I think the American Dream is more like an American Promise, which is that if you work hard and honestly that your life will improve and the lives of your children will have greater opportunities that you did. All people are treated equally, regardless of where they come from, whether it is another country or from a well to do American family. Of course some of this is not true. The possibility of being completely new to America and making it big is still there but there is a lot of stuff against them including generally stigma to not having connections that a person who grew up in an influential environment would have.
I define wealth as being able to do anything you want to do, like go on vacation or pay for school supplies, without having to worry for the most part about how to save up for it or how the spending of money will make you vulnerable in the future. The length of time you could keep spending money and not necessarily be worried about spending too much is also a sign of wealth. Since it is difficult for me to conceptualize really large amounts like a billion dollars, I just imagine the things a billion dollars could do. When it comes to a person’s personal wealth, at a certain point the amount does not make a difference until it can be translated into ability to do things or ownership of other stuff. I guess that is one of the reason the “new money” people in The Great Gatsby show off with parties and nice cars. They feel like they have to distinguish themselves in the one way everybody they meet will understand, through purchases. “Old money” has to show their wealth in more subtle ways that other “old money” rich people would automatically recognize like referring to a high end secluded vacation spot or the long line of family members who went to Ivy League schools like Nick does with Yale.
It is difficult for many Americans, including myself, to understand what poverty looks like in our own country. I grew up at least with the images of poverty being shown by the commercials asking for less than a dollar a day, shown on regular TV or by my church. The people in those commercials had no shoes and rarely did they interview the people in the commercials so it was assumed they could not speak English since the voice-over was in English. Rarely in America, does poverty look like that, but poverty still exists in America. If you believe in the American Dream, where every person has equal opportunity to get wealthier, the logical conclusion is that people in America living below the poverty line are either not smart enough to get out or do not try hard enough. I think wealth can grant a person privacy through having lawyers to make sure your privacy is protected to being able to afford homes and vacations in the middle of nowhere.
