The American Dream Has Turned into a Grueling Quest for Survival for Millions of People

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Education is a luxury the minimum wage worker cannot afford. This message is passed on to their children. "My son is about to graduate from kindergarten, and I don't even have enough money to get his cap and gown, and that's only $20,"  says McDonald's worker Carman Iverson.

While many service workers live in poverty, well-off and well-educated professional workers increasingly find themselves working for poverty wages or for nothing at all. The Atlantic is one of many media outlets who  covered the plight of the underpaid McDonald's worker - while simultaneously  refusing to pay many of their own  writers.

Young Americans seeking full-time employment tend to find their options limited to two paths: one of low-status, low-paying temp jobs emblematic of poverty; another of high-status, low-paying temp jobs emblematic of wealth. America is not only a nation of temporary employees - the  Walmart worker on a fixed-day contract, the immigrant struggling for a day's pay in a makeshift  "temp town" - but of temporary jobs:  intern , adjunct , fellow.

Like their counterparts in the service industry, these short-term prestige positions frequently offer no benefits, no health care, and in the case of the intern, no salary. They require that you have the money to move to switch jobs year after year – impossible for many, but easy for those with cash to spare. In the end, college graduates who trained for white-collar professions often cannot afford to take them, and end up, instead, working at a place like McDonald's.

Post-recession America runs on a contingency economy based on prestige and privation. The great commonality is that few are paid enough to live instead of simply survive.

The importance of Helen Thomas

On July 20, 2013, the journalist  Helen Thomas died at age 92. Thomas was a seminal Washington reporter who covered every president since John F. Kennedy, but she came from humble means. Her father, an immigrant from Lebanon, was illiterate, but he encouraged her to get an education. She earned a BA in English from Wayne State University in her native Detroit. She moved to Washington DC and worked as a waitress - one could once afford to live in DC on a waitress's salary - and then got a clerical job at the Washington Daily News, which led to a job with United Press Service.

Helen Thomas worked her way up from the bottom. She did not buy her opportunities, because exorbitant journalism schools and unpaid internships did not exist. Her time in the service industry was not perceived as indicative of her abilities or her future path.

Today, a reporter of Thomas's modest background is out of luck. Journalist David Dennis  argues that requiring unpaid internships shuts out voices from poor communities by denying those who hail from them the ability to work: "Opinions or perspectives reflecting my own come few and far between. How many journalists can say they have firsthand knowledge of the mentality of someone from the inner-city? Many of these voices have been muted just because they simply can't navigate the landscape of privilege that most modern journalism encourages."

Mistaking wealth for virtue is a cruelty of our time. By treating poverty as inevitable for parts of the population, and giving impoverished workers no means to rise out of it, America deprives not only them but society as a whole. Talented and hard-working people are denied the ability to contribute, and society is denied the benefits of their gifts. Poverty is not a character flaw. Poverty is not emblematic of intelligence. Poverty is lost potential, unheard contributions, silenced voices.