J. Stiglitz: The American Dream has become a myth

[the_tyrant]

I would say that the big rags to riches situation is not the norm.

Every day, there are people succeeding in a rags to riches story, in every field and industry. However, the "American Dream" is simply because at the time, there is a better chance of a rags to riches transformation in the United States.

However, I personally do not associate rags to riches with the US specifically, I associate it with the discovery of a "new frontier"

The new world offers more opportunities, simply because it is new. I would say that the "American dream" started off with Cortez and Columbus, they started the "rags to riches" trend in the new world.

it started with the Conquerors and explorers, than it went to the pioneers and settlers, than it became the industrialists, and now, the rags to riches stories occur in the IT industry.

The rags to riches stories are more likely to happen in a breakthrough, a new frontier. America was once the new frontier, than many subsequent breakthroughs happened in the US.

The "rags to riches" stories mostly happened in the US, because it was the "new frontier" in most of its history. Than, many subsequent breakthroughs occured in the united states.


this is the classic mis-interpretation of a relationsip. The breakthroughs happened in the US, thus you were more likely to "strike it rich". But you were likely to strike it rich because of the breakthrough developments, not because there is something interent about the United States that makes it more like for a poor man to suddenly strike it rich.

Rags to riches stories are most likely to happen when new trends and breakthroughs appear, there is no geographical relationship. In fact, there has been many success stories within the last few years in Somalia of all places. Pennyless fishermen who took up piracy ended up as millionares. That is the classical "american success story", they took a new emerging trend, ran with it, and got rich. Geography had nothing to do with it.