Achieving The 21st Century American Dream

Take risks, make sacrifices…and work hard

The American Dream is alive and well, but we’re going to have to work harder than ever before to achieve it.

Unfortunately, it’s no longer achieved by simply buying a house with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, getting a union job, marrying your high school sweetheart, getting a dog and having 2.5 kids, and retiring in Social Security at 55.

To achieve it today, we’ll need to take risks, work hard, and make real sacrifices. We’ll need to start businesses, innovate, and create net new opportunities, at home and abroad.

Writer and historian James Truslow Adams in his best-selling 1931 book, Epic of America, described the American Dream as:

"…that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with OPPORTUNITY for each according to ABILITY or ACHIEVEMENT…It is not a dream of motorcars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

The American Dream is not achieved by chance. Over the next 30 years we’re going to need to think differently than our parents and grandparents to achieve it.

What risks are you taking today? What sacrifices are you making? How hard are you working?

Go get it!