Good answer. Thanks. But it still seems to me that this can't be the American dream. It is satisfied so well by so many other countries with healthcare and good employee protections.
The American dream must surely be an exceptional one, to justify some exceptional hardships?
The American Dream is connected to our frontier culture, so it's a few hundred years old. I think even a century ago, places like Europe has prosperity but still very strong class systems (some might argue they still do.) The promise of America was freedom, that hard work would mean prosperity (not riches, but prosperity), and that your kids could do better than you did. We take all this for granted but I think in some ways we now struggle to still offer this; in particular, it's not clear that the new generation today will have to opportunities that the last one did.
Reminds me of the piano player at Nordstrom's who worked 27 years and put his kids through college. Not something most of us would want to do, but definitely the American Dream by a lot of definitions.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/01/27/2452005/nordstrom-p...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream