The excerpt from the speech “Renewing the American dream”, delivered by Former Senator of New York and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the second day of the 2014 New America Conference deals with the current state of the American dream and why it is broken.
Clinton shows how basic American values like opportunity, freedom and equality are deeply rooted in today’s America. She also mentions the essence of the American dream: people have the opportunity to build a good life regardless of origin given they work hard.
Clinton also presents how this idea isn’t what it once was. She describes missing upward mobility due to the state of the economy, where lower-class citizens aren’t able to climb up into the middle class anymore, middle-class citizens fall back down into the lower class and the majority of wealthy-born children stay in their class without effort.