I can clearly see a strong correlation between both education and hard work vs. social status and income. I come from Europe though. Is it really not the case in the US? Is it because of student loan barrier?
How hard did Boris Johnson work again? Or Priti Patel? Or Don Jr? Or Jair Bolsonaro?
I'm Brazilian, but I live in Europe, and everyday I see that I was privileged to be able to focus on studying hard (and didn't, most of the time) and still managed to be quite successful when compared to the average European. In Brazil, my skin and eye color was a ticket to some very restricted spaces I simply wouldn't have access to with the wrong colors.
You are cherry picking outliers to argue against a claim about a general trend.
It really does not matter how hard this or that particular individual worked. What matters is statistics which describes the opportunity of an anonymous Joe in the society.
It really depends on what kind of mobility we are talking about. The wealth and influence of the individuals I mentioned is pretty much impossible to reach unless you have optimal initial conditions. As the saying goes, the easiest way to become a millionaire is to be born a billionaire. Even if you are born a mere millionaire, you can make many more attempts at becoming a billionaire than a person who needs to work in order to have dinner.
There is a lot of statistics that point that current levels of social mobility are on par with feudal England and, while a modest improvement in conditions is very achievable for those who aren’t born in the most unforgiving situations, the remaining possible paths are very much closed.
I kind of expected that we are talking about the basic mobility, such as my wife coming from a low income blue collar family becoming an upper-middle class architect. Not the chance of becoming a super-rich or super-powerful.
