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Gary Becker
Nobel Prize in Economics
Gary Becker: My parents were both immigrants. So if you ask, my mother came when she was six months, but she liked to feel that she was European, she wasn't an American. My father, clearly, came to this country when he was 14 and it was for a dream to get employed. I've always been a very strong proponent of immigration and the like, because I think the American Dream is real. We provide the opportunities for people. I came from an uneducated family, as I said, no books in the house. But the opportunities provided by this country were enormous, and that's why I feel so patriotic, so proud to be an American. You won't catch me attacking. I mean the U.S. makes a lot of mistakes, but I won't attack America, because I think it's a great country, and I think it's continued to provide for opportunity for people and there's no country in the world that provides these kind of opportunities. So I think it's a real dream, and what we and the younger generations have to do is continue that dream, that people from all walks of life can succeed. It isn't the contacts you have, it isn't the networks you have, although they count. But if you're willing to work hard enough and keep your mind on a goal, and willing along the way to take criticism, that the chances that you'll succeed, for everybody, is considerable. And that to me is the American Dream.
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Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
We all get to decide how we're going to go about making our own living and so on and so on. That happens to also be a very effective way of deploying an economy so that you get an economy which mostly makes sense. You know, things mysteriously -- because of that invisible hand -- tend to work out. I remember there was a time -- I may have these statistics slightly wrong -- a few years ago there was a heat wave in the South that killed three percent of chickens, and I think egg prices doubled because there were three percent fewer chickens. Well, that means that the number of chickens is roughly right, even though there's nobody deciding how many chickens there should be. So, that is a very interesting fact, I think, that a free market economy -- which by necessity involves a lot of liberty -- just happens to work well in terms of allocating resources. But, imagine a different world. Imagine a world where some incredibly artificially intelligent computer could actually do a better job than the invisible hand of allocating resources, and were to say, "There shouldn't be this many chickens, there should be this many chickens," just a few more or a few less. Well, that might even lead to more aggregate wealth. So, it might be a society that if you give up liberty, everybody could be a little wealthier. Now, the question that I would pose is, if that turned out to be the world, "Is that a good trade?" Personally, I don't think so. Personally I think it would be a terrible trade. And, I sometimes worry about that, because I think it's a coincidence that liberty tends to do such a good job of creating an economy that functions well.
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Keith Black
Pioneering Neurosurgeon
Keith Black: I think that the American Dream is an evolving concept, because it has never been entirely true, particularly for minority groups. I mean the concept that there is equal opportunity never really meant equal opportunity for everybody. And it still doesn't mean equal opportunity today. If you're an African American child in South Central L.A., in a school without the sort of capabilities as a student in Beverly Hills who is going to a private institution, even though you may have the same intellectual capability, you do not have the same opportunity. I think, in an idealized fashion, what the American Dream means is that there's equal opportunity for every American. We're a long ways from achieving that dream, and I think as a society I would have to say the American Dream is an evolving concept. The American Dream should really be, "How do we, actually, as a nation, get to the concept where the American Dream is a reality?"
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