As a European with substantial friends and family in America, yes. The American Dream is interesting because it's not just "Can I make it if I try hard as an A

As a European with substantial friends and family in America, yes. The American Dream is interesting because it's not just "Can I make it if I try hard as an American", it's also "would I want to go to America, as a foreigner?". To the rest of the world it is as much an ideal as it is to Americans. Now of course there are many people who still try to gain entrance to America. Undoubtedly, some of them are leaving places with worse opportunities. But I'm going to take it from my family perspective. My parents' generation basically got kicked out of the old country in the late 1970s, and ended up spread around various countries. Denmark, France, UK, Canada (Vancouver/Toronto), and a large contingent in the US (CA, CO, DC). Big family, more cousins than I can count. Even more people and countries if we start counting family friends and distant relations. Now and again people meet up. When someone is traveling, whoever is around tries to hang out with them. Luckily we have no alcohol tolerance so it is cheap to get us drunk. Inevitably, people end up asking each other what it was like to grow up in whatever country it was. Above everything, two things stick out. University costs a bunch of money in America, and health insurance costs a bunch of money. Not only that, your chances at secondary school depend a lot on where you started out. There is systematic racial bias built into the admission system. With the cost being so high, you'd better hope nothing bad happens while you're studying. The health insurance thing is a big deal as well. Get sick, go broke. Don't lose your job either. And what does your day-to-day look like? Well, you walk out on the street in SF and there are people using the public streets as toilets. There are people in obvious need of psychiatric help wandering around cursing their invisible enemies. There are tent camps of people who live in the middle of one of the most prosperous cities on earth. There are videos of large groups of people completely messed up on drugs, just sitting in the middle of the street. There are people who loot stores en masse. The question of "can someone make it if they work hard?" is also a question of fairness. What rules have they got in place in America, so that people who did well previously do not simply use their winnings to keep "winning"? Well, it seems like there are a lot of rules that favor the already rich. We hear they can arrange their taxes favorably. We hear they can lobby Washington. They can get their kids into those universities, something that is not so straightforward in other countries. This is all on top of an electoral system that is not proportional representation, for various reasons. It seems to favor stasis, with two large parties that have kept everything the same for a long while. Anyway, that's enough for now, getting late here, but there are other thoughts to gather on the subject.