That was my meaning, that soccer isn’t a big deal in the USA yet Beckham still got a monster deal from L.A..

You would call the people of the first room more prosperous.

The people in the first room left the homes of the people in the second room less than 300 years ago and accumulated that much prosperity due to their ideals of prosperity and capitalist system. And since those folks with $1 DO get free health care, DO pay no payroll taxes, DO get state & federal benefits, DO get free/reduced housing, I’d say that the $1 represented would really be much higher.

There’s a reason, after all, that people are coming from all those $8.25 positions (not far from our minimum wage) in the socialist countries in order to do the jobs that those $1 folks refuse do do.

I see the US spending records & know how much we spend on the poor, working poor and middle class. We are not stingy. Anything but, actually.

Well, as a gov’t, that is. Personal giving in certain (cough, blue) areas are another story.

Anyway, I think I see the difference – tell me if this is right. Two rooms, each with 10 people. One room has this:
1 person with $100
1 person with $12
8 people, each with $1
- Total $ in room – $120
Another room has this:

1 person with $20
2 people with $15 each
6 people with $8.25 each
- Total in room is $99.50

You would call the people of the first room more prosperous. I would call the people of the second room more prosperous.

Anyway – yeah.. Warren Buffet may not have learned the stock trade from his dad… maybe he didn’t even get any connections from his dad’s cronies, and maybe he worked at McDonalds to pay his way through college, and sold his Beatles album collection to fund his first stock purchase… but I suspect that even so, growing up with the rich and the powerful equipped him in other ways for the life of a future mogul.

David Beckham started out under some pretty humble circumstances

Got his huge payday by going to Los Angeles. But, soccer/football in the USA is an iffy example, as I wouldn’t think Norweigian baseball players make as much as the average New York Yankee.

Danby,
Warren Buffett’s success in purchasing stocks has little to do with his dad’s profession. Nice try, though.
Where are all the billionaires that came from politicians/moguls in the grand Paradise-laden lands of the ‘free gimme’ states? Why aren’t there hoardes of people leaving the mean ol’ USA for the riches of Canada, she of the free health care system? Buffalo is a short distance from the border, one would think that proximity to one’s birthplace or where they grew up wouldn’t be that big a factor (since so many come into the USA for, well, prosperity).

Bill Gates, son of corporate lawyer William Gates, founding partner of Preston Gates & Ellis LLC. His father was the employer of noted Republican bag man Jack Abramoff.

Donald Trump, son of Fred Trump, wealthy NY real estate mogul.

Not very good cases for American social mobility. Oprah Winfrey, I’ll grant you.

In America, you can have a poor kid from Ohio grow up to don #23 and become the biggest thing in sports right now (Lebron James). There are no Lebron James’ in Sweden or Scandanavia; and there won’t be, because there isn’t the capital for someone to create a top notch franchise (poor analogy, but the gist is true). If you don’t like the James analogy, go find the Swedish version of Trump, Gates, Winfrey, Buffett….they don’t exist. They exist in the USA because we’re where the “American dream” resides.

Sure, Johnny Depp lives in France & Gwynneth Paltrow prefers Europe to we redneck Americans, but when it comes time to find the fulfillment of their personal dreams of prosperity, they conveniently enough sign on the dotted line of the big movie companies in teh USA instead of heading to the Royal theatre for a reading of Shakespeare.

And don’t get me started on all the free stuff in Cuba, China or North Korea…

One note about the mixed economies of Western Europe – an interesting effect, or side-effect, of their system is that there is better economic mobility. While we have greater “freedom” and “opportunity” here, Europeans are actually able to break out of their economic class of birth and become economically and socially mobile. Now, social mobility is not my number one priority, but I think it is important and it shows that Europeans may be better suited to living the “American dream” than maybe Americans are.

I know a lot of Americans fear a health care “system” because they do not trust the government to administer it properly. That’s especially true for those who want to be able to pay for more comprehensive care, rather than having to accept the same standard of care as everyone else at a lower level than they feel they deserve. I think their concerns should be heard, and have some legitimacy to them – but I don’t know what the best answer is. I do know that the unintended consequence of a system where a middle class individual can pay for elective procedures but a poor person has to die for lack of a relatively basic treatment is a terrible flaw also. So, those are hard questions.