The American Dream, the conviction that hard work will pay off and can take you from being poor to being well-off is rather ingrained into both US society and the international image of the US. This report from American University paints a different picture, though. Apparently, the US (together with the UK) are the Western/High-Income country where parent income best predicts future child income, i.e. where the chances for children to rise beyond the income bracket of their parents, is lowest.

Also, economic growth or recession seemingly has very little to do with upwards mobility, and working long hours doesn't pay off in any statistically significant way, either.

So, this got me thinking. How correct are the views we hold about our own country as well as other countries? How valid is that dishwasher to millionaire cliché? Has it ever been?

Pretty much. The way it seems to me, the American Dream needs a slight revision though, because the reason for this brokenness is that all the really interesting jobs, which require you to know something other than how to dick people out of their money with your MBA, are at best "only" low six-figure deals, i.e., enough to be substantially comfy, but not nearly enough to be free of worry or imbued with any kind of power. The MBA guys have all that perfectly concentrated in their realm. And I really wouldn't want to be one of those hacks anyway, so I guess my dream is to do something good for society and get paid nearly what I'm worth. Imagine that!

It's a SICK statistic.  I'll ask Nick, he probably has it on hand...

Yeah, I saw an article on the front page of the Business section of the New York Times a month or two ago about just that Sinic. I'll poke around.

Here's one.

MS, are you sure you're following your own advice? ;-)

Sean, those diagrams are sickening, especially in connection with all the "woe be unto us, we are barely avoiding a recession, we really need to lower wage expenditures" rhetoric that gets spouted by the talking heads so often these days. And yes, sinic, I also read about the CEO to worker pay relation differences between US and the rest of the world a couple of months ago, no linky though. I also remember there being a correlation between that income relation and the overall "healthiness" of the business in question, i.e. the larger the difference between CEO and worker pay, the less healthy are often other aspects of the company, like communication structures, employee happiness, etc.

But on the topic at hand, yes, it does happen. For example, there's this dude in New York, an immigrant from one of the soviet states, was a cabbie, then somehow managed to make like a billion dollars. So it does happen; it just requires hard work and a hell of a lot of luck. I mean like, probably 600 times your fair share of luck.

So yeah.

Not that I'm doubting you or anything Sean, but do you have a link for it?  I'm curious what the guy did to get there.

I know you can make a lot of money through illegal practices (See also:  Kennedy) so I'm just curious if they guy might be doing shady real estate or something.

Actually, the local millionaire in my village went to the same school I did, was dyslexic, failed all his GCSEs, was hated by all his teachers, and then went and opened a little shop, and worked his way up until he owned Botany Bay, local landmark.

I didn't know any of this until he landed his helicopter on the school field one day while I was in French. ^_^

Apparently Richard Branson has a similar story, what with the dyslexia and doing badly at school etc.

And Virgin owns about half the world.

So the school/universityl/book smart type intelligence isn't so important to getting super rich, but I imagine the iron will and dedication is, as well as probably a good head for how people are and such.

Of course, the fact that Branson came from a wealthy background probably didn't hurt. 

The children not rising beyond their parent's income bracket thing.... I think some of it is education and advantages, but I also think a lot of it is culture. If your parents are a maid and a dishwasher, they will probably be really proud of you if you go out and get a job in a supermarket as produce manager or something. It'd be a step up in their eyes, but if someone else looked at the salary ranges they'd probably class both parents and child in the same bracket.

In America, the opprotunities are still there. But you have to be alert to them, and know how to take advantage of them. Most people just are not that clever/driven. It's easy to get sidetracked by day to day concerns. Most people just stick with what they know. And they way they know it is from their parents and community. (Most communities seperate out by income, lif you look at the rental and property prices)

The wage gap makes it look really glaring, but honestly, even if you're fairly low on the income scale in America, you probably have electricity, you've been vaccinated, you'll only starve if you're too stupid to go to the soup kitchen, you can probably read or if not were given the chance to learn for free, you have access to libraries and legal protection if you look for it, and you can probably get basic health care through Medicaid.

On the other hand, if you're poor in say... Africa, you probably don't have electricity, food, or a floor made of something other than dirt. You may not be able to read, easily curable illnesses will kill you and your children, and if someone attacks you it's probably a member of someone's army and good luck trying legal recourse.

I am not saying it does not suck to be poor in America. It totally does. There are people who are living 10 people to a two bedroom apartment because that's the only way to afford it. But I suspect that to your average refugee from Somalia or East Timor, the life of a amecican minimum wage manual laborer might look pretty good.