What Happened to the American Dream?

If you had told the 16-year-old me that an American couple could earn $120,000 a year — and still need to sell blood plasma to help make rent — I wouldn’t have believed you.

That wasn’t the America I crossed an ocean to find.

I wasn’t born in this country.

I grew up in Britain’s foster care system, in a cramped, unheated room above a garage. On winter nights, I would lie awake and watch my breath turn to mist in the cold.

My school job counselor told me to be realistic. “Become a telephone repairman,” he said.
But I had already decided where my future was.

I used to cut pictures of the New York City skyline out of magazines. I imagined myself walking between those skyscrapers, building a life on Wall Street that looked nothing like the one I had been born into.

Then, on July 9, 1987, I landed at New York’s JFK International Airport with $150 in my pocket and the clothes on my back.

I had no connections. No safety net. And no one waiting to open the door for me.

So I worked three jobs. I offered to work for free on Wall Street until a guy named Frank finally gave me a chance. He hired me on as a gofer for the big-time brokers — and two years later, I became the youngest vice president in Shearson Lehman history.

Later, I ran my own private fund. I built a life that the foster kid shivering above that garage could barely have imagined.

I’m not telling you this to brag. I’m telling you because America kept its promise to me.
Where I started did not determine where I finished.

That was the American Dream I came here chasing. And for me, it became real.

But today, for millions of hardworking Americans, that dream is becoming what I call the Wealth Gap Nightmare.

When the American Dream Becomes a Nightmare