had 8 children and a wife living in Oaxaca. He would work every day from sun up to sun down in the neighborhood making peoples yards more beautiful for $10 per hour (1990 $10 = ~130 pesos) or $80 to $160 per day, and send the money back home to send his children to the best schools in Mexico. Minimum wage (2008) in Oaxaca is about 50 pesos ($4 a day). When his eldest son was able to emigrate legally, his dad already had the money saved for the son to put a large down payment on a small fixer up house in Southern California dad had already scoped out. The father and son repaired the house, made the yard phenomenal, and sold it for a hefty profit. And, so on. This continued until all the children who wanted to come to America were set up with a good start, and a good education. Dad went back to Oaxaca at age 50, now retired but still futzing in his own garden.
I was not mentioning the American dream as something negative. However, also there there are many examples of good people that work their bottoms off and don't make it.
Somebody in south central who has a good brain will be better off trying to get into university and study instead of becoming a professional athlete. (mind you, the first will be difficult enough)