America Today

"The American dream needs repair," is forerunner of the genre. In
today's Financial Times, it focuses on the rigidities of the US system.
The time was when a young American could start at the bottom and work
his way up. Luck and pluck was all that it took. But now, according to
scholars at the Brookings Institution, people stay put. If you're born
poor in America you're more likely to stay poor than if you had been
born poor in Britain, Denmark, Sweden or dozens of other countries.

What happened? The authors (Daily Reckoning) do not say. So we will. Success breeds
failure. As a society becomes rich, more and more people find ways to
game the system. The elite get tax credits, tariffs, and protective
regulations. Every layer of bureaucracy makes it harder for new
competitors to get ahead. And every new tax on income makes it harder
for upstarts to join the ranks of the rich. The poor get their
parasitic benefits too. Welfare, unemployment compensation, child tax
credits, medicare, food stamps, social security - all of these programs
give the poor an incentive to stay poor. Bill Bonner