I know it seems that way and it can be discouraging, but it isn’t as bad as the media makes it seem. A vast majority of millionaires in America are small business owners, with the rest being made up of doctors, lawyers, accountants and dentists. More than 90% did *not* inherit their wealth - they made it first generation. Go look at research such as that done by Dr. Thomas J. Stanley, in Georgia, who specializes in studying America’s rich.
These same classes make up most of the top 50% of income, too. For every 1 Brad Pitt or LeBron James, there are literally thousands of Steven and Anthony Markels, who built Markel Insurance from almost nothing and own a combined $110 million in stock, or Robert Stiller, who owns nearly $480 million worth of Green Mountain Coffee, which was a tiny startup only a few short years ago.
It’s easy to think of the Paris Hilton’s or the Tom Cruises. The reality is, they are a statistical aberration but they stand out because you know about them. 1 out of every 25 Americans is a millionaire. It’s just they are driving (again, statistically) a Toyota or Ford, not a Bentley. If you, like most Americans, know 250 people, that means that you personally know 10 millionaires in your own life. The odds are also that you have no idea they are rich because they probably own a local restaurant or are a professor at the local community college.
Most of this is the media. They have kids in the inner cities of America convinced that they need to become a rapper to be successful when, if they were a heart surgeon instead, they would be in the top 1% of wealth in the United States. There are a lot of successful heart surgeons - if you make the cut and live wisely, the odds are good you’ll retire rich - but only a handful of rappers that can feed themselves. How many heart surgeons are on MTV or endorsing sneakers, though? It has to do with exposure. Yet, most of the homes in Beverley Hills and Palm Springs are owned by those same “boring” people.
Despite all of our current challenges, The United States of America is still the best hope in the world when it comes to converting your dreams to reality. It just happens that the rift between the “have” and the “have notes” is going to blow wide open because technology makes the “have notes” unnecessary from a labor viewpoint.