To me it all depends on how you define well off. I think anyone, no matter what their background is or where they come from can work, learn a skill and eventually land a decent job that pays them good salary. They can live an upper middle class life. No, they won't be rich, but they will have a good life.

Going beyond that takes something that most people simply don't have. You either need to start your own business or be able to do something aside from your job that has the potential to bring in big money. Unless you have that idea that can make you big money or you have an idea for a business that can be very profitable and you are able to start it, run it and grow it, you aren't going to rich (unless you get lucky and buy a winning lottery ticket).

So there is upward mobility, it just has has a roof on it that restricts most people from going past a certain point and it has always been that way.

I think a better way to put that is that most people have their own ceiling that stops them from going past a certain point.
Whether it be average or below average intelligence, lack of drive or ambition, fear of losing, etc.

You put ridiculously amount of importance for personal skills. Money comes through transactions and in bigger scale from a thing called as economy. If you were some chicken shit farmers in the middle of nowhere with just your chickens, your ambitions would be limited by your chickens breeding pace. Just like you now live in a environment that sets the frame for all your life.

We have ceilings like productivity, resources, demand and so on. Those are not fixed, but for most of us they are more or less fixed, as our influence to those is very little.

There is just "so much" to divide per moment.

So what do you put "importance" on? Factors surrounding people that are out of their control?

Got news for you...SOME people (the exceptional ones that do make it) don't stay in the midwest being farmers. They take a leap of faith and go where opportunity is.

I never said it was for most people.

As you said...99.9% of people never have and never will have what it takes to step up and do something like that.

Wealth isn't a pie with just "so much to divide". I just don't believe that. I've seen it with my own eyes when my uneducated dirt poor grandfather became a multi-millionaire by...ironically...farming! (citrus industry in Fla.)

And I myself have made a few million dollars since I entered the adult industry in the mid 1990's. Before that, I was a professional musician lucky to make a couple hundred bucks a week.

When I decided that my days as a "rock star" were over...I turned my attention to being successful.
And within a couple of years I was making more money than all the people I went to high school with who had been working on careers for 20 years.

I know what you're saying...and yes, it will hold back average or uninspired people (talking about the United States...not some shithole thirdworld country). But the OPPORTUNITY is out there.

Nobody is stuck in a shithole town working a nowhere job.

Anybody can take the biggest chance of their lives and LEAVE that shithole and put their ass on the line. And IF they have what it takes...they can make it.

Most don't. That's always been true. And always will be.

I didn't say anything about some 99,99 % of people. And wealth is a pie to divide per moment. Wealth in general is not fixed of course, but per moment it is (spot picture), and can be even in the long term, here comes the economic equality in question (the "pie" issue). In enough equal societies there is variety, but the "base layer" rises. So in very rich society a bum could have beach house, but the rich ones have some resident house in Mars (assuming that is luxury).

You want it or like or not, but the big picture has huge influence in our lives, the part to where we can influence little to none. For example you can't influence to the time you live on. You weren't born at stone age, but not thanks to you as you had zero influence to it. Same goes with many things. We like to think that we are more in charge and succesful people especially like to think that the success is all because of their accomplishes. Well, it is a nice story anyways. And I don't mean that forward going wouldn't help to bring success, yes it does, but no matter how hard you tried at stone age, you couldn't travel in space, as space travel is a result from huge bunch of peoples work during thousands of years. So it's not just up to you.

Stop it. You aren't allowed to talk like that. It makes Jesse Jackson angry.

This IS the lament of the failure.
What you'll never admit is this.........you've never worked as hard as the successful. In fact you refuse to.
The rest is just the fantasy you tell yourself to get you to sleep at night instead of slitting your wrists.

No, those are just facts. And I didn't say that hard working wouldn't help. And why would I want to slit my wrists open anyways?

Do you have some obsession to be succesful, or at least think you are? Where stands your wrist slitting line?

Correct. There are many people out there who might have an idea for a business that could be successful, but they are unwilling to take the risk it takes to make it happen. They are content in keeping their job and bringing home their steady paycheck so long as they have their weekends off and can take a vacation every summer.

I have a friend who is a professional chef. She is amazing and cooks some fantastic food. She is always talking about opening a place of her own. I tell her she should. She knows that is a very risky business so she doesn't do it. The funny thing is, her husband makes enough money for them to live on so it isn't like they have to put everything on the line. However, she always has a good excuse why she doesn't either she doesn't want to risk taking out a loan or she doesn't know how to get investors or she can't find the right place. The laundry list of reasons why she can't is huge. Someone who rises above will take that risk and take the chance of failing. Someone who stays in their comfort zone will find a reason not to do it.

Son, the bottom line is there are those who go out and succeed and those who whine about other's successes on chat boards.
Anyone who does even a small amount of research understands that upward mobility is VERY alive and well in the US.
There are just too many people who are unwilling to do the work it takes to become upwardly mobile.
Those are the facts

It is a sign of an economically challenged country when the middle class is doing less well.

It is easy to get $500,000 of debt to go to school because university endowments funnel that money back into the market, so big business likes this. It is hard to get $500,000 of debt financing to grow or start a business.

I think the measure of economic health is how far hard work can get a person.

I think hard work and determination should be respected, valued, and rewarded.

I'm not sure that the Greatest Generation immigrant success stories are as likely today as they once were. But I believe that hard work can eventually lead to success, no matter what the starting point.

Will most Millenial or Gen X citizens outperform or equal their parents' or grandparents' quality of life? Not a sure thing in middle class work-for-a-living circles and that is a problem.