Okay, rather than being pithy, perhaps you could explain succinctly why people are rich, then?
Or perhaps you can admit that in many cases people have achieved moderate to high wealth in democratic free market societies by either working harder or worker smarter than their peers?
One big reason people get rich is because their parents were rich. Rich parents pay for a better education for their children. This gives them access to the best jobs, and most valuable of all a network of people to give them a leg up. This also gives them better access to capital. It is also much easier to try your business idea if failure means moving back into Daddies pool-house, rather than complete ruin. I have worked with a lot of 'entreprenuers' and they are overwhelmingly from rich backgrounds. 'Started it with a small loan from my father of 1m' is a quote I heard more than once.
Another reason is luck. My father worked from nothing to owning a house in a nice place because he had a skill that was in demand. He nearly lost it all and is now scraping a living in his 70's, because technology made his skill less valuable. 10 more years of luck he would have retired at 50 and I would have had the advantages...
Someone, mentioned that rich people were better looking. Perhaps they are just healthier, better dressed, and better groomed?
This is all true. If this was the only factor though, there wouldn’t be any social mobility at all, certainly not in any downwards direction but also not upwards. The richest 50 people in the world would have the top 100-200 children in the world in terms of opportunities and the billionaires list wouldn’t have a single surname that wasn’t represented in the 19th century elite. This is clearly not the case, though.
The net result is that the process of getting rich is often a multigenerational effort where each generation does everything they can to give their own children more opportunities than they ever had. And if you talk to the people who do that, they’re often motivated by the experience of being poor and hungry and deprived and being willing to do whatever it takes to give their own kids a better chance. Conversely, if you’re born rich, sometimes you’re complacent and entitled and probably spoiled and lazy. There’s a proverb about how many generations it takes to go from rags to riches and back to rags.
Without causing this to become an argument of semantics, generally speaking, the US has higher class mobility than the rest of the world. No, it is not commonplace for someone born in abject poverty to become fabulously wealthy, it's not commonplace for anyone to become fabulously wealthy. That said, it is rather common for folks to come to the US in pretty close to abject poverty and grow to sustain a middle class lifestyle, something which is nearly impossible in most of the rest of the world. Is someone with a middle class lifestyle in the US "rich"? I guess it depends on your outlook, and this is where semantics plays a part. Mobility is not entirely caused by intelligence or hard work, but they definitely play a part.
You are correct that the best way to become rich is to be born into a rich family and inherit the wealth (or the opportunities that create wealth). But it is simply false to state that this is the only way, or even the predominate way, in which people become rich in democratic free markets. There are a LOT of small business owners in the US that, are at least on paper, millionaires, and most of these people were not born into rich families. Through my life I've known many wealthy people, and only a handful were born into generational wealth, the majority grew their wealth during economic booms and worked to entrench it so they could survive busts, most by starting a small business in a high-value niche. By global and national standards, many people who are simply professionals and not even business owners, are rich or wealthy, just by being smart with their money. If you own a home and are working a job that pays six figures for your entire career and invest well, you will retire a millionaire without much difficulty, which definitely puts you in the upper quintile in the US.
This fatalistic, defeatist, and frankly infantile attitude from some people that acts as if wealth is only ever granted by random chance and at birth is utterly ridiculous, doesn't help anyone, and is factually incorrect from every angle. Your comment clearly illustrates an understanding of this, but you seem bent on defending the thrust of the comment I was replying to from the other poster.
It's likely true that it's fallen, because inflation affects people further down the quintiles more than people at upper quintiles, and directly reduces class mobility. That said, just looking at how the GSMI is scored, it appears that they aren't outcome-focused, and instead look at correlative factors like educational access (which is tied to cost of education) and health metrics which drags down the US against its peers. By sheer outcomes, the US is in the top 3 most socially mobile countries in the world.
Rousseau said, "Money is the seed of money." We can guess at the myriad of reasons but we don't have to wonder if it's true. I'm sure you've read this but if not, it's fascinating:
The Wealthy in Florence Today Are the Same Families as 600 Years Ago
People are mostly rich because their parents were rich. Rich people do not come from poverty. Why is that? Do you think it's because impoverished people are not smart?
Sometimes rich people do come from poverty. Sometimes middle class people come from poverty and rich people come from the middle class. And sometimes rich heirs and heiresses go bankrupt and fade into obscurity. Why does this happen? Because the people who improve their position are either intelligent or diligent and the people who decline in position are either stupid or lazy.
To whatever degree these traits are genetic, you’d expect them to get roughly sorted out to the point where social mobility would decline, but it wouldn’t disappear entirely.
> Because the people who improve their position are either intelligent or diligent
Or corrupt, or given a leg up through connections of ones father or school.
> and the people who decline in position are either stupid or lazy.
Or unlucky. Or got ill.
Your ideas sound very Victorian to me. I have noticed that most people who did get rich assume it is something special about themselves that did it, I'm guessing you are one of them.
I’m talking about broad population-level averages. Maybe you define “luck” as an actual quantifiable trait that measures whether or not you’re blessed by God, but I define luck as a completely random variable that produces noise in the individual case but does not affect population-wide averages.
Or perhaps you can admit that in many cases people have achieved moderate to high wealth in democratic free market societies by either working harder or worker smarter than their peers?