I would describe the american dream as using the opportunities america provides to create any life you choose to live. America provides so many different options and avenues for people to create the life they want. It may be more difficult for some, but I think there is a road for everyone to create a meaningful life for themselves here. Their are tons of stories of millionaires and billionaires coming from nothing and working hard doing what they love to become rich. I think that is what a lot of peoples american dreams are, becoming very rich. That is often what people chase when they are chasing the american dream. But the american dream doesn't necessarily have to be about becoming rich it is just about allowing people to create the life they want. 

To me the definition of wealth differs depending on what you are talking about. Wealth is typically used to describe money or how much someone is worth, but it can be used to describe other things as well. In general I just think wealth or to be wealthy means to have a lot of something.

I think that Americans attitudes toward peoples of extreme wealth, in current circumstances, is a view of anger and distrust. A lot of people who are unhappy with the way things are currently going blame the wealthy for it. There's also a feeling that they are manipulating government and laws in their favor. In addition to this, with the growing wealth gap people think the rich are hoarding money and not putting it back into the economy. Since the wealthy have so much money currently many people want them to pay much higher taxes for things like public colleges and universal healthcare. At the same time most Americans want to become extremely wealthy and want the lifestyles that the rich have.  I think Americans attitudes toward poverty is that it is bad and everyone wants to avoid it. The attitude toward how to help people in poverty are, I would say in general, government programs such as welfare and charity efforts. 

I think that acquiring wealth to the extent that you are free of financial worry is most important, as that is probably one of peoples biggest stresses which I would prefer to avoid. Personally I would not sacrifice things like relationships or other non material things to gain a huge amount of wealth. In respects to how I view extremely wealthy people, I look up to them and try to emulate some of what they have done in my life. There is no possible way to become a billionaire if you are not one of the best at something, and I think that there is a tremendous amount of wisdom that can come from the ultra wealthy. As for my view on poverty I think that there are many ways to end up in poverty, just as there are many ways of getting very wealthy. I think that a lot of time poverty is a result of circumstances and results in a cycle. Since I have never been in poverty I do not know what it would be like, but I can imagine it would be very difficult to get out of if you were constantly surrounded by it. Oftentimes it is a result of just being born into poverty I feel as though people who were blessed to not be born into poverty, all of which is by chance, should try to help and give back to those who were.    

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