In the article U.S.A., Land of Limitations?, Nicholas Kristof argues that the United States has turned into exactly what we hoped it would not. Our ancestors had come to this country searching for opportunity, or more specifically, "The American Dream." Kristof states, "Success is not a sign of virtue. It's mostly a sign that your grandparents did well." Therefore, if you are not born into a rich or successful family, the odds of you becoming rich and successful on your own is very slim. Kristof chooses to relate to a specific friend in order to further get his point across. Rick was a hardworking male whose family situation was not necessarily good enough to help him capture success. His mother died when Rick was only five years old and his father was an alcoholic, which in turn gave him no one to truly look up to. Rick dropped out of school by tenth grade and worked in mills, machine shops, and eventually lived off disability money and odd jobs. Kristof explains that Rick has made bad choices in his life, but those bad choices did not distinguish him. Rick merely had a lack of opportunity.
Kristof states at the end of his article, "They (children in America) grow up not in a "land of opportunity," but in the kind of socially rigid hierarchies that our ancestors fled, the kind of society in which your outcome is largely determined by your beginning." He then proceeds to say that is what the presidential candidates should be discussing. In many situations, children have fathers and mothers who are unfit to have the title "parent." What exactly can a future president do to change that? Most presidential candidates themselves are prime examples of parents' incomes correlating to their adult children's incomes. What can a president do to change the fact that some people do not have the same opportunity as others?
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