Lord loves a working man; don't trust whitey; see a doctor and get rid of it.

Wow, subby! This gives the other 299,999,995 of us hope for the future, doesn't it?

They should pay 0% in taxes because one day I will be just like them.

foo monkey: Lol wut? The overwhelming majority of wealthy people were born into wealth.

not true.

39% percent of the children born in 1968 to the top 1% cohort remained there as of today. 23% landed all the way at the 4th quintile. as 1% of the population remains 1% through the decades, I would think that means a lot of other peoples children moved up to take those dead 1%ers and those 1%ers' childrens positions at he top of the heap. 6/10.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility (new window)

must be a lot of people who are not yet dead though who had cash in 1969. senior citizens now.

Here's another list of seven Bootstrappy Americans who started dirt poor but became millionaires! (new window)

stiletto_the_wise: For every one rich person who was born poor, there are 100 rich people who were born rich. I don't see what the point of the article was.

You haven't present a shred of evidence to back that statement up, and you are, in fact, dead wrong, but any of the evidence to the contrary of your opinion you'll probably just write off as unbelievable and biased since it doesn't confirm your prior biases.

Have you ever actually challenged your own beliefs before, or have you only hung around yes-men all your life?

natazha: Looks like lots of folks don't understand basic math or ever know what a majority is. No surprise there. I started out lower middle class and retired with a million in assets. Many people move from one side of the bell curve to the other. Wealth is most often gone by the third generation.

Lots of people retired with a million in assets... Before the Real Estate crash. How's your re-fi going?

Just for Hydraderp:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html (new window; full .pdf on link)

"The key findings relating to intergenerational mobility include the following:

* Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.

* Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300) had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5 percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.

* Education, race, health and state of residence are four key channels by which economic status is transmitted from parent to child.
African American children who are born in the bottom quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose parents had identical incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile.

* The difference in mobility for blacks and whites persists even after controlling for a host of parental background factors, children's education and health, as well as whether the household was female-headed or receiving public assistance.

* After controlling for a host of parental background variables, upward mobility varied by region of origin, and is highest (in percentage terms) for those who grew up in the South Atlantic and East South Central regions, and lowest for those raised in the West South Central and Mountain regions.

* By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States."

We're so meritocratic! WHEEE AMERICA *CRYING EAGLE*

wolvernova: Take away ever penny of inheritance money past (say) a million dollars ... The playing field would be leveled

lol. Uh, not even close. All you'd do is eliminate the small number of people that get multimillions or billions at birth... which would still be a good thing but you'd still have the same cycle of those that inherit getting to skate by, just with a lower "starting ceiling".

You realize that someone with a mere $50k inheritance at age 18 (vs. those that get $0 - which over 90% of the population can expect [Link (new window, .pdf warning)]) can easily be parlayed into a massive competitive advantage. All inheritance is contrary to efficient free market economics and meritocracy/personal achievement. All.

/my old boss, from the wayback machine; his mother left him house that was worth ~$25k in early '70s
//the guy is a freaking dolt and rudimentary maintenance is his "natural peak skillset"
///so he leveraged his free house to get more properties: rent out, pay down some principal, buy another, repeat
////again - this person didn't understand a thing about the rental industry, just how to change a wax toilet ring
///after 20 yrs he was making 6 figures and after 40 yrs he was making high 6 figures
//take away the free house at the beginning and he'd have been a lower-middle-class handyman for life
/of course he thinks he hit a triple, despite the stork having gently placed him on third base