&gt; Isn&#x27;t that part of growing up though? Why have a life savings if you&#x27;re only temporarily poor. You know you&#x27;re going to be rich eventually, right?<p>No, letting your dreams die is not a &quot;part of growing up&quot;, good lord, how depressing. Think about what life savings are for a minute. It&#x27;s literally a bunch of money you save over many years that you only get to spend once you&#x27;re too old to work anymore. If we all just settled for this very pragmatic dream we wouldn&#x27;t start companies, create art, or take any significant risks.<p>&gt; I think there&#x27;s a implicit understanding with this quote that Americans not only have that &quot;American dream&quot;, but we also don&#x27;t expect to work for it.<p>That&#x27;s funny, because that&#x27;s <i>exactly</i> how I would characterize Socialism; as the ability for anybody to attain the &quot;American Dream&quot; without having to work for it. If the Government could simply hand out American Dreams at the Bureau of American Dreams then why would anyone ever aim any higher? Why would anyone take a risk on anything or try to exceed expectations?<p>&gt; Part of dreaming big is understanding that you have to work towards it, or it won&#x27;t happen. I don&#x27;t feel like this is happening in America. (As an American)<p>I agree completely, and that&#x27;s precisely what the American Dream is. If people are misconstruing it as some handout that you don&#x27;t have to work for then that&#x27;s a problem and they need a big wakeup call. But I think the American Dream is still alive and well here, otherwise we might not be here on Hacker News keeping up to date with the latest happenings in the startup world and we might not be thinking of or attempting to start our own startups. But we clearly are, and we&#x27;re doing it at a higher rate than any other country on the planet.<p>The day the American Dream dies is the day we stop innovating as a country.