Name: Is the American Dream Still Achievable Today?
Uploaded: 2024-04-30T21:07:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is the American Dream Still Achievable Today?' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is the American Dream Still Achievable Today?' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-30. Transcript available.

yeah that's what the people say a lot of times is it does feel like that now it
feel there's a lot
of energy in the air it feels like um the american dream isn't possible that it
doesn't
exist where do you think a lot of that energy comes from um that that is the it
feels like
that's the consensus these days would you agree with that it feels like that uh
there's a lot of
there's a lot of loud people that have that i don't know that it's necessarily
a consensus
among americans because consensus means that most people agree with it right
okay so i'm not sure
that but there's enough there's enough people that are making noise in that
regard but there kind of
always has been i mean if you go back to the you know the the 70s with the hippie
movement it was
the same kind of thing right and so there's always been a you know my group the
baby boomers and so
there's always been somebody in the group that felt like the system was rigged
man we got to get the
system you know yeah we can't beat the system the little man can't get ahead
yeah you know and so
the neighborhood i grew up in people say that you know and they never said it
with like enthusiasm
it's like the little man can't get ahead yeah like eeyore is their spirit
animal oh yeah where's my tail
yeah it's just that's it and i'm stuck and life's bad and you know and no you're
not get up off your
butt and go get a pressure washer i mean there's stuff to do you know so uh and
most of these people
again these millionaires um and a million dollars is not that's not a billion
dollars that's a million
there's a lot of difference millionaires don't have jets millionaires don't
have seven cars and four
houses no you know they just got they've just got a paid for house and some
money in their retirement
that's what it amounts to and so there's a people kind of have a different
mindset there and they think
okay i can't be like this rock star well you might not be there's not as many
billionaires as there
are millionaires yeah so but anyway can it be done yes it can be done and there
is there's a lot of
uh loud noises out there i don't know where that comes from it's a i think it
starts with and
one of the reasons i pushed back and did this study and then we ended up doing
a number one
best-selling book on it baby steps millionaires pushing back in the marketplaces
against those
voices is because they're not it's not true that you can't get ahead right and
when you convince
someone that it's true you're stealing their hope and you shouldn't steal
people's hope man that's evil
yeah and so you ought to encourage people to go do stuff now you should not
encourage them
to go on american idol if they can't sing yeah okay but you you should you know
so stop their
nightmares but also encourage their dreams so this hopelessness that goes with
that i feel stuck i
i'll never get a house i'm a gen z i'm a millennial i can't get ahead in today's
world you boomers bought
your house for two baskets of strawberries and so now i'm stuck and you don't
understand and and
housing is so expensive honey it's always been expensive i was doing an
interview on npr the other
day and the lady said you know i was riding with the uber driver and the uber
driver said his daughter
is a dancer and a barista and she couldn't get a house and i went that's been
true in every generation
yeah if you serve coffee and you're in nashville and you're a dancer yeah i
think that's just gonna
be that's not those are not you know career fields that you're gonna make
enough to be able to afford
a house that's not that's not a new thing that doesn't mean the system has
failed yeah and who's
buying java off a stripper either you know to be honest i'm not saying i didn't
say what kind of
dancer i didn't i didn't have any idea there but yeah oh okay yeah i thought
yeah i didn't know but
yeah like who also i guess it would be nice though if a stripper just shows up
as a nice cup of coffee
but the the back to your thing the thing is hope is a decision and it's got to
be based on you know
you've had the actual reality in your life of going from collecting cans to
sitting here i've had the
reality in my life of going from mowing grass to millionaire in my 20s to
losing it all i'm so
dumb i had to do it twice damn so you know i've got that reality and so when
someone says it can't
be done i went uh wait a minute hello um and i don't really i'm fairly smart
but i'm not a rocket
surgeon i mean i don't i don't really know how to do stuff i just i'm figuring
it out as i go right
and and so i think anybody can do it no it's good to hear yeah i think people
having a hope like that
is important you know and i think that's yeah it's just really important to
hear that that yeah if you
take away somebody's hope because i guess that's what a lot of this this uh
these loud voices are
doing right i never thought about that that much they're just trying to take
away hope because once
they have your hope they can kind of keep you there well if they're running us
if they're running a game
you know and they're they're manipulating that's one thing and that's
particularly evil but it the
other one is just they really have lost hope and so they're angry and they don't
want and they want
to loudly proclaim that it's not possible which makes them feel okay that they're
not winning that
they haven't gone and done something yet and because winning is hard man it's
hard
Thank you.