Weiss 1

Xochitl Weiss

Mrs. Reed

American Literature, 2nd hour

6 March 2017

Will the Future Generations Better Off?

Through her TED talk, American journalist Courtney E. Martin eloquently delivers a

speech discussing the economic and creative possibilities of the future. The details in her speech

are centered around her opinion that future generations will continue to be better off based on her

own personal standards. In The New American Dream, Martin discusses how her family has

continued to be better off over past few generations and ties her speech to American culture with

a discussion of how our ancestors lived.

Martin discusses the life of her family to show the steady progression of how their lives

have improved and allows me to connect my topic to her speech. She begins by talking about the

life of her great-grandfather s and her grandfathers generations. Her great-grandfather was a

drunk in Detroit, who sometimes managed to hold down a factory job and her grandfather was

a traveling salesman that was unable to support his family (Martin). But, her father became a

bankruptcy lawyer and she became a well known successful journalist proving her argument

that each generation continues to improve upon the one before it (Martin). Martin also discusses

how people who are starting families or considering having children soon, should think about the

ideas she sets forward in order to help their children have high quality life. Her use of family in

support of her argument ties her speech into my topic.

As a young adult that will look for a job later in life, I am able to negatively connect most

to her article where she talks about the predicted declines of finding secure jobs. In the future, I
 Weiss 2

hope to find a secure job and her argument scares me. She uses a particular rhetorical question:

Is better off finding a secure job that you can count on for the rest of your life? and statistics

to argue that secure jobs are disappearing and should not be a way to judge whether or not people

are better off. Although she succeeds in making her point, the idea that the amount of secure jobs

is slowly declining is worrying to me. This TED talk is significant to me because it is so

informative about the job market in the future.

Towards the end of her speech, Martin discusses our immigrant American ancestors to tie

her speech to American culture. She says When they came to America, they often shared

apartments, survival tactics, child care always knew how to fill one more belly, no matter how

small the food available. But they were told that success meant leaving the village behind and

pursuing that iconic symbol of the American Dream which provides detail into the historic view

of our ancestors and gives readers a sense of what their life was like. These details set her up to

argue that the American Dream has changed which also ties back to American culture because

the American Dream is a common theme in many historical and literary stories.

Throughout her TED talk, Courtney Martin uses her family as an example to argue that as

time passes each generation is only improving and talks about American immigrant ancestors to

tie her speech to American culture. Her overall argument, that future generations will be better

off, is supported by her use of these two argumentative details. I was able to connect with her

argument especially when she talked about certain worrying aspects of our economic future. But,

she was able to very effectively argue her opinion and leave readers with the takeaway that the

children of the future will be able to have high quality lives.