Struggles Of The American Dream

The, “American Dream,” is practically the leading cause of crime in the United States. Why do people commit crimes? Often for money and personal gain, but why? Often you will see people who commit crimes just to make ends meet, but more often than not you see people committing an excess of crime, and why do you think they do this? To live the “American Dream” and give their lives a sense of meaning. Wealth is glamorized in today’s culture. When you have role models, athletes, politicians, and celebrities that are all filthy rich, it’s hard for people not to want to be wealthy. The American Dream creates tensions between classes especially. You can see this in different genders, races, classes and you can see it in things like media, music, and culture. …show more content…
More often than not, the lower classes are the most affected by the strain of the american dream and capitalism. They simply cannot reach the goals of many other middle class individuals in a legal manner, so they do it whatever way they can, whether it is legal or not. This is because the wealth is glamorized. We have movies, music, and television shows that all for the most part revolve around crime, or wealth. There is hundreds of movies out there that glamorize wealth and depicts the wealthy life as a glamorous one. The film, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” is a perfect example. The film revolves around Jordan Belfort, a man who is infamous for essentially scamming the stock market and millions of citizens using insider trading in the stock market. The movie starts with him being poor, struggling to get by, with a girlfriend and an apartment, but as the movie progresses he becomes