The fact that some people like the author still succeed in becoming wealthy from humble beginnings is besides the point. It's like those actors who talk about how they waited tables and went to hundreds of auditions before they got the role that made them a movie star. Yes, it worked for them, but how many more didn't make it? Did they really work less at it, or were they less lucky?

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quaddoggy 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you live in America? You seem to be under the mistaken impression that it is a zero sum game. It isn’t.

	▲	jhbadger 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes I do live in America - and nothing I've said has anything to do with zero sum economics - only that examples of people succeeding has no bearing on how likely it is in general. The "American Dream" implies that economic mobility is 1) likely in America and 2) more likely there than in other places. This can be and has been measured and the results are not in general optimistic e.g. https://news.yale.edu/2025/02/20/tracking-decline-social-mob...