system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The American Dream is a scam

I’m an American and a child of immigrant parents, and I’ll preface by saying that the US is a fortunate place to be at compared to other places in regards to political and economic stability. 

With that said, I see the “American Dream” as nothing more than an empty catchphrase for political point-scoring and false, overseas advertising. Reality is that the school and university systems prep you to be a lifetime wage slave here. If you’re from overseas, your university degree from back home may mean nothing here and you may have to start from scratch again. 

And if you do start from scratch, or if you’re a resident and do attend university here, you will rack up crippling student debt. Debt that will take forever to be repaid given the current state of the market. To employers, it feels a bachelor’s and perhaps even a master’s degree is nothing more than a checkbox and I don’t feel the ROI from a degree is near valuable enough given the jobs nowadays. And if you pile on mortgage, bills, taxes, maybe a loan here and there, it feels like you’re always in an uphill battle to pay something off. 

Folks here are overworked, barely get any paid vacation days, and a lot live paycheck-to-paycheck. Some dream. 

Would be mitigated with healthcare coverage, but we know that politicians and health insurance companies want otherwise. Many people depend on their jobs for coverage because the prices are so high. One of the few developed Western democracies w/o universal healthcare, and it’s an embarrassment honestly. Land of the Free can’t even take proper care of its citizens. 

Even trying to make it whether through starting a business or climbing the career ladder just doesn’t seem all that to me. It’s like the system really is against you, as I clearly saw with the GME-Wall St showdown. 

When I go back to my home country, I’m enamored with all the big, lavish houses that many of our families have back home and more rooted way of life. If it weren’t for severe economic and political instability, some of it perpetuated by invasive/punitive US foreign political/economic policies, I’m pretty sure a lot of immigrants wouldn’t mind returning. 

I guess that’s why they have to perpetuate this myth that Africa is all mud huts and the Middle East is one giant war zone, when both are clearly not true. They have to keep up this superiority complex and depict the people there as deprived so the average American isn’t exposed to the reality that they’re lives aren’t all that it’s cracked up to be compared to others. If the potential of those regions (and other regions) were realized, they would rival America, and we can’t have competition like that. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe vestiges of the American Dream exists, but only to the wealthy here. For the rest, it’s just a scam. That’s why when politicians harp on the American Dream, I can’t help but be amused, because it’s just a chest-thumping exercise to placate the average American viewer sitting at home watching from their device.
gpt
It's only a scam if you define the American Dream as a guarantee - not as an *opportunity* for success. 

So for example, you talk about college degrees as being a requisite part of the scam, but Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Williams all dropped out of college before proceeding to make it big. 

Also you need to consider why the US has the highest number of immigrants wishing to move there *by far*. 

You highlight the dark side of the dream - that not everyone will make it - but that's not all there is to it.