alt Hacker NewsThe US was not settled by wealthy people, or even middle class people. The poor people came by the scores of millions. Many came as indentured servants. The Irish came here because of the potato famine. And so on.
If you like, name a wealthy American who came from royalty. I can't think of any.
Fun fact: the Titanic was not built to transport rich people to the US. Quite the contrary, the bulk of it was for poor people immigrating to the US. The first class section was for status and marketing. The money came from the rest of the human cargo.
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That doesn't matter anymore. The wealthy class might not be called "royalty" (yet?), but they effectively are. The chances today for someone who starts in a poor family to reach middle class, let alone become rich, are very slim. Pretending that the current system in the US is catering to anyone else except the rich is disingenuous.
That said, I agree that the economy of such a society has a better chance of succeeding, but it's at the cost of suffering of lots of people. Actually both extremes are bad - socialism has its problems, but so does the unchecked capitalism.
> If you like, name a wealthy American who came from royalty. I can't think of any.
You can play the opposite game too: name a wealthy American who did not come from a multigenerational-upper-middle-class background (i.e. someone who's parents and grandparents were all well above median income).
Of the big names, the only one I can think of is Bezos (his adoptive father was an engineer, but a first generation immigrant with no established wealth). Everyone else, all of them AFAICT, came from backgrounds where they never had to worry about money or support through the early parts of their careers.